Talk:Tapioca

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Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Tristan Donohoe. Peer reviewers: AmethystCosmos, Sr137.

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Comment

Why would you take out the sentence

These come in both large-pearl and small-pearl forms.

So what if many things come in both large and small forms? Many things don't. Large-pearl tapioca handles very differently from small-pearl.

jaknouse 19:15 29 Jun 2003 (UTC)

How are spheres made?

The external link describing the production process is interesting, but does not explain (to me, at least) how drying turns the wet goo into (aparently) perfectly spherical pearls. So tell us please, why are pearls so spherical, instead of irregular chunks?

I am just guessing, but I think a rotary kiln would do it. A rotary kiln is a large barrel, laid on its side, almost horizontal, rotated, while fire is shot into the slightly raised end.

no sir you are wrong, the cassava plant is sectioned and they just run it through a binder that shakes loose the sections and if continued it will segment it into small enough pieces —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.243.157.15 (talk • contribs)

New Ulm

How can New Ulm be considered the world tapioca capital if the dish isn't even from there? This information must be vandalism, or otherwise an absurd claim by the people from that town. 00:56, 6 June 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 189.83.93.169 (talk)

Images

Can you put in some images of both the pearls and the original plant? It would be very helpful. Iopq 23:38, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Yes, a picture would be nice--Aegisxgundam 03:29, 14 November 2006 (UTC) Question still not answered. Does anyone know —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.47.83.148 (talk) 02:13, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Red/Green branches?

What is the support for the red/green branches assertion? The usual dichotomy is between bitter and sweet varieties, with the latter sometimes (erroneously) considered not to require removal of cyanide-generating components before consumption (although this is disputed). I'm inclined to remove the red/green phrase from this article. Myron 10:28, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

The "fact" about Canada is erroneous

I was born in Canada 66 years ago. I have lived here for 66 years. I have NEVER heard the suggestion that tapioca is fed to poor children. What nonsense!!

The "fact" about Britain is highly dubious

The article says "'Tapioca' in Britain often refers to a rice pudding thickened with arrowroot,[citation needed]". I'm a British person; I have never heard of this and think it is highly unlikely. Tapioca pudding is made from tapioca pearls (not pre-soaked). We normally cook it by simmering it with milk, sugar and a little vanilla, and then baking it in the oven, often with nutmeg sprinkled over. PhilG (talk) 19:53, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Is tapioca a processed food?

The opening line

Tapioca is an essentially flavourless starchy ingredient, or fecula, produced from treated and dried cassava (manioc) root and used in cooking. It is similar to sago.

suggests that it is a processed product from the cassava root. Later paragraphs seems contradict that. "In the South Indian State of Kerala Tapioca is a staple food. Boiled Tapioca is normally eaten with fish curry or beef, and is a traditional favorite of Keralites.", "During World War II's Japanese occupation of Southeast Asia, many refugees survived on tapioca." This article[1] mentioned the various names cassava goes by in different countries. Most notably, that cassava is known as tapioca in india. I can't find any other mention, but where I live, tapioca is used to refer to the cassava root as well. --Dodo bird 14:43, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

The problem is that the article is not differentiating between tapioca (a by-product of cassava) and cassava itself in many places. I am trying to sort some of that out now by moving a few sections (like the "flatbreads/casabe" bit).Cgerbode (talk) 16:40, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Tapioca is not a by-product of Cassava. I can assure you that the root of the plant (whatever it is called) is what is Tapioca. If you are equally sure that that's what is Cassava, then it probably is just two different names for the same root, or these two are closely related plant species. However, this "article" has several extremely dubious pieces of information and needs a serious clean up. I can provide correct information with regards to India and several other Asian countries, but there are other members who are claiming that the article provides dubious facts about their countries too (for example, one English gentleman has commented in this talk page). May be I'll just clean up what I know for sure. Thanks! --ThePiston (talk) 18:01, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

New Zealand

Here, at least — I don't know about other countries — tapioca pearls are labelled as "sago", presumably because of their shape, but even though it is a different plant entirely! porges 06:06, 1 April 2006 (UTC) That's odd - because in Australia, Sago is often labelled "Seed Tapioca" - exactly the reverse!

