No matter your age, you should be fueling your body with healthy staples. However, as you progress in life, your body will go through hormonal shifts like puberty, pregnancy, and menopause. During these times, there are specific foods that will help you get through these hormonal milestones, and according to Aviva Romm, M.D., people in the 40s and 50s should be incorporating lots of one specific nutrient-dense food: sweet potatoes.

Why sweet potatoes?

Generally speaking, estrogen and progesterone start dropping around the 40s and 50s, which results in more difficulty digesting. Although everyone’s body is different, Romm says that most people will have more trouble digesting grains.

On the other hand, sweet potatoes will fill you up with healthy, whole carbs. Plus, they “are great for your digestion [and] your elimination.”

Sweet potatoes are high in resistant starch, a type of carbohydrate that’s especially good for gut health because it travels through the small intestine without fully digesting, and by the time the resistant starches reach the colon, they ferment and serve as a prebiotic.

If you want to boost the already high resistant starch present in your sweet potatoes, you can put them in the fridge overnight and reheat them before eating.

Sweet potatoes are also remarkably full of antioxidants and minerals (vitamin A, vitamin C, manganese, vitamin B6, magnesium, and potassium) which, once you’re in your 40s, you should be keeping an eye on.

To conclude, sweet potatoes are a healthy and tasty food to snack on at any age, but if you notice that your digestion isn’t as good as it once was as you venture into middle age, then consider grabbing some starchy sweet potatoes on your next supermarket run for some digestive relief.