Cultivated mainly for the tuberin the Philippines, used as vegetable, eaten boiled, baked fried, or dried and ground into flour to make biscuits, bread, and other pastries. Tubers also dehydrated in chips, canned, cooked and frozen, creamed and used as pie fillings, much like pumpkin. Leafy tops eaten as vegetable and sold in markets in Malaysia. Greatly esteemed as feed for farm animals; with 3 kg green sweet potatoes equivalent to 1 kg of corn, with a food value rated 95–100% that of corn. Dry vines have feed value which compares favorably with alfalfa hay as forage.

Practically the entire plant can be used for food or feed. The leaves are often used as a salad or as addition to stewed meals with other vegetables as well as being very ornamental. Fish, fresh or dried, often completes a meal with Kamote leaves.

According to Hartwell (1967–1971), the leaf decoction is used in folk remedies for tumors of the mouth and throat. Reported to be alterative, aphrodisiac, astringent, bactericide, demulcent, fungicide, laxative, and tonic, sweetpotato is a folk remedy for asthma, bugbites, burns, catarrh, ciguatera, convalescence, diarrhea, dyslactea, fever, nausea, renosis, splenosis, stomach distress, tumors, and whitlows (Duke and Wain, 1981).