Merge proposal

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Done already. Closed. 79.72.144.208 (talk) 15:54, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

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I think this is the same as Tapiaco. If I'm mistaken, please remove these tags. If it's the same, but the alternate spelling is used, there may be a better way to say that in the Tapioca article than leave a separate Tapiaco one. (Unsigned post)

Done, with this edit, in November 2006. Closed and archived. 79.72.144.208 (talk) 15:54, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Merge Tapioca with Cassava

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Closed, no support for merge. 79.72.144.208 (talk) 15:58, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

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Another merge request: I believe this is the same as Cassava. In fact, both articles contain the same photo of the roots and, to my knowledge, both plants are one and the same. GabiAPF (talk) 18:15, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

I support this merger request. I think cassava is the general term for this variety of tuber with tapioca being the variety indegenous to south-south east asia. Simply reading the articles and looking at their large overlap is reason enough for the merger.BaronVonchesto (talk) 16:23, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Cassava and tapioca are different things. The problem is that apparently in India cassava is called tapioca, hence the confusion. Most of the India section refers to cassava, and the plants shown in the article are cassava (a.k.a. manioc, yuca, etc) plants, not tapioca plants. As stated on the first sentence of the article, tapioca is a starch, extracted from the cassava root. A comparison could be made with wheat and wheat flour, or corn and corn starch - tapioca is cassava starch. In Brazil it is also called polvilho, which can be doce (sweet) and azedo (sour). In other regions of the country, though, tapioca is the gummy starch made by adding water to the polvilho doce (or by not letting it dry). So there are many local nomenclatures that sometimes get mixed up, but they all refer to a type of starch, not to the cassava, which is a tuberous root. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 189.104.61.92 (talk) 03:37, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

The articles for both Tapioca and Cassava are linked together; Tapioca article mentions that it's made from cassava, and the cassava article mentions in its introduction that tapioca is derived from it. I don't feel that merging the pages will help, especially since cassava has culinary uses apart from being processed for tapioca. Cinderlei (talk) 15:44, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

TAPIOCA is portuguesse for CASSAVA and YUCCA. It is false to say that Tapioca is native to Brasil as Tapioca, as maize, was a pre-Colombian indigenous staple food all over the Americas long before Columbus. Its origin is necessarily unknown beyond it being native to the Americas. To say that Tapioca is different from cassava is an expression of Brasilian bias. I disagree with the notion that Tapioca is the flour and not the root. Tapioca is a regionalism of Cassave and Yucca. Cassave and Yucca also compete as identifiers for the plant in the West Indies. In Dominican Republic Cassave denotes the bread product of Yucca. Clearly for Dominican Republic, Casave is Tapioca. In Puerto Rico the term Casave has been mostly abandoned in favor of the term Yucca. But in Puerto Rico the prouction of the bread and flour has beed abandoned also. The fact is that the nomemclature was never well defined during the Spanish and Portuguese colonization migrations. It was the portuguese who coined the term tapioca in India and Asia. To attempt to establish a new found distinction between Tapioca and Cassave is to deny history in favor of Brasilian bias. Clearly for the portugusse, the origin of their plants was Basil. But for Spaniards it was the West Indies or Cuba or Venezuela. In fairness to the portuguese, spaniards had a vaiety of simultaneous colonial origins to understand the term; unlike the portuguese that could only associate the plant to their only colony, Brasil. Stapler80 (talk) 14:03, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

You are completely wrong. Cassava or yucca are known in Brazil (therefore in portuguese) as MANDIOCA (or also, if they are of the non-poisonous variety, as aipim or macaxeira). Tapioca is a starch obtained from the mandioca. Tapioca is a word that originates from the tupi language word "typy'oka" (or "typy'aka"), which means "sediment", "clot", it may also come from the words "(t)ypy" meaning "bottom" and "'ok" meaning "remove", so it would be something like "removed from the bottom". To make tapioca you must grate a skinned cassava, then mix this with water into a cylindrical recipient, after some time, part of this mix will sediment and clot at the bottom of the cylinder, this is what the tupi called tapioca, and is what brazilians call tapioca. And this is also what is used to make tapioca pearls, tapioca puddings, etc, meaning that this is also how the british and americans call the starch, tapioca. In India, apparently, cassava is called tapioca, that is fine, but it is not the same thing as the tapioca that is being discussed in this article, (i.e. the starch known as tapioca to american and british english speakers) but the tuberous root called cassava, yucca, or mandioca, for which there already is a different, pre-existing article on Wikipedia.189.104.2.131 (talk) 07:37, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

