Ask-a-Dave's-Gardener: Yams or sweet potatoes, 1 by CountryGardens

CountryGardens wrote:
Sweet potato & yam.
Muskmelon & cantaloupe.

Why do the super markets mislabel these items ?

All this talk about labeling GMO's & they can't get it right on these simply vegetables.

Muskmelons are grown in the USA, as are sweet potatoes. Yams are grown in Africa, cantaloupe is a European vegetable that nobody here would eat.

Found this on the web.

Why the confusion?
In the United States, firm varieties of sweet potatoes were produced before soft varieties. When soft varieties were first grown commercially, there was a need to differentiate between the two. African slaves had already been calling the ‘soft’ sweet potatoes ‘yams’ because they resembled the yams in Africa. Thus, ‘soft’ sweet potatoes were referred to as ‘yams’ to distinguish them from the ‘firm’ varieties.

Today the U.S. Department of Agriculture requires labels with the term ‘yam’ to be accompanied by the term ‘sweet potato.’ Unless you specifically search for yams, which are usually found in an international market, you are probably eating sweet potatoes!