Yam, Sweet White 2LB, Organic
$8.49
$9.99
While many might know the orange-fleshed Sweet potato varieties as “yams”, they are not the same thing – not even biologically close. Yams are big, starchy, dry tubers that are generally white-fleshed. They are native to Africa, where they are mainly commercially grown today. The word “yam” even comes from its African name, nyami. Everything produced and sold as a “yam” is really a Sweet potato. This confusion started around the middle of the 20th century. The common varieties of American Sweet potatoes at that time had white flesh, so when a newcomer hit the market with orange flesh, people wanted a term to differentiate the two main types: soft orange flesh versus firm lighter flesh. So, Colonial America borrowed a word brought over by slaves, who saw that the Sweet potatoes looked similar to the yams they knew in Africa, hence they called them by the same familiar name. Marketers ran with it, and the name "yam" was commercially applied to the orange-fleshed Sweet potato in order to distinguish it from the others (even though, ironic enough, yams usually have white flesh). This misnomer has continued to this day as orange varieties are still called yams, and are even labeled as such in stores, even though, botanically and culinary speaking, they are Sweet potatoes.