Yams vs sweet potatoes: How they are different
Let's clear this up first, yams and sweet potatoes are not the same. Neither are yams a variety of sweet potatoes, nor are sweet potatoes a type of yams. They both are tuberous root vegetables, but they don't have much in common. The fact that they are often mislabeled at grocery stores can cause a lot of confusion. Here's how to tell them apart.
What are sweet potatoes?
Sweet potatoes originated in Central and South America. They have white or sometimes bright orange flesh with smooth, shaven purplish, or brown skin. Their flesh consists largely of starch, and the orange-fleshed varieties are high in beta-carotene. Sweet potatoes come in various shapes ranging from fusiform to oblong or pointed oval, and have tapered ends. Moreover, these come in more than 400 varieties.
What are yams?
Yams are native to Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean, with the majority of the crop coming from Africa. They have dense white, red, or purple flesh and irregular scaly brown skin with dark spots all over. Yams can be as small as potatoes and sometimes can grow up to several feet long. There are more than 600 varieties of yams available worldwide.
What is the difference between sweet potatoes and yams?
They actually look and taste quite different from each other. Most importantly, sweet potatoes and yams belong to entirely different genera. While yams belong to the Dioscorea genus and are related to lilies, sweet potatoes come from Ipomoea in the morning glory family. Yams have drier, starchier flesh with darker textured skin, whereas sweet potatoes have moister flesh with smooth reddish-brown skin.
Why so much confusion?
There's an interesting story behind this confusion. There are two types of sweet potatoes; one is firm, while the other is soft. In the United States, the firm variety was the one that initially had major production. The softer version came much later when they began to be produced commercially. To differentiate between the two, the newer variety was marketed as yams.
Is a sweet potato healthier than a yam?
Both vegetables are super nutritious, but it is difficult to rank one above the other particularly. Both sweet potatoes and yams are low in calories, fat-free, and high in carbs. However, sweet potatoes generally have slightly fewer calories per serving than yams. They are also richer in vitamin C content and have more than triple the amount of beta-carotene.
