04/13/2024
If you’ve never heard of Yacon Root, please let me introduce you to your new found love!
Yacon root is a tuber, looks like a potato, but tastes like a cross between watermelon and a mild apple. Sweet, crispy, juicy, refreshing.
Yacon root is a prebiotic functional food. It has compounds known as fructooligosaccharides
that inhibit the growth and reproduction of cancer cells. A study published in published in Chemistry & Biodiversity, a fungus that grows on the roots and leaves of yacon demonstrated anticancer benefits against skin, colon, brain, cervical, and blood cancers.
Yacon root also regulates digestion and bowel movements, increases immunity, supports bone density, reduces obesity and insulin resistance, maintains blood pressure, regulates cholesterol, can aid in weight loss, improves resistance to infections and decreases allergic reactions.
You can purchase yacon root syrup online or at many health stores. Look for 100 percent pure yacon root syrup with no additional additives or other substances.
When using yacon root syrup as a sugar substitute or for health reasons, the recommended dose is one teaspoon, which has only about seven calories and less than three grams of sugar.
One teaspoon of organic yacon syrup contains about:
* 7 calories
* 3.7 grams carbs
* 2.3 grams sugars
This syrup is typically considered a healthy sugar alternative and one of the more acceptable natural sweeteners for diabetics.
You can use yacon root syrup in baking just like you would other sweeteners. It can also be used as a sweetener in coffee, tea and smoothies. It can also be cooked like other tubers, used in curries and soups or cut into slices and fried (like potatoes, yet it contains no starch like potatoes do). Thanks to its fruity sweetness, the vegetable is also a great addition to desserts, such as puddings, cakes and pies.
You can find it as a syrup, powder, and capsules on Amazon and grocery stores.
Yacon syrup is made from the edible part of the yacon plant — its cluster of tubers or storage roots. Yacon (yah-KON) is also sometimes called llacon, strawberry jicama, Bolivian sunroot, ground pear, and Peruvian ground apple or apple of the Earth.
The scientific name of the yacon syrup plant is Smallanthus sonchifolius(formerly Polymnia sonchifolia), and it’s a species of perennial daisy indigenous to the Andes Mountains located in South America.
Yacon is eaten raw and traditionally used as a source of refreshment in a fruit salad called Salpicón.
Yacon root syrup contains a high percentage of fructooligosaccharides, which are prebiotics that pass through the upper part of the gastrointestinal tract and remain undigested. When fructooligosaccharides reach the colon undigested, they are then fermented by gut microflora, increasing bowel mass and promoting the growth of beneficial bacteria. For these reasons, yacon root syrup can be helpful when it comes to digestive issues, such as providing natural constipation relief and treating traveler’s diarrhea.
If you over consume yacon root it can lead to flatulence, diarrhea, nausea and digestive discomfort.
Constituents:
Water, fructooligosaccharides (oligofructans), free fructose, glucose, sucrose, inulin, starch, chlorogenic / ferulic caffeic acids, sesquiterpene lactones, y-cadinene, caffeic-acid, 3-caffeoylquinic-acid, chlorogenic-acid, 2,4-dicaffeoylaltraric-acid, 2,5-dicaffeoylaltraric-acid, 3,5-dicaffeoylaltraric-acid, 3,5-dicaffeoylquinic-acid, enhydrin, ferulic-acid, fluctuanin, gallic-acid, gentisic-acid, inulin, melampolides, oligofructans, beta-pinene, protocatechuic-acid, rosmarinic-acid, sonchifolin, tryptophan, 2,3,5-tricaffeoylaltraric-acid, 2,4,5-tricaffeoylaltraric-acid, and uvedalin.
There are many studies of the benefits of yacon root on Google Scholar and many delicious recipes online too!
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