At 08:22 PM 2/24/01 +1100, John McKenzie wrote:
<snip>
>
>I had heard the terms intermixed in speech, so it was my mistake to
>think
>that the two were the same (seet potatoes and yams). Sorry for any
>confusion.

All to common, I'm afraid.  We get this yearly debate on the bird lists (I
have parrots and dogs), around Thanksgiving, with people insisting that all
sweet potatoes must be cooked (I advocate raw, natural foods for my birds
:), because sweet potatoes are yams and yams are poisonous...  And then
there's the "well the produce guy told me they were yams so they were"
argument...  When in fact, it's very rare to get an actual yam in the
US--just some "ethnic" markets have them.

Oh yeah, and there's the wild yam that is native to NA, but it's medicinal,
tiny, you wouldn't mistake it :)

Some urls:

http://encarta.msn.com/find/Concise.asp?ti=051E0000 (yams)
http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/1/0,5716,79841+1+77750,00.html?que
ry=yam

http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/2/0,5716,72462+1+70627,00.html -
sweet potatoes

http://members.aol.com/Wstnhouse/diff.htm - follow url at the bottom for a
table that compares them

Dianne