And yet, if all you do is wash + cook Cassava, you'll die in relatively short order - since there's a good amount of cyanide in there. Wikipedia has a small section [0] on how it's prepared 'in the wild':
> A safe processing method known as the "wetting method" is to mix the cassava flour with water into a thick paste and then let it stand in the shade for five hours in a thin layer spread over a basket. In that time, about 83% of the cyanogenic glycosides are broken down by the linamarase; the resulting hydrogen cyanide escapes to the atmosphere, making the flour safe for consumption the same evening.
> . The traditional method used in West Africa is to peel the roots and put them into water for three days to ferment. The roots then are dried or cooked.
How easy are either of those to discover? Especially since low levels of cyanide consumption doesn't have immediate health effects.
Across a thousand years, it starts becoming likely.
Biff: "Didn't you know you're not supposed to eat Cassava?"
Awk: "No. What's the problem? I did a couple weeks ago, and I'm fine."
Biff: "It's deadly. What did you do?"
Awk: "I mixed the paste with water to make dumplings, then Thag came by wanting to show me his new club. So I let it sit in the shade for the afternoon."
Biff: "Interesting. Let's try that again and feed it to Grep and see what happens."
Ah, but you miss the point - whether you leave it to sit for an afternoon or not, as long as it's cooked you'll be fine. Unless you do it for a significant portion of your food - and Cavassa's pretty easy to grow, so it'd make for a nice staple crop - in which case you'll die after a few years.
So the feedback loop isn't "weeks" it's "years" or "decades".
"Fine" given that you eat such foods rarely and/or your time horizon is months not years. No immediately apparent health effects, but long term ones - sort of like eating fish high in mercury.
> A safe processing method known as the "wetting method" is to mix the cassava flour with water into a thick paste and then let it stand in the shade for five hours in a thin layer spread over a basket. In that time, about 83% of the cyanogenic glycosides are broken down by the linamarase; the resulting hydrogen cyanide escapes to the atmosphere, making the flour safe for consumption the same evening.
> . The traditional method used in West Africa is to peel the roots and put them into water for three days to ferment. The roots then are dried or cooked.
How easy are either of those to discover? Especially since low levels of cyanide consumption doesn't have immediate health effects.
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassava#Food_preparation