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When was the yam discovered?
It was introduced to Europe in the 19th century, when the potato crop there was falling victim to disease, and is still grown in France for the Asian food market. The tubers are harvested after about 6 months of growth.
Who discovered sweet potato?
The earliest cultivation records of the sweet potato date to 750 BCE in Peru, although archeological evidence shows cultivation of the sweet potato might have begun around 2500-1850 BCE.
How did yams get their name?
It seems that American slaves referred to the soft orange-fleshed sweet potatoes as “yams” because of their similarity to the true yams they knew from Africa. Growers began using this name to distinguish them from the firm white-fleshed varieties of sweet potatoes, and the name stuck.
Is yam an African food?
Yam is tuber root vegetable that is grown in most African and Asian countries. It is starchy, good source of cabohydrates and filling. Yam is an African word that means 'to eat'.
Where did yams originally come from?
Yams originated in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean. Africans call yams “nyami,” which is where we get the word “yam.” They are cylindrical and vary in size. Some of the largest yams have weighed more than 100 pounds and have been several feet long.
What's the difference between a yam and a sweet potato?
Yams are starchy and have a rough, brown exterior. They can grow up to 45 feet long and are eaten in parts of Latin America, West Africa, the Caribbean, and Asia. Sweet potatoes are a New World root vegetable, have a softer, reddish skin, a creamier interior, and often, a darker interior.
What do Americans call yams?
sweet potatoOften North Americans use the words “yam” & “sweet potato” interchangeably. However, a true yam is a starchy, edible tuber, generally with a drier taste than a sweet potato. Yams are rough, scaly, difficult to peel and very low in beta-carotene.
Are yams poisonous?
Naturally occurring plant proteins found in yams can be toxic and cause illness if consumed raw. Peeling and cooking yams thoroughly will remove any harmful substances ( 17 ). Summary: Sweet potatoes contain oxalates that can increase the risk of kidney stones.
What are Jamaican yams called?
Yellow yam, also known as Jamaican yam or Guinea yam, is a tropical root vegetable that originated in Africa and spread to the Caribbean by way of slaves. It is a part of “ground provisions”, which is usually a pot of various boiled root vegetables and flour dumplings that is traditionally eaten with Jamaican meals.
What do yams symbolize in Nigeria?
For the Igbo and Yoruba people of Southern Nigeria, it symbolizes prosperity and fertility. For the Igbo people of South Eastern Nigeria, the yam crop is not just a harvest, but a symbol of hard work, wealth, and celebration. Since the early days, the harvest of yams represented the start of a new harvest season.
What are yams called in South Africa?
What is yam called in South Africa? It's known as 'Elephant's Foot' in English, in isiZulu 'ingwevu', meaning grey/old or 'ifudu', meaning tortoise; in Sepedi the name is 'Kgato' – 'to stamp'. In the 1950s, the yam was heavily exploited by the British pharmaceutical firm Boots for the production of cortisone.
How do Africans eat yams?
West African yams are toxic when raw and must be cooked prior to consumption. The tubers are commonly boiled, sprinkled with palm oil and served with eggs, or they are boiled and mashed into a dough-like paste known as fufu and is served with soups and stews.
How were sweet potatoes invented?
Sweet potato has been radiocarbon-dated in the Cook Islands to 1210–1400 CE. A common hypothesis is that a vine cutting was brought to central Polynesia by Polynesians who had traveled to South America and back, and spread from there across Polynesia to Easter Island, Hawaii and New Zealand.
What country does sweet potato come from?
Sweet potatoes may seem as American as Thanksgiving, but scientists have long debated whether their plant family originated in the Old or New World. New research by a paleobotanist suggests it originated in Asia, and much earlier than previously known.
Is sweet potato man made?
Like any cultivated crop, sweet potatoes have been genetically modified by humans over a very long period of time, through selective breeding, to produce improved varieties with desirable traits for flavor, texture, color, shape, pest and disease resistance, drought tolerance, and so on.
Did Christopher Columbus discover potatoes?
Columbus Day: Christopher Columbus discovered the potato, tomato, tobacco and other New World crops - The Washington Post.
Basic Species Information
Yams are flowering plants of the family Dioscoreaceae, consisting of more than 800 species of climbing vines and woody shrubs. Many members of the yam family produce subterranean tubers or tuberous stems, and have heart-shaped leaves, small green or white flowers, and a fruit that is a winged capsule or berry.
