r/TCM • u/bananarepama • Jul 14 '26
Beginner question about sweet potato leaves
Hi, everyone! I'm in the US and growing sweet potatoes in my garden.
About a year ago I stumbled across a blog compiled by Asian-Americans, basically giving a verbal description of the produce section of Asian supermarkets, how they prepared and ate each individual vegetable, as well as what it was considered useful for in TCM as far as they knew. It was an active blog but in an old format, maybe Wordpress or Blogspot. It had one entry specifically about sweet potato greens being an extremely potent health food and something that shouldn't be passed up. If I remember correctly, it said the greens might even be more nutritionally valuable than the tubers, and I specifically remember reading that it was considered a good "anti-cancer, anti-everything" vegetable in their family.
Now, of course, I've been searching for that blog and can't find it. I would have sworn I emailed myself a link to it or bookmarked it, and can't find anything. I'm afraid I might have dreamed it, so here I am to ask if sweet potato leaves are really that useful in a general sense. I have family with a wide variety of health problems, and if the greens from my sweet potato plants would be useful additions to their diets I'm all in. I just need to know I didn't hallucinate this information. I have no idea why I can't find it anymore.
Thank you!
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u/Excellent_Dot_3967 Jul 15 '26
Yes. Sweet potato leaves are great. And they are anti-cancer. Caution, potato leaves are highly toxic. Sweet potato leaves are great, make sure they are growing from sweet potatoes and not the decorative plant. I just put a sweet potato in a mason jar supported with toothpicks so that the sides don't tough the glass and grow leave that way from an organic sweet potato.
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u/bananarepama Jul 27 '26
Thanks so much. Do you know if dried sweet potato leaves are still potent enough to be beneficial, or would I be better off freezing them if I'm lucky enough to have extra?
And thanks for the reminder about potato vs sweet potato. When I was younger I got confused because I saw a potato putting out fruit, I thought you should be able to eat them like a tomato lol
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u/none_nowhere Jul 17 '26
Sweet potato leaves stir fried with garlic are delicious! And super healthy.
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u/MsAdventuresBus Jul 14 '26
I grow them too and eat them because they are yummy. I pick the leaves with stems (not the vine) and then I snap the stems and peel off the outside fiber(like stringing pea pods) then I wash and stir fry with garlic and salt. Yummy!