TED visit

wrote:
badwilson wrote:

Tapioca is cassava? Wow. I didn't know that.

It's made from cassava. It has to go through a bunch of processing,
etc. But the raw material is cassava. There are cassava fields all
around where I live in Thailand and down the street is the tapioca
factory.

Does the cassava grow in those little balls? Seriously, is that its
natural shape, or is that what happens in the processing plant?

Joyce

That must be what they turn it into at the processing plant because
cassava is pretty much like a sweet potato. It looks just like a sweet
potato or yam (can't ever tell them apart), bigger than a regular
potato, longer and kind of pointy on the ends. The above ground part of
the plant grows quite high, up to 6 feet, and has these pointy leaves
that remind me of pot.
--
Britta
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overflow.
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On Sun, 19 Feb 2006 18:47:30 +0700, "badwilson"
wrote:

wrote:
badwilson wrote:

Tapioca is cassava? Wow. I didn't know that.

It's made from cassava. It has to go through a bunch of processing,
etc. But the raw material is cassava. There are cassava fields all
around where I live in Thailand and down the street is the tapioca
factory.

Does the cassava grow in those little balls? Seriously, is that its
natural shape, or is that what happens in the processing plant?

Joyce

That must be what they turn it into at the processing plant because
cassava is pretty much like a sweet potato. It looks just like a sweet
potato or yam (can't ever tell them apart), bigger than a regular
potato, longer and kind of pointy on the ends. The above ground part of
the plant grows quite high, up to 6 feet, and has these pointy leaves
that remind me of pot.

Also, the cassava plant is poisonous until processed. According to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassava, some varieties merely require
cooking, whereas other varieties, with up to 50 times more of the
cyanogenic glucosides (which convert to cyanide in the presence of an
enzyme found in the plant) require grinding into flour, a repeated
soaking in water/squeezing dry process, and finally toasting.

Whoever worked out how to make cassava edible must have been doing so
under famine conditions, given that early attempts were probably still
poisonous after being cooked.

--
John F. Eldredge --
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"Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better
than not to think at all." -- Hypatia of Alexandria