Further Reading
Hu-Yin, H. & P. Sheng-Ji. 2004. Plants used medicinally by folk healers of the Lahu people from the autonomous county of Jinping Mial, Yao, and Dai in Southwest China. Economic Botany 58: S265-S273. CrossRef Google Scholar
Early history: Western South America
The earliest archaeologically verified potato tuber remains have been found at the coastal site of Ancón (central Peru ), dating to 2500 BC.
Spread across the World
Sailors returning from the Andes to Spain with silver presumably brought maize and potatoes for their own food on the trip.
Becoming a European staple food
French physician Antoine Parmentier studied the potato intensely and in Examen chymique des pommes de terres ("Chemical examination of potatoes") (Paris, 1774) showed their enormous nutritional value.
20th century research
By the 1960s, the Canadian Potato Research Centre in Fredericton, New Brunswick, was one of the top six potato research institutes in the world. Established in 1912 as a Dominion Experimental Station, the station began in the 1930s to concentrate on breeding new varieties of disease-resistant potatoes.
Further reading
Salaman, Redcliffe N; W. G Burton; J. G Hawkes (1985). The history and social influence of the potato. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521077835.
Introduction
Most rheumatologists are aware of the discovery of cortisone by Philip Hench and Edward Kendall for which they, along with the Polish chemist Tadeus Riechstein, received the Nobel Prize in medicine and physiology in 1950.
Introduction
Most rheumatologists are aware of the discovery of cortisone by Philip Hench and Edward Kendall for which they, along with the Polish chemist Tadeus Riechstein, received the Nobel Prize in medicine and physiology in 1950.
Philip Showalter Hench
Philip Hench was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on February 2, 1896 with a severe cleft palate, but overcame his speech impediment to become a fine speaker. He attended Lafayette College, to which he remained loyal for life, and enlisted in the US Army Medical Corps after graduation in 1916.
Edward Charles Kendall
Edward Kendall was born on March 8, 1886 in South Norwalk, Connecticut. He graduated from Columbia University in 1908, and remained for his doctorate in chemistry in 1910. He briefly worked on the isolation of thyroid hormones at Parke-Davis, before moving onto St. Luke’s Hospital in New York, a Columbia affiliate, in 1911.
World War II
With America’s entry into World War II on the horizon, rumors were rampant that the Nazis were secretly importing bovine adrenal glands from Argentina via submarine to produce extracts for military use.
Mrs G
Despite successes in the synthetic process, by 1948 Merck had invested more than $13 million in compound E without a clinical indication and with none on the horizon. At an investigator’s meeting in New York on April 29, Kendall sensed waning interest and feared the plug would soon be pulled on the project.
Human Evolution
- Several hypotheses have been proposed where yams and other plants producing edible starchy roots (collectively described as Underground Storage Organs, USOs) are key to the spread of hominins outside Africa and of important changes in social organization. Wrangham et al. (1999) have suggested that access to USOs and cooking them, which dramatically...
Fire Management
- Aboriginal Australians used fire as a tool to encourage the distribution of yams and manage productivity. The Kuku-Yalanji people of Cape York, Queensland, exploited two species of yam, Dioscorea bulbifera, and Dioscorea transversa, burning rainforest margins to encourage growth (Hill & Baird 2003). In Western Australia, Dioscorea hastifolia, was also managed by the use of fi…
Domestication
- Some groups of West African farmers engage in a process of yam management, rather loosely referred to as a process of “domestication” (Dumont & Vernier 2000; Scarcelli et al. 2006). Farmers select yam tubers from the forest that present desirable phenotypic attributes such as size, color, and taste and transplant the yam head, from which new tubers grow, into their cultiva…
Toxins and Medicinals
- The active compounds within the family of Dioscorea yams fall into three main categories: the alkaloids, tannins, and saponins (Coursey 1967). The tannins and saponins are the least likely to present a problem for human consumption, though they do affect the taste of the tuber. Tannins are thought to give tubers an acrid taste (Coursey 1967: 208) and the saponins cause bitterness …
Social Contexts of Yams
- The Baka of Cameroon apply the metaphor of the human body to describe the anatomy of yams; it is the only plant treated in this way (Dounias 1996). The spiny roots at the head of the tuber are referred to as “hair,” the oblong tuber as “body,” and the terminal point as “bottom.” Other tuberous forms are associated with male reproductive organs and leaf hairs are recognized as human “bo…