Now that we’ve established that yams and sweet potatoes are entirely different from each other, let’s tackle the issue of why they are commonly mixed up. Especially in the United States and Canada, many people mistakesweet potatoes foryams. In other words, they think they are devouring yams but are actually consumingsome variety of sweet potato. As it turns out, there are some historical reasons for this misconception, one of which dates back centuries to the time of the slave trade.
Yams have been grown in parts of Africa for ages and have been an important part of the diet there, but they were not grown in the United States. During the time when Europeans transported slaves to the Americas, enslavedAfricans began eating some species of sweet potatoes that remindedthem oftheir home. They referred tothese sweet potatoes as“yam,” which was derived fromthe African word njam, meaning “to eat.”
