For some reason, someone wanted to make it clear that sweet potatoes are not true potatoes. Sweet potatoes are called potatoes simply because the tuber resembles a potato and grows in a similar way. 

Over time, people decided it would be a good idea to call them ’yams’ to differentiate them from true potatoes but this causes another problem.  There is a tuber called a yam and sweet potatoes are not related to true yams.

A yam is a tuber native to Africa.  It is versatile and used as a staple food.  The outside is dark brown and the inside is white.

The standard sweet potato has dark orange skin with bright orange flesh.  There are other varieties of different colors with different tastes, but none of them are related to yams.

Odds are that you’ve never laid eyes on a yam because we just don’t eat them here.

So next time you hear someone call a sweet potato by the wrong name, you can teach them the interesting difference.