The once lowly sweet potato is being reborn as a fashionable, orange superfood.
Gone are the days when the only time Americans encountered
the tuber was mashed up and topped with marshmallows alongside a
Thanksgiving turkey. Today, sweet potatoes turn up everywhere as
healthier, nutrient-dense alternatives to french fries at burger joints
or colorful side dishes for swanky restaurants. They have more fiber and
fewer calories than white potatoes.
And the appeal isn't just among Americans, who are eating
twice as many sweet potatoes as they did in 2005. Demand also is surging
in Europe. In the U.S., the world's biggest exporter, farmers are
planting their biggest crop in five decades after their shipments
overseas doubled in five years to an all-time high. Nutritionists say
consumers who want to eat fewer grains and processed foods are choosing
sweet potatoes.
"We've seen various different plants emerge as new
superstars," said Kristin Kirkpatrick, manager of wellness nutrition
services at Cleveland Clinic Wellness Institute. "From a diet
perspective, people are so interested in really eating much closer to
the farm. Sweet potatoes could be clumped in with beets and kale and
some of these other things that are coming from the ground and not
coming from a plant where people are wearing hairnets."
While Americans still eat far more white potatoes -- as
french fries or just baked or mashed -- demand has slowed. Consumption
was 113.7 pounds per person last year, down from 125.4 pounds a decade
ago, the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates. Meanwhile, sweet
potatoes are catching on and growers are marketing them as a year-round
staple. In 2015, consumers ate 7.5 pounds, up from 4.5 pounds in 2005,
USDA data show.
Sweet potatoes, which belong to a different plant family
than white potatoes and yams, were already well-established as a root
vegetable in Central America and South America by the time explorer
Christopher Columbus arrived in the late 1400s. They were a big part of
the U.S. diet almost a century ago, peaking in the 1930s, before falling
out of favor over the next six decades. With demand and output now
rebounding, the crop is marketed in everything from dog food to vodka.
"They've been phenomenally popular" at DMK Burger Bar in
Chicago, where sweet-potato fries served with a lemon-Tabasco aioli have
been on the menu since the first restaurant opened in the Lakeview
neighborhood in 2009, said David Morton, co-founder of DMK Restaurants,
which operates three of the burger joints in the Chicago area, as well
as locations in Soldier Field. "They have a very, very loyal following."
Most of the U.S. crop is grown in the Southeast, where land
has traditionally been used for tobacco and cotton. More than half comes
from North Carolina. Total domestic output last year jumped 4.8 percent
to 31 billion pounds, the highest since 1946, USDA data show.
Seedings this year are forecast at the highest since 1965,
the USDA estimates, providing a profit source for farmers at a time when
global surpluses of grain and oilseeds have led to lower prices and
losses on those crops. A farmer can generate $1,200 to $1,400 of
operating income per acre growing sweet potatoes, up from $827 in 2012,
according to an analysis by Elizabeth Canales, an assistant professor of
agricultural economics at Mississippi State University. By comparison,
U.S. farm income is falling for many crops, and some Midwest corn
growers may barely break even.
Sweet potatoes have a "really positive demand-side story,"
said Roland Fumasi, a senior fresh-produce analyst with Rabobank Food
& Agribusiness Research and Advisory in Fresno, Calif. "While you've
seen production really, really rapidly rise, price has also gone up
over that time period. It gives those producers an incentive to spend
more and drive yields."
Kornegay Family Farms in Princeton, N.C., sowed 800 acres of
sweet potatoes this year, up from 600 in 2015 and double the amount a
decade ago, said Kim Kornegay-LeQuire, vice president of the company's
sweet-potato packing and marketing unit. The family, which began farming
in 1953, also grows tobacco, soybeans, peanuts, wheat, watermelon and
asparagus. It packages about 760,000 pounds of sweet potatoes a week,
with three-quarters of that exported, she said.
"If you're a commodities farmer just dealing with soybeans
or wheat or corn, you're very thankful to have sweet potatoes in your
arsenal because, not only does everything help each other out with crop
rotation, but you don't have all your eggs in one basket when it comes
to row crops," said Kornegay-LeQuire, who is part of the family's fourth
generation of farmers.
Demand growth domestically is partly driven not by raw sweet
potatoes but value-added products such as pre-cut cubes or fries, said
Jennifer Campuzano, a Chicago-based director at Nielsen's Perishables
Group, which tracks food consumption. While retail sales climbed 3.2
percent by volume in the year ended April 30, outpacing a 2.6 percent
gain for all produce, value-added products rose 18 percent, Nielsen data
show.
China is by far the biggest consumer, producing 77.7 million
tons in 2013, more than 20 times any other country, according to the
latest United Nations data. But demand for U.S. exports is being driven
mostly by increased sales to Europe, including the U.K., Netherlands,
Belgium and Ireland. Exports last year of 179,881 tons were more than
double those in 2010, and sales in the first five months of 2016 are
running 24 percent ahead of the prior year's pace, according to USDA
data.
"It has certainly got more popular than it used to before,
because maybe we finally worked it out how to cook it properly," said
Scott Hallsworth, owner of Kurobuta, a Japanese restaurant in London,
where he serves sweet-potato fries. "People don't realize how versatile
it is."
Click Here For More Articles
No comments:
Post a Comment