I’ve eaten more sweet potatoes in October than I’ve eaten in all of 2012. That’s because a friend and I are working through the spiritual fasting exercises in Jen Hatmaker’s book 7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess. The first exercise focused on food; I committed to three weeks of a restricted, ultra-clean diet consisting of seven foods (Jen’s list). There were a few variations/modifications (dinners, eating out, etc.), but for the most part, I ate eggs, whole grain bread, baby spinach, sweet potatoes, chicken, avocadoes, and apples—for three weeks.
Wow. Restrictions are hard, even when you aren’t going hungry. I had to get creative with what I had, especially with the sweet potatoes. I ate them baked for a week, then I had to shake it up. I made sweet potato soup. (meh.) I made whole-wheat sweet potato pancakes. (Tasty; needed the unsanctioned pecans.) Then I got crazy and made sweet potato fries. (delicious!)
And that brings us to today’s Which Word Wednesday. Was I eating sweet potatoes or yams? Maybe they are synonymous? I honestly don’t know. Let’s see if we can sort out these veggies, starting with the definitions from The Oxford American Dictionary:
sweet potato :: noun
an edible tropical tuber with pinkish orange, slightly sweet flesh
yam :: noun
the edible starchy tuber of a climbing plant, widely distributed in tropical and subtropical countries
That’s no help whatsoever. Let’s go see what Rod Evans says in The Artful Nuance:
“Sweet potatoes are the orange roots of the morning glory . . . whereas yams are the brownish starchy tubers . . . of the vines of the genus Dioscorea. . . . They are distinct vegetables.”1
OK. Both roots: one from a flower, one from a plant. Still not solved.
These are yams. Crazy big.
I’m going to the Internets. I watched a few videos and did some searching. I found that sweet potatoes are the reddish orange variety; yams are more like yellow potatoes but are HUMUNGOUS.
There you have it. Sweet potatoes are orange and normal sized; yams are brown and freakishly large.
What’s my WWW verdict? I think I can safely say that I have not been eating yams.
What’s your verdict? Do you call your sweet potatoes yams? Have you ever eaten a yam? Do share in the comments.
_______________
Check out previous Which Word Wednesday verdicts here.
_______________
Sources
1. Rod L. Evans, The Artful Nuance: A Refined Guide to Imperfectly Understood Words in the English Language (New York, NY: Penguin Group, 2009), 190.
