Are those yams or sweet potatoes on your Thanksgiving table?

Unless you bought them at an ethnic grocery, they are sweet potatoes. Although they are a tuber that resembles sweet potatoes, yams are popular in African, South American and Asian cuisines. Very few true yams are grown in this country.

The smaller sweet potatoes always have been more popular in North America. But they were often called "yams'' in the South, probably at first by transplanted African slaves.

To make things more confusing, Louisiana sweet potato growers trademarked their products "yams'' in the 1930s in an attempt to distinguish them from those tubers grown in the eastern states. This is why you might see a box or can of sweet potatoes labeled "yams." More recently, some members of the produce industry have begun spelling the name of their product "sweetpotatoes" supposedly to distinguish them from plain "potatoes." (Although potatoes, sweet potatoes and yams are all tubers, they are not related.)

No matter what you call them, there's probably nothing more nutritious on the Thanksgiving table. Sweet potatoes are excellent sources of beta-carotene, potassium and vitamin C.

Just go easy on the sugar and butter.

Chuck Martin