You know, it's not an unreasonable thing to think - lots of things in the world seem to be rituals and superstitions people come up with because they take things too far Surely you can cut down the "ritual" process of soaking the manioc from three days to one day
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The actual answer, the opposite of a nutrient deficiency - an environmental toxin that's universally present in the community's staple food source - was kind of a harsh surprise
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There's been a lot of papers written about the UN having to go humbly to find old women who remembered the "old ways" so they could train the younger generations on how manioc should be properly prepared It's the original case study of hidden value in "primitive folkways"
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And I mean yeah In the *long* run Western science and our philosophy of asking questions and overturning tradition and inventing new things won, I suppose In the modern era you can just buy tapioca starch made from cassava in a factory with no risk of poisoning yourself
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But a lot of people suffered and died in that transition The long period of time in between in which smart arrogant white people showed up and said "This whole three day soak thing is a huge waste of time and time is money so we're changing it"
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It turns out that ugly cliché of "I'm just telling you how to do it because this is how my mom told me to do it and how her mom told her to do it and scores of generations that survived this long can't be wrong" isn't always a bad thing
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Most people in history who survived a long time didn't do it by being clever and using their brains and figuring things out from scratch at all They survived by taking orders and doing what you're supposed to do
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End of conversation
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Reminds me there was a nutritional desease in the southern US they were too proud to admit was nutrition because America was too advanced for that
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