I am from India, and I have never heard or seen anyone using the word Cassava here. Tapioca is not a processed food here. It is the root, unprocessed. After tapioca is processed, what we get here is called as "Tapioca pearls". After all, it now looks to me like this is a cultural thing, and the same root vegetable is known as Cassava in some countries, and Tapioca over here (and presumably in some more Asian countries). Unfortunately, there's a lot of confusion because some people are mistaking Tapioca pearls with Sago pearls, and the article seems to reflect this incorrect notion. --ThePiston (talk) 18:11, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

The word isn't used in India, but it is used elsewhere. And since there already is a preexisting article under the name Cassava, that's where any entries pertaining to the root Manihot esculenta should take place. The ideal situation would be to rename this article to Tapioca starch (with redirects from terms such as cassava starch, tapioca pearls, tapioca granules, etc), as to avoid any further confusion between the starch and the root as it is known in India and possibly elsewhere (even in the brazilian page there is confusion over the term, which is both used for a starch and for s dish, known elsewhere in the country as beiju), and to change the disambiguation page for the term Tapioca, with an adjusted link that leads here, to the starch article, and with the addition of another that leads to the cassava article. Once that is done, all the root exclusive content (dishes made from the root and not the starch, the pictures of different varieties of the cassava root, etc) need to be removed. 200.217.225.129 (talk) 02:17, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

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I've closed this; there was No support for this merger, and the opinion here seems to be that Tapioca (the starch) and Cassava (the plant) are different subjects, both wider than what they have in common. 79.72.144.208 (talk) 15:58, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Chowwary is Malayalam for Tapioca?

"Tapioka is called Chowwary in Malayalam." Being a native Malayalam speaker, I have never heard that Chowwary is the same as Tapioca. As far as I know, Chowwary is a form of Barley. I could be mistaken on this one. Therefore, not editing the article directly Chowwary/ chovvary /savalleri (ചൊവ്വരി / സാവല്ലരി / സാവല്ലേരി) are processed starch from several sources, one among them being tapioca tubers. It is not used as a synonym for Tapioca. At least in South India, Tapioca is the name of the plant or its raw or cooked tubers (കപ്പ / മരച്ചീനി/കൊള്ളി/ പൂളക്കിഴങ്ങ്). The plant is the same as Cassava. The two articles indeed need to be merged together. ViswaPrabha വിശ്വപ്രഭ (talk) 03:47, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Again, as has already been stated twice in two other topics in this discussion page, different nomenclatures in differents countries have created a confusion between cassava and tapioca. Apparently, in India and Southeast Asia cassava is known as tapioca. But in other countries, like Brazil, tapioca is a by-product of cassava, tapioca is a type of cassava starch, therefore cassava and tapioca are not synonyms. If you want to write about the tuberous root or plant head over to the cassava page, if you wish to talk about the starch, the tapioca page is the place to do it. Unfortunately due to this confusion the article is a mess, maybe a good solution would be renaming the article from tapioca to tapioca starch, as to make it more clear that the subject of the article is not the plant/root.189.104.97.183 (talk) 03:31, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

US-Centric Language?

The article says "It is processed into either fine dried flakes or, more commonly, small hard white spheres or "pearls" that are soaked before use." Most commonly where? According to some random person's experience? Let's get a world-wide perspective or some specifics about what this "more commonly" means.

US centric language gives the article a world wide perspective. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.32.45.69 (talk) 01:52, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

In Brazil, at least in Fortaleza on the northeast coast, flakes and spheres are uncommon. They primarily use the flour (polvilho doce) to make cheese bread (pao de queijo) and what they call tapioca (see below). Take a look at a Brazilian food importer's product page for manioc starch and other products from Brazil. Farinha de Mandioca is much coarser (which I believe contains some of the fiber of the root, and may have some starch, but I don't know) and is eaten plain in many meals. Technically, that may be considered tapioca as well.

In Brazil, the word tapioca itself means the tortilla-like fried product (though it is never browned, the tapioca is made in a very hot pan and almost melts together instead of cooking the way you'd think by the word frying), and is never a pudding. Calling it a tortilla is in fact a little bit misleading as even the thinnest tapioca is at least three times as thick as a regular tortilla, and some tapioca is formed to be as much as an inch thick and only about 4 inches in diameter. Here's some tapioca, though if you want a guaranteed copyright-free image (or any others to do with this topic) I can arrange to get a fresh one straight out of Brazil. See the Wiki page on Tapioca for more information, as well. Erik Eckhardt (talk) 07:14, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Allergy

People can be allergic to tapioca. Since its mentioned that tapioca can be an alternative for gluten-free foods and people can be allergic to tapioca itself, would it be appropriate to make an allergy section for tapioca?

