CASSAVA - Taking A Deeper Look
Please note this is a work in progress, but I wanted to share my findings as I go along, so please bear with me!
As I’ve mentioned earlier, my exploration into Cassava originated when learning about wheat varieties from my Artisan Breads instructor, Chef Matt (Sourdough) Duffy.
In an abstract for Comprehensive Reviews in Food Science and Food Safety I read entitled “Nutritional Value of Cassava for Use as a Staple Food and Recent Advances for Improvement”, the authors cited a personal communication introducing Cassava as being to African [but also South American] farmers as “rice is to Asian farmers, or wheat and potatoes are to European farmers. (Montagnac, Davis, Tanumihardjo, 2009, para. 1)
In an abstract for Comprehensive Reviews in Food Science and Food Safety I read entitled “Nutritional Value of Cassava for Use as a Staple Food and Recent Advances for Improvement”, the authors cited a personal communication introducing Cassava as being to African [but also South American] farmers as “rice is to Asian farmers, or wheat and potatoes are to European farmers. (Montagnac, Davis, Tanumihardjo, 2009, para. 1)
The original inhabitants of Jamaica from my own knowledge and confirmed by Jamaica Information Service points to the Arawaks. (JIS, n.d., paras 3,4).
They grew cassava among other foods and without modern era imports and exports, would have relied heavily on fruits, vegetables and fish for most of their sustenance.
Cassava is a drought-tolerant food crop, not requiring much water in order to thrive and more widespread recognized uses for this food is through processing it into cassava flour, shredding and drying it out to create bammy as well as utilizing in its root form to boil and consume.
Something I thought was truly interesting to learn about cassava is that similar to the fermentation process in bread baking where three main events occur such as the release of gasses for leavening, development of flavour, and the development and strengthening of gluten, cassava also goes through its own fermentation process. As expressed by Mohamed Hawashi, Tri Widjajaa and Setiyo Gunawan,
“The cassava fermentation process is a strategy to improve nutritional value by enriching protein and detoxifying toxic and anti-nutritional compounds, in particular by reducing toxic cyanogenic glycosides to a safe level of consumption in cassava products as well as reducing post-harvest losses” (Solid-State Fermentation of Cassava Products for Degradation of Anti-Nutritional Value and Enrichment of Nutritional Value, 2019, para 5)
This realization created an increased desire to learn more and investigate whether going back to this root as a main source of nutritional value in lieu of rice and breads, would decrease the effects of increased type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, stroke and other known health ailments prevalent among those with an African Caribbean background. I’m obviously still early on in my investigation, but cannot ignore the plethora of credible resources available that explore many health benefits this root has.
As I continue, I will be sharing all the resources with you in case you want to delve even deeper into the subject. Please comment below and tell me your thoughts about these findings and if you have some info to share with me!
REFERENCES:
British Heart Foundation. (n.d.). How African Caribbean background can affect your heart health. Retrieved from https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/heart-matters-magazine/medical/african-caribbean-background-and-heart-health
Hawashi, M., Widjaja, T., Gunawan, S. (2019). New advances in fermentation processes: Solid-state fermentation of cassava products for degradation of anti-nutritional value and enrichment of nutritional value. Retrieved from https://www.intechopen.com/books/new-advances-on-fermentation-processes/solid-state-fermentation-of-cassava-products-for-degradation-of-anti-nutritional-value-and-enrichmen
Jamaica Information Service. (n.d.). The history of Jamaica. Retrieved from https://jis.gov.jm/information/jamaican-history/
Montagnac, J.A., Davis, C.R., Tanumihardjo, S.A. (2009). Comprehensive reviews in food science and food safety: Nutritional value of cassava for use as a staple food and recent advances for improvement. Retrieved from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/j.1541-4337.2009.00077.x