Sweet Potatoes

The sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas) is a root that comes in a variety of shapes, sizes, and colors. Its flavor is largely based on starch and sugar. The plant originated in the tropical areas of Central America and northwestern South America. The earliest archaeological evidence of the sweet potato, however, was found in Peru and dates to 2000 BCE. Domestication may have occurred as early as 8000 BCE.

In pre-Columbian times sweet potatoes were disseminated throughout much of South America, Central America, and the Caribbean. Spanish explorers in the Caribbean ran across them and called them by the Taino name, batatas. The Spanish shipped sweet potatoes back to Europe, where they became a sensation. Sweet potatoes were among the earliest New World foods adopted in Europe. At approximately the same time as the Spanish exploration, Portuguese explorers encountered sweet potatoes in Brazil and transported them to Africa, where they were grown to provision Portuguese ships headed to and from Asia and slave ships headed to the New World. A linguistic imbroglio arose when the Spanish encountered the white potato (Solanum tuberosa) in South America in 1529. They called the white potato “batata” and later “patata,” which led to confusion between white potato and sweet potato. The shipping activity between South America and Africa and Europe led to confusion between the sweet potato and the yam (Dioscorea), another large tuberous root of which many varieties were native to tropical regions of the Old World. Varieties of sweet potatoes and yams are similar in appearance, and sweet potatoes in the United States are frequently misidentified as yams.