The Difference Between Sweet Potatoes And Yams Explained In A Quick Cartoon

by N/A, 10 years ago | 1 min read

It's an age-old question, that you may have never found an answer to: "What's the difference between sweet potatoes and yams?" There is a difference, you know. If you could never tell what that difference was, or why it was even worth noting, you're in luck because Eva Hill of the Huffington Post has put together a very short, very amusing and very informative animation for you to find all your questions in this matter answered.

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So first, watch this less than one minute explanation about the difference between sweet potatoes and yams, of which, there are apparently five.

Make sense? Just for future reference and to recap, let's go back over the main points.

1. "Their skin looks completely different"

While the sweet potato can take on many colors in a chameleon-like fashion, the yam (at least in this illustration) looks like a gorilla.

2. "They don't even come from the same place"

Completely different hemispheres of Earth in fact, so confusing the two makes it even more strange.

3. "When your grocery store labels something yam, it's probably not a yam"

Sweet potatoes are readily available and exactly what you asked for, while yams, well, are actually rarely yams. Be sure to find out for sure if you really want yams and not yams.

4. "They don't taste at all the same"

As you can see, sweet potatoes have delicious adjectives attached to them, while yams seem rather repulsive by the above description.

5. "Their insides look different too"

It's not just their skin coloring that is different: inside of a sweet potato is usually orange vs. white for a yam.

So, there you have: the five differences between sweet potatoes and yams–please stop confusing the two from now on.