Featured Fruit Product: Sweet potato juice concentrate

Sweet potatoes are native to Central America, but can now be sourced globally. Native Americans were growing sweet potatoes when Columbus arrived in 1492. Sweet potatoes were the main source of nourishment for early US homesteaders and for soldiers during the Revolutionary War. Sweet potatoes are often confused with yams, but yams are large, starchy roots grown in Africa and Asia and the two are not even closely related.

These tuberous roots are among the most nutritious foods in the vegetable kingdom. They are packed with calcium, potassium, and vitamins A and C. This is why one colonial physician called them the "vegetable indispensable." Sweet potatoes are often confused with yams, but yams are large, starchy roots grown in Africa and Asia.

Despite the sweet potato name, it is really not a potato, but a tuber of the morning glory plant family. Sweet potatoes have almost four times the recommended daily allowance of vitamin A, 42 percent of the recommendation for vitamin C, four times the RDA for beta carotene, and, when eaten with the skin, they have more fiber than oatmeal. All these health benefits and only about 130 to 160 calories.

Nutritional Information:

• Vitamin A (400% of your daily value - Puree only)
• Vitamin C
• Manganese
• Copper
• Dietary Fiber
• Vitamin B6
• Potassium
• Iron

Sweet potatoes are commercially processed into puree and juice concentrate as a standard ingredient. Encore has developed certified supplies of juice concentrate from sweet potatoes for the food, beverage, and supplement industries. The juice concentrate is a sweet, mild tasting and versatile vegetable ingredient that makes a great base for blended mixed fruit and vegetable juices, or as a high brix solids sweetener in dairy, confections or baked goods. Enhance your products vegetable content for 5 A DAY fruit and vegetable claims using juice concentrate from sweet potatoes.

Encore offers a 60 brix clarified juice concentrate from sweet potatoes which is easily incorporated into a variety of consumer products, so contact us today for samples and information. Call Encore, your Superfruit specialist.