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Amazing food fact: The main ingredient in tapioca pudding is a tropical tuber that provides a huge portion of the world's dietary carbohydrates

Saturday, December 03, 2011
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...)
Tags: tapioca, carbohydrates, food sources

Tapioca

(NaturalNews) After rice and wheat, the most important human carbohydrate source is not what you might guess. It's not the starchy potato, or any of the major sweetener-producing crops (sugar cane, sugar beet or corn). It's a tropical tuber known by the names cassava, manioc and yucca (in Spanish), and it's the main ingredient in tapioca pudding.

Although little known in North America, cassava was a staple food for the pre-Columbian cultures of tropical America and remains an important food in that region of the world today. It has also acquired a central place in African cooking, and is a significant calorie source for that continent. That's because cassava is not only both versatile and highly nutritious, it's also a good source of fiber, calcium and phosphorus, among other essential nutrients.

In addition to being cooked and eaten like a potato, cassava can also be ground into a flour. The starch of the cassava is not called "cassava starch" (as you might expect based on "corn starch" or "potato starch") but tapioca, and is most famously used in puddings and in the "boba" balls of certain Asian teas. These are sometimes called "pearls" and are often served with a milk-enriched tea called "pearl milk tea" or, in Chinese, phonetically spelled out: "jen-joo-nai-cha." (I used to drink this all the time in the night markets of Taiwan, where it was sold from street carts, alongside noodles, papaya milk smoothies and fried onion-cakes ("tsong-yo-bing").

Source: 25 Amazing Facts About Food, authored by Mike Adams and David Guiterrez. This report reveals surprising things about where your food comes from and what's really in it! Download the full report (FREE) by clicking here. Inside, you'll learn 24 more amazing but true facts about foods, beverages and food ingredients. Instant download of the complete PDF. All 25 facts are documented and true.

Sources for this article include:
http://www.africanfoods.co.uk/cassava.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassava
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tapioca

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About the author:Mike Adams (aka the "Health Ranger") is a best selling author (#1 best selling science book on Amazon.com) and a globally recognized scientific researcher in clean foods. He serves as the founding editor of NaturalNews.com and the lab science director of an internationally accredited (ISO 17025) analytical laboratory known as CWC Labs. There, he was awarded a Certificate of Excellence for achieving extremely high accuracy in the analysis of toxic elements in unknown water samples using ICP-MS instrumentation. Adams is also highly proficient in running liquid chromatography, ion chromatography and mass spectrometry time-of-flight analytical instrumentation.

Adams is a person of color whose ancestors include Africans and Native American Indians. He's also of Native American heritage, which he credits as inspiring his "Health Ranger" passion for protecting life and nature against the destruction caused by chemicals, heavy metals and other forms of pollution.

Adams is the founder and publisher of the open source science journal Natural Science Journal, the author of numerous peer-reviewed science papers published by the journal, and the author of the world's first book that published ICP-MS heavy metals analysis results for foods, dietary supplements, pet food, spices and fast food. The book is entitled Food Forensics and is published by BenBella Books.

In his laboratory research, Adams has made numerous food safety breakthroughs such as revealing rice protein products imported from Asia to be contaminated with toxic heavy metals like lead, cadmium and tungsten. Adams was the first food science researcher to document high levels of tungsten in superfoods. He also discovered over 11 ppm lead in imported mangosteen powder, and led an industry-wide voluntary agreement to limit heavy metals in rice protein products.

In addition to his lab work, Adams is also the (non-paid) executive director of the non-profit Consumer Wellness Center (CWC), an organization that redirects 100% of its donations receipts to grant programs that teach children and women how to grow their own food or vastly improve their nutrition. Through the non-profit CWC, Adams also launched Nutrition Rescue, a program that donates essential vitamins to people in need. Click here to see some of the CWC success stories.

With a background in science and software technology, Adams is the original founder of the email newsletter technology company known as Arial Software. Using his technical experience combined with his love for natural health, Adams developed and deployed the content management system currently driving NaturalNews.com. He also engineered the high-level statistical algorithms that power SCIENCE.naturalnews.com, a massive research resource featuring over 10 million scientific studies.

Adams is well known for his incredibly popular consumer activism video blowing the lid on fake blueberries used throughout the food supply. He has also exposed "strange fibers" found in Chicken McNuggets, fake academic credentials of so-called health "gurus," dangerous "detox" products imported as battery acid and sold for oral consumption, fake acai berry scams, the California raw milk raids, the vaccine research fraud revealed by industry whistleblowers and many other topics.

Adams has also helped defend the rights of home gardeners and protect the medical freedom rights of parents. Adams is widely recognized to have made a remarkable global impact on issues like GMOs, vaccines, nutrition therapies, human consciousness.

In addition to his activism, Adams is an accomplished musician who has released over a dozen popular songs covering a variety of activism topics.

Click here to read a more detailed bio on Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, at HealthRanger.com.

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