Which are healthier: oven chips or sweet potato wedges?

Swapping that helping of takeaway chips for a healthier portion of home-cooked oven chips or sweet potato/kumara wedges is a step in the right direction. But which choice is healthier?

Oven chips

There’s no doubting the convenience of keeping a pack of oven chips in the freezer – they make a prep-free, inexpensive way to serve up starchy carbohydrates in a hurry. Try our herby lemon oven chips recipe.

The nutrition lowdown

Although they have more carbohydrates than sweet potato wedges, they have far fewer sugars. They could never be considered as a ‘good’ source of protein but they do have twice as much as their sweet potato rivals (a total of 7 per cent of the overall calories come from protein). They also have the edge on the fibre front, boasting 1g more per serving than sweet potatoes. If you need to avoid wheat and/or gluten, though, always check the label: while some brands are gluten free, others may contain flour (and therefore gluten).

Sweet potato wedges

Creating these beauties from scratch does involve some prep on your part, although it’s quite quick and easy to do and you will definitely reap the benefits. Give our veggie burger and sweet potato wedges a try.

The nutrition lowdown

If you bake our 200g portion at home, using just a little spray oil or Fry Light, you’ll be shaving 136kcal and almost 8g fat from the equivalent portion of oven chips. The sugars are higher, but because sweet potatoes are a vegetable, these don’t count towards your 30g maximum of added sugars a day. The wedges have more than double the amount of bone-building calcium and they’re also way ahead on three antioxidants – vitamins C and E and the orange pigment beta-carotene. These have many important roles in our bodies and are especially important for healthy skin.

And the winner is…

Quite simply, you pack more nutrients into your calories by opting for the sweet potato/kumara wedges. We do love the convenience of oven chips but feel it’s worth the small effort of slicing a sweet potato for its added benefits. A serving also contributes one of your five-a-day, whereas potato chips, being a starchy carbohydrate, don’t.