69.243.93.144 (talk) 03:35, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Vandalism?

I removed the following text from the article, because it appears to be vandalism. --Una Smith (talk) 19:16, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Ethiopia International Tapioca Research Stone & Tome Red cluster department of aural limestone use (est. 1846 with regards to roanoka settlements disappearing causes (and reservations, and planting corn, etc.)35476

Pearls

I think we need a better explanation of what exactly tapioca pearls are. ike9898 (talk) 10:14, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

I agree! --Ithunn (talk) 09:14, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Nutrients

I think a table with tapioca nutrients would be useful. Can someone please add it? I once read that tapioca is not a recommended baby food, despite its widespread use in ready-made, processed baby products, because it has no nutrients (vitamins and minerals), only glucids and virtually no proteins.--Ithunn (talk) 09:16, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

While the article's introduction indicates tapioca is almost completely protein-free, the section on World War II claims it provided protein to refugees, a clear contradiction. The citation link for the latter section is expired, but a backup copy makes no mention of protein. http://web.archive.org/web/20071014235041/http://changimuseum.com/Chronicle/Chronicles+body+text+5.htm —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.235.64.184 (talk) 00:59, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Milk pudding made with arrowroot?

I highly doubt that an entire country (UK) would make slime and call it tapioca. It also said that that a citation was needed. Arrowroot+milk=inedible and disgusting slime. Tapioca usually refers to a milk-pudding made with tapioca pearls. -- Azemocram (talk) 04:23, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

I've never heard of that either, and the claim has been disputed since 2009. I've removed it. Iapetus (talk) 10:48, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

tapioca plant in the philippines is not sago. it is called balinghoy or kamoteng-kahoy.

sago is the translation for "tapioca pearls" — Preceding unsigned comment added by 112.200.56.99 (talk) 00:16, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

claims about Ayurvedic use

I have removed them as they are not sourced. --Abhijeet Safai (talk) 14:54, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

Sago

Several parts of the India subsection refer to how sago is used and made. While pearl sago is very similar to pearl tapioca, they are processed from two different plants that are native to opposite sides of the globe. Cinderlei (talk) 16:57, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

- I agree with the above comment. There is considerable confusion amongst the contributors to this article about Tapioca. Many have conflated it with Sabudana/Sago, which is the starch made from a completely different plant (the palm, Metroxylon sagu). This article needs to be cleaned up of all such references to Sago — Preceding unsigned comment added by 149.171.104.61 (talk) 01:58, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

But What Is It ???

The article says it come from the 'starch' of the plant. Plants have leaves, stems, and roots. There is no part called the 'starch' of a plant. There is a picture there of cassava roots. Why is that picture there? Are you saying tapioca is from the roots? I like to the casava roots and eat them even better than potatoes. They are often a side dish with food in central America and the Caribbean. Are you saying that we are eating tapioca ? Then what of the little beads? And why then is sago used in preparation ... completely confused by this article! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.54.185.173 (talk) 02:11, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

The "fact" about India, Bangladesh, and a number of Asian countries is dubious

Tapioca is different from Sabudhana. This article claims that tapioca pearls are called as Sabudhana in some places of India, and in Bangladesh. However, this is completely wrong. Sabudhana is Sago pearls, and it is completely different from Tapioca. Tapioca is the root of a plant, which is known as Kappa Kezhangu in Tamil, and as Kappa in Malayalam. I'm unsure as to what it's known as in Marathi and other Indian languages, but Sabudhana is Sago. This article must be edited to reflect this fact. I might do it shortly.ThePiston (talk) 18:04, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

-- there is a comment above under the header "sago" that makes the same point. The article needs to clearly distinguish between tapioca pearls and sago pearls — Preceding unsigned comment added by 110.33.196.37 (talk) 11:24, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

Starch vs root

In the south america section, "In Peru, tapioca is known as yuca and is eaten mostly boiled as a side dish in the Amazon and fried with Papa a la Huancaína sauce as a snack when drinking alcohol." This refers to the use of the root as a vegetable, and this page should only be about the use of tapioca starch. Removing Danfeder (talk) 22:53, 9 February 2014 (UTC)

The name is wrong

Um... I am pretty sure you are mistaking tapioca (a dish) with the starch (which is called something else) on this name... Manioc starch is NOT called tapioca in brazil, tapioca is exclusively the name of the dish made from manioc starch, which is most often in powdered form and called polvilho. "In Brazil, the plant (cassava) is named "mandioca", while its starch is called "tapioca". " It is not — Preceding unsigned comment added by 177.96.175.219 (talk) 19:21, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

