Benefits Of Dasheen And Yam

Two medical doctors, my primary care physician (PCP) and my brother-in-law, a paediatrician, were looking for something to eat in Jamaica. Along the road, they came upon a roadside food vendor with a variety of preparations. As they stood there deciding what to eat, the woman operating the stall asked:“Do you want food or rice?” Not used to the dialect, they retorted:“We are looking for something to eat. We know what rice is, but what is“food?” She explained that food in Jamaica is basically ground provisions (roots and tubers such as yams and dasheen), green bananas and plantains. As good Trinis, they opted for“food.”

At this juncture, I must include my personal observation with food. My experiences with ground provision started out very early in my life because many times that was all we had in the house to eat. In my book titled: Seven Years on Adventist Street (2015) I presented a snippet of such an experience under the subheading: Blue Food and Sancoche. Here are a few lines from the narrative:

“My mother was untiring in her effort to provide palatable food and clean clothes for us. We were the poorest of the poor, but there were food-producing plants growing around our house. Especially important was the root crop known as dasheen. In some countries, it is known as malanga. The swollen starchy tuber (corm) is the main part of the plant that is used for food.

Shaped like the ears of an elephant, young dasheen leaves are also edible and can be used in the making of emerald rice, bhagi and callaloo. Callaloo is a very special dish in Trinidad and Tobago; a boil-up of dasheen leaves, okra, coconut milk, chives, thyme, salt, black pepper, and a young green Scotch Bonnet hot pepper. Some people will at times add blue crab and/or salted meat to the pot. The poem below illustrates the value I placed on the life-saving dasheen-what we call blue food.”

Blue Food-the Dasheen

Behind the house in the stinking mud

Elephant's ears dare to bud,

Slender stems almost brown

Interlock around the corm.

Tentacled roots reach to feed

In that putrid mud with utter greed,

Swelling the starchy tuber

Food stored to satisfy a midday hunger.

As the rains fail and drizzle away

The sun for another season comes to stay,

To scorch the land;

Large bulbs appear, time for a reaping hand.

And the tuber so dear,

Pulled to feed those with a hungry stare,

In the pot, white turns another hue

Hot sticky dasheen so very blue.

Complimenting the dasheen (Colocasia esculenta) were other varieties of ground provisions, including yam, cassava, tannia or cocoyam (yuatia), yamatuta (yellow yam). On rare occasions, we savoured sweet potato, cush-cush (yampie), and eddoe. Much of the yam came from our Uncle Duncan, the husband of our Grenadian great aunt. He was the proprietor of a mixed cultivation in the village of Fishing Pond. 'Devil yam' otherwise known as 'Cut-and-throw way yam,' was the variety he planted. Uncle Duncan also showered us with many hands of moko. Moko is also known as blugo, rulo and bok-bok.

We never ate the moko in the green stage. When it ripened, it was fried. If at all it became overripe, the short, square-looking banana was mashed and mixed with flour, eggs, sugar, baking powder, a dust of cinnamon and a couple drops of mixed essences. Overloaded tablespoonfuls of the batter were then fried until crisp. This fritter was labeled 'Bup' because when it was first fried for us, one of the fritters fell 'bup' on the ground, and so the name came into being.

As a child, there were times when I thought that all these ground provisions were 'poor people food.' I was not aware that these foods were better for me because they were complex carbohydrates. Look at what MedlinePlus (Review Date 4/1/2025) presented:

“ Complex carbohydrate foods provide vitamins, minerals, and fiber that are important to the health of an individual. The majority of carbohydrates should come from complex carbohydrates (starches) and naturally occurring sugars, rather than processed or refined sugars, which do not have the vitamins, minerals, and fiber found in complex carbohydrates. Refined sugars are often called“empty calories” because they have little to no nutritional value.”

During his readings, my brother-in-law came across an article in EcoNews published in ScienceDirect (04/05/2026) about the benefits of consuming yam titled: Neither fish nor nuts: the food that could help boost memory and neural development is a humble tuber that many people still overlook.

I cannot copy and paste the entire article, but I would suggest that all Caribbean readers and their friends should share what I read in this article:

“Yam” is an umbrella term for edible tubers from the genus Dioscorea, a group with many cultivated species. In Spanish, you'll often see them called“ñame,” and around the world they show up as white yam, yellow yam, purple yam, and more...A 3.5-ounce (100-gram) serving of raw yam provides about 118 calories, nearly 28 grams of carbohydrate, 4.1 grams of fiber, and 1.5 grams of protein, with very little fat and only about 9 milligrams of sodium. It also delivers around 816 milligrams of potassium, plus vitamin C and vitamin B6...

“One reason yams keep popping up in labs is diosgenin, a naturally occurring compound found in some Dioscorea species. In preclinical work, researchers have linked diosgenin to memory-related effects and to pathways involved in axonal growth. The biggest recent headline comes from a randomized controlled trial published in August 2024 in the journal Phytomedicine Plus.

“Patients with mild cognitive impairment or mild Alzheimer's disease took a diosgenin-rich yam extract or a placebo for 24 weeks, and the authors reported modest improvements in some cognitive test domains along with changes in plasma neurofilament light chain. Earlier human work points in the same general direction, with caveats. A 2017 placebo-controlled, randomized, double-blind crossover study in 28 healthy volunteers reported that older participants improved on a standardized cognitive test battery after taking a diosgenin-rich yam extract, and the authors reported no adverse effects...

“Yams are rich in starch, but not all starch behaves the same once it hits your gut. In a 2024 review focused on Chinese yam, researchers describe how a higher amylose-to-amylopectin ratio can slow digestion, and they summarise evidence linking resistant starch to more favourable glucose and lipid responses...If you are watching your blood sugar, a simple approach often works. Keep portions reasonable, pair yam with fiber-rich foods like beans and vegetables, and check how your body responds, especially if you have diabetes or prediabetes.”

Let's look at dasheen or taro. Erica Julson, MS, RDN, CLT in her article: 'Seven Surprising Benefits of Taro Root' in Healthline (07/12/2023) adds:

In terms of nutrients, here is the breakdown in one cup of cooked dasheen or taro: