Sweet on Sweet Potatoes

What’s in a name? When it comes to the maroon, rough-skinned vegetables with sunny orange flesh, it’s complicated. For so long, we’ve called them sweet potatoes—especially this time of year, when marshmallow-topped casseroles appear on Thanksgiving tables—only to be corrected that they’re yams.

Not so fast. Turns out, they really are sweet potatoes.

“Originally, African slaves in the southern United States called sweet potatoes the Senegalese name nyami because the vegetable reminded them of the starchy tubers they had grown in their homeland,” according to the Louisiana State University Ag Center. “Nyami” evolved into “yam,” and a 1930s marketing campaign by LSU Horticulture Department researchers helped insert it in our lexicon. (The campaign’s goal was to differentiate Louisiana’s orange-flesh sweet potatoes from the white-flesh ones grown to the north.)

No matter what you call them, sweet potatoes are an off-the-charts source of vitamin A and excellent source of vitamin C. A good source of fiber and potassium, they also contain calcium and iron.