I would guess the confusion arose by the fact that tapioca is essentially made from polvilho and nothing else (cassava/manioc starch), however tapioca and the starch are not the same thing. I hope this gets corrected before this misuse spreads even more all over. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 187.112.69.4 (talk) 23:04, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

Is there no one to fix this? This has also been mentioned a couple times in some discussions above, like in US centric language. This page is a huge confusion of names. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 187.112.79.99 (talk) 04:07, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

We already have articles on Cassava (the plant) and this one (on the starch) and on Tapioca pudding (the dish), and which link to each other, so I don't see the confusion. If the objection is that “the starch is not called tapioca in Brazil”, I'd point out that it is in English, so if the Brazilian name for the starch is polviho, then that might be added somewhere; though the Portuguese WP (which is doubtless edited by people who would know) calls the starch product Tapioca and the dish Cuzcuz de Tapioca, so you might want to take it up there first. 79.72.144.208 (talk) 16:05, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

(Comment)

history of Manihot the page on 'cassava' mentions that the plant was widespread throughout precolumbian mesoamerica, but on this page it says it was brought to the west indies after european contact. it looks like th is page is wrong about that. Potholehotline (talk) 16:21, 25 June 2015 (UTC)potholehotline

Laundry usage

There should be a citation or more information on the use of tapioca in laundry. Quanhuynh96 (talk) 03:39, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

Processing to reduce toxicity of linamarin

A question was raised within the article about how to minimize the toxicity of linamarin. This process is too detailed for the article, in my opinion, so I'll post it here for discussion. An excerpt from the FAO reference listed as #2:

...linamarin often coexists with its methyl homologue called methyl-linamarin or lotaustralin. Linamarin is a cyanogenic glycoside which is converted to toxic hydrocyanic acid or prussic acid when it comes into contact with linamarase, an enzyme that is released when the cells of cassava roots are ruptured. Otherwise linamarin is a rather stable compound which is not changed by boiling the cassava. If it is absorbed from the gut to the blood as the intact glycoside it is probably excreted unchanged in the urine without causing any harm to the organism (Philbrick, 1977). However, ingested linamarin can liberate cyanide in the gut during digestion. Traditional processing and cooking methods for cassava can, if efficiently carried out, reduce the cyanide content to non-toxic levels. An efficient processing method will release the enzyme linamarase by disintegrating the microstructure the cassava root. On bringing this enzyme into contact with linamarin the glucoside is converted into hydrogen cyanide. The liberated cyanide will dissolve in the water when fermentation is effected by prolonged soaking, and will evaporate when the fermented cassava is dried. Sun drying fresh cassava pieces for short periods is an inefficient detoxification process... Simple boiling of fresh root pieces is not always reliable since the cyanide may be only partially liberated, and only part of the linamarin may be extracted in the cooking water.

--Zefr (talk) 15:07, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

Tapioca

When it is grown and harvested months 188.70.15.205 (talk) 13:20, 27 April 2022 (UTC)

Inconsistency

The article says:

(1) The plant provided much needed carbohydrates and other nutrients.

(2) Dried tapioca pearls are 11% water and 89% carbohydrates, with no protein or fat. In a 100 gram reference amount, dried tapioca supplies 358 calories and no or only trace amounts of dietary minerals and vitamins.

contradicting itself.

also reference for (1) is not longer available. 189.243.22.150 (talk) 02:15, 22 October 2022 (UTC)

Good catch on this inconsistency. I removed the dead reference for the WWII use, as a search for tapioca on that site yielded nothing. The USDA source used in the nutrition section is reliable, here, using the pick list for a 100 g amount. Only carbohydrates are notable in the 100 g amount, so the nutrition section is described accurately. The USDA has analyzed many foods containing tapioca, search results here, but in most cases, tapioca is only an ingredient, as it is commonly used in food manufacturing, especially for baby foods. Only the entry for dried tapioca "pearls" seems relevant for this article, and this is the same as the source in the nutrition section. Zefr (talk) 04:54, 22 October 2022 (UTC)

Conflicting information

The introduction says "use has spread throughout South America." No mention of Asia. Yet the second half of the page is all about Asia and India. Edit, please. 2600:1700:1C64:8240:BCD6:2A3:28DF:87E2 (talk) 13:47, 29 June 2023 (UTC)