Why Add Sugar to Sweet Potatoes?

[thorny_locust]

@Broomstick

Is it just that American culture has so conditioned people to eat massive amounts of sugar that many can no longer taste the natural sweetness of sweet potatoes? And my inability to eat most processed foods has insulated my own taste buds?

@Little_Nemo

I feel the same way about salt. I don’t use much of it and I often feel that other people are making food too salty because they’re become desensitized to it.

Probably.

Often the main ingredients in processed foods were bred, managed, and harvested entirely with production and shipping in mind, and have very little flavor. Manufacturers add a lot of salt and sugar so they’ll taste like something; and probably also because those are both preservatives; and possibly in some cases because they’re cheaper than the supposed* main ingredients. People get accustomed to large amounts of salt and sugar, so that’s what tastes right to them.

IMO, sweet potatoes don’t need any added sugar unless you’re making a dessert with them, and then they don’t need very much.


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• a lot of ingredient labels, which are legally required at least in the US to be in order of amount in the product, read like this: 1) Supposed Main Ingredient. 2) Sugar source. 3) additional food ingredient, maybe. 4) another sugar source 5) another sugar source 6) spice or maybe another food ingredient 7) another sugar source . . .

If you add up all the sugar sources, I suspect they’d often have to be listed as ingredient 1.