by Art Young

Created on: June 09, 2010

When was the last time there were sweet potatoes on the dinner table? Most people would have to think hard about this question. Most likely, the last time sweet potatoes were a part of a meal, was last Thanksgiving or perhaps Christmas.

While they are a holiday staple, the farmers who grow sweet potatoes want this vegetable to be eaten more than just 1 or 2 days a year. In order to make this happen, they have some excellent health data and a marketing plan.

Sweet Potatoes and Yams

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has all kinds of information about sweet potatoes and please, don’t make the mistake of calling them yams.  There are two types of sweet potatoes (Ipomoea batatas). The paler-skinned model has a thin, light yellow skin with pale yellow flesh. Unlike the implication of its name, it is not sweet and has a dry, crumbly texture. The darker skinned variety of sweet potato has thinker, dark orange to reddish skin with bright orange, sweet flesh and a moist texture. This is the sweet potato that most everyone also calls a yam. It turns out that this is erroneous.

The true yam is tuber of a tropical vine, scientifically known as Dioscorea batatas, and it is not even distantly related to the sweet potato. Yams are closely related to lilies and grasses and native to Africa and Asia. There are over 600 varieties of yams and the USDA notes that while 95 percent of these are grown in Africa, they are slowly becoming popular in the U.S. markets. The yam tuber has a brown or black skin which resembles the bark of a tree and cream-colored, purple or red flesh, depending on the variety. Yams are generally sweeter than sweet potatoes and can grow to over seven feet in length.

African slaves working in southern vegetable fields were the first to mistake sweet potatoes for yams. The word yam comes from the African words njam, nyami or  djambi and it means to eat. When sweet potatoes were first starting to be grown commercially, the African slaves began calling these soft, sweet potatoes “yams” because they resembled the yams of their native countries.

The Health Benefits of this Potato are Sweet

For several years, there has been a noticeable national trend in the United States to eat healthier. Because of their health benefits, consumption of sweet potatoes has increased accordingly.

Sweet potatoes are high in fiber and rich in Vitamin A (betacarotene) and Vitamin C. Both of these are powerful antioxidants that work

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