ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on existing processed food products from the sweet potato and inherent problems associated with developing wider utilization of sweet potato products as a food or food ingredient. The sweet potato would appear to be an obvious choice, however, world production figures do not support this position. Sweet potatoes can be pureed to produce a product that may be used for baby foods, pie fillings, reconstituted potatoes and with the addition of starch, frozen sweet potato patties. A puree is also utilized in the production of sweet potato flakes and numerous other products. The sweet potatoes are then conveyed along a sorting line where diseased or otherwise unacceptable roots are removed. Surface blemishes are cut away as are the fibrous ends of the storage roots. Interest in dehydrated sweet potatoes increased dramatically during Second World War. Precooked dehydrated sweet potato flakes undergo rapid deterioration if stored at an ambient oxygen concentration.
