From my email from Door to Door Organics:
Yams or Sweet potatoes?
Several months ago we tackled the debate on the tomato, is a fruit or is it a veggie? We sided with the US Supreme court (no joke - you look up the decision under Nix v H edden) and ruled the tomato a veggie. A new debate has come up recently here at Door to Door, what is the difference between yams and sweet potatoes?
It turns out, in North America yams and sweet potatoes are used interchangeably, in fact, the USDA requires that sweet potatoes labeled as "yams" also be labeled as "sweet potatoes." The confusion started back in 1930 when Southern sweet potato farmers wanted to differentiate their variety of sweet potatoes from the drier, white-fleshed varieties that were being grown on the East Coast. The word yam is derived from the African words njam or nyami, meaning to eat. True yams have rougher, scalier skin than sweet potatoes and are often pale-fleshed. They are generally starchier in texture, and are hard to come by in the U
Botanically speaking, a tomato is a berry, making it also a fruit. Botanically speaking often disagrees with our standard way of referring to food (nuts are fruit too).
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