{"id":52040,"date":"2024-11-20T19:36:17","date_gmt":"2024-11-21T00:36:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=52040"},"modified":"2024-11-20T19:36:23","modified_gmt":"2024-11-21T00:36:23","slug":"sweet-potatoes-arent-potatoes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2024\/11\/20\/sweet-potatoes-arent-potatoes\/","title":{"rendered":"Sweet potatoes aren\u2019t potatoes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Sweet potatoes and common potatoes share part of a name and the spotlight at Thanksgiving meals, but the two are entirely different plants \u2014\u00a0and\u00a0sweet potatoes aren\u2019t even potatoes. While both root vegetable species are native to Central and South America, they\u2019re classified as unrelated. Sweet potatoes belong to the Convolvulaceae family, a group of flowering plants that\u2019s also called the morning glory family. Potatoes belong to the nightshade (Solanaceae) family and are cousins to peppers, tomatoes, and eggplants.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

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Both species get their name from an Indigenous Caribbean term, batata, which eventually morphed into the English \u201cpotato.\u201d By the 1740s, \u201csweet\u201d was added to the orange-fleshed tuber\u2019s name to differentiate the two root crops. Then there are yams. Although they\u2019re often served interchangeably with sweet potatoes at Thanksgiving dinners, this third root crop is biologically unrelated to either sweet potatoes or common potatoes. These tubers belong to the Dioscoreacea family, a group of flowering plants usually cultivated in tropical areas. Luckily, you don\u2019t have to know their scientific classification to distinguish between the two nonspuds at the grocery store: Sweet potatoes have tapered ends and relatively smooth skin, while true yams are generally larger with rough bark and a more cylindrical shape. At most U.S. grocery stores, what you\u2019re seeing labeled as a yam is probably actually a sweet potato.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sweet potatoes and common potatoes share part of a name and the spotlight at Thanksgiving meals, but the two are entirely different plants \u2014\u00a0and\u00a0sweet potatoes aren\u2019t even potatoes. While both… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":52041,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"3772","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":true,"token":"eyJpbWciOiJodHRwczpcL1wvaTAud3AuY29tXC9sYWtlbGFuZGdhemV0dGUuaW5mb1wvbmV3c1wvd3AtY29udGVudFwvdXBsb2Fkc1wvMjAyNFwvMTFcL0lzLUl0LUJldHRlci10by1CYWtlLUJvaWwtb3ItU3RlYW0tU3dlZXQtUG90YXRvZXMud2VicD9maXQ9MTAyNCUyQzU3NiZzc2w9MSIsInR4dCI6IlN3ZWV0IHBvdGF0b2VzIGFyZW5cdTIwMTl0IHBvdGF0b2VzIiwidGVtcGxhdGUiOiJoaWdod2F5IiwiYmxvZ19pZCI6MTYzMDQwNjYxfQ.9lNG2wMIahAO2sSWPlbA8ShVZTxal96QHC8YyJ3flr8MQ"},"version":2,"attached_media":[{"id":52041,"url":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/Is-It-Better-to-Bake-Boil-or-Steam-Sweet-Potatoes.webp","type":"image\/jpeg"}]},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[3772],"tags":[10372],"class_list":["post-52040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-recipes","tag-sweet-potatoes-arent-potatoes"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52040"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52040\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52042,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52040\/revisions\/52042"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}