Several nights ago I went grocery shopping and found that the yams were on sale for 55 cents a pound.  Getting into the mood of the season, I picked some up for the family.  For a while now, I have been wondering why some people say sweet potatoes, some say yams, and some say that “orange stuff my aunt brings to Thanksgiving.”

Well, today I was bored and it hit me… get to the bottom of this once and for all.  So I did I Wikipediaed yams and after a few short minutes, my world was turned upside down.  Sweet potatoes are what we eat.  Yams are what people from Africa and Asia eat.

I also found out that the term yams being substituted in America for sweet potatoes started in “The South.”  That’s right, the thick accent, stubborn, tobacco loving, confederate, conservative republican, easy on the exercise, extra butter, Bible-belt “South.”  I’ll bet that someone’s grandma in Arkansas thought to herself, “Sweet potato pie doesn’t sound unhealthy enough to really capture how unhealthy it really is, so I am going to come up with a new name… how about sweet candied yams!!!”

Now understand, some people actually do use yams, which are sweet, but they don’t look a thing like what we think.  To get a picture of what yams really look like, take a look at the picture above.  The happy couple just won’t their first yam growing competition and wanted to take a picture… come to think of it, that is kinda what people in “The South” do with their fish.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 19th, 2008 at 3:26 pm and is filed under Small, Medium, Large. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.