141–150 of 204 posts
> "We are professors, busy between teaching and administrative work, so we rely on existing literature to come to conclusions" Is this really what academia is like?
> "We are professors, busy between teaching and administrative work, so we rely on existing literature to come to conclusions" Is this really what academia is like?
This looks like a giant variety of 'Pachyrhizus erosus' or Jicama, which is also a street snack widely sold in Mexico. I'v never seen ones as large as the one in the article, but the watery texture and how it's condimented (lemon, sugar, salt, chili powder) is exactly like Jicama. Seems wikipedia has a reference to ones as large as 2 meters and 20 kg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pachyrhizus_erosus so it may be like…
This seems unlikely, since jicama is widely eaten in India as well, and much smaller than what the images depict. (I don't doubt it can grow that large, just that I've never seen it that big.) The texture also looks off for jicama, which is more watery and can't be sliced that thin. Wikipedia: "In Bengali, it is known as shankhalu (শাঁখ আলু), literally translating to "conch (shankha, শাঁখ) potato (alu, আলু)" for its…
Isn't it a bit... terrifying to buy and eat food, when nobody wants to tell you what that food actually is??
I know, I thought that was funny. But does anyone really know what's in a Dodger dog?
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Yikes. Your symptoms were likely caused by calcium oxalate raphides, little mineral needles present in raw agave (and several other plants). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raphide
Your linked article says at the bottom that these things are also present in spinach, beets and pineapple.
Wild plants, on the other hand , has not been subject to the same selection process and could easily contain a dangerous amount of oxalate.
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There is no food 'regulation' for the snacks sold in open cart. There are innumerable varieties of such snack which are not 'mysterious'. This seems to be 'mysterious' because of the writing skill of the author. She successfully managed to create a buzz. If finding the answer was the goal it could have been easily found out by offering 10X-50X (approx $150-$700 = Annual income perhaps) the money they offered mentione…
The author isn’t looking to setup a roadside snack business. Throwing money at a “problem” is not a real solution. I think the people in the article have made a good-faith attempt to research and find out more about the snack.
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Hi. I am the author of this article :) To sum up, most research as of now points to Agave but botanists who did the DNA barcoding don't want to commit to Agave. For two reasons: 1) It is 89% close to Agave, the Sisalana variety but 11% is open to doubts and research. 2)The Agave expert, who tried to make a beverage out of it and has worked on it for years, says it's can't be agave. He has eaten both the snack, as wel…
Hi, I appreciated your article. Do you know when Agave was introduced to India? Perhaps a timeline may assist with determining the identity of the food, since Agaves are from central and South America and were presumably brought to India sometime in the past few hundred years. Is this a food item that has a long tradition? Small note of feedback since I couldn't find a way to comment on the Atlas Obscura site. Specie…
With those 2 simple rules you have your needs covered. Corner cases add complicatiins, but unless you are in the bussiness you shouldn't need it.
meta: how can atlasobscura.com operate legally in Europe when the only cookie option is 'confirm'?
Who says it is operating in Europe? Just because you can reach it with a browser from Europe does not mean it has a business nexus in the EU. Yes I know the EU claims that GDPR covers the entire world, but the practical reality is that they do not have overseas strike forces going after small web publishers for cookie banners.
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Species doesn't mean as much in the plant world. Cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, Brussels sprouts, collard greens, kohlrabi, and gai lan are all Brassica oleracea . You can have specimens that are even technically the same cultivar but wildly different alimentary character.
Hooray!! I totally love the way 'Brassica' vegetables provide such a vivid illustration of the amazing variety that some selection-pressure can yield on the development of essentially a single type of input organism. Makes you wonder what might happen when these types of selection-pressures start affecting humankind more!
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Except, as mentioned in the article, they _did_ look into it, to the extent of DNA testing it! And still didn't come to a particularly satisfactory conclusion. "It might be an agave, but also the agave expert says agaves aren't like that" is about as far as anyone seems to have gotten.
So, it's an unclassified botanical specimen. That's not really a "mystery". It's just an unclassified botanical specimen. This makes the product application of the root even less mysterious: "It was seasoned with salt, chili powder, and lime; my husband’s had sugar and lime. It was crunchy, juicy, and refreshing, but had no taste of its own."
The whole thing is fascinating. It's a low-stakes mystery, but a mystery all the same.