cassava

[mellowtigger]

As I mentioned earlier in my daydream list, I thought it would be a good idea to genetically engineer a plant to become a self-contained complete source of nutrients for humans. It turns out, someone is doing exactly that. They're working on a plant called cassava which looks something like a yam. It's an interesting choice as a food source, since it's also potentially deadly because of its cyanide yield. Apparently preparation of the cassava as food involves many hours of airing out so that the cyanide gas can escape. Strange, eh?

The story from Ohio State University says:

The researchers have further engineered the cassava plant so it can resist the crop’s most damaging viral threats and are refining methods to reduce cyanogens, substances that yield poisonous cyanide if they are not properly removed from the food before consumption. The reduction of cyanogens also can shorten the time it takes to process the plant into food, which typically requires three to six days to complete.

This is important news not just for humans on earth but for humans leaving the planet too. Information that I can't yet find is the B12 content of this newly engineered cassava plant. As I found out during my own health troubles, B12 is manufactured only by bacteria and not by larger life forms. Even on their more-detailed webpage, though, I can't find mention of B12 content. Worse, it seems that cassava is already known to actually reduce the B12 in the body.

Comments

[randomcub.livejournal.com]

Heck, leave the cyanide in. People can process it or whatever. Yay jobs!

[mellowtigger]

Yeah, good for industry, employing people to make the cassava safe to eat. I was surprised by the wikipedia entry that said cassava was already "third largest source of carbohydrates for human food in the world, with Africa its largest center of production." I'd never heard of it before, and it's already that valued as a food source.

[randomcub.livejournal.com]

You have to wonder how they figured out how to process it. Trial and error? ("Oops, she died, try another process!")

I was reading an interview of Deb Duchon (the culinary anthropologist who is regularly on Alton Brown's "Good Eats" TV show); the interview is here:

http://www.goodeatsfanpage.com/References/TheInterviews/DebDuchon1.htm

What I really thought was interesting was her explanation of induction in the liver, re enzymes:

"So I studied a little more and in toxicology one of the most interesting concepts is that of induction. And what the means is that your liver, which manufactures the enzymes to digest food, can make over 2,000 enzymes. It doesn't need that many. So why waste a lot energy making enzymes you're never going to be needing. So what it does is it waits for something, a food, to be introduced which ‘inducts' it to do it. And so that's why when you eat a new food you have a tendency to nibble it. That's an instinctive behavior. That you nibble your food, you're sending a message to your liver saying, "Okay ... what enzyme do I need? Is it in inventory right now? Or is it something you're going to have to make that's new?" Like sesame seeds. Sesame seeds need a specific enzyme. That's all the enzyme is used for is
sesame seeds. So if you've never had sesame seeds before, your liver would have to do it. So this is the same thing with the nightshade. So you can train your liver to create the enzyme to handle it."

[furr-a-bruin.livejournal.com]

You'd think they'd start with something that doesn't have the cyanogen problem, but maybe cassava has other positive attributes (like being able to be grown in a wide variety of climates without a lot of effort) that offset that issue.