OCR Text |
Show Food Value of Tapioca Discovered in Odd Way As a matter of fact the milky juice of the bitter cassava is highly poisonous and therefore cannot be eaten In Its natural condition without danger, but the application of heat, as the explorer explor-er discovered, destroys the poisonous property. "Tapioca," which Is of native Brazilian Bra-zilian origin, is the name applied to a vegetable food obtained from the starch In the roots of the plant known as bitter cassava, which is Indigenous to tropical America. According to a Latin-American tradition, the food value of the cassava root was accidentally acci-dentally discovered by a Spanish explorer ex-plorer lost In the Jungles of Brazil. He had heard from the Indians that the sap of the cassava plant was highly high-ly poisonous, and, preferring a quick death by poison to a slow one by starvation, star-vation, he ate a bowl of soup prepared by boiling cassava roots In water. Instead In-stead of dying he lived to tell the world how this pleasant and digestible digesti-ble food saved him from starvation. |