Sweet potato and Yam are different root vegetables. Many times you will see stores mention yams or sweet potatoes interchangeably when actually they are referring to Sweet Potatoes. They are not the same and they actually taste quite different from each other. Sweet potatoes have orange flesh and Yams have white or off-white flesh. It turns out that the reason for all the confusion was how sweet potatoes were marketed back in the early 1900s to try to sell the root vegetable. The term stuck, and it is often mislabeled to this day.