A street snack that has baffled botanists | Hacker News Reader

A street snack that has baffled botanists

atlasobscura.com

484 pointsperiya194 comments

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 those tree trunk sizes in the article.

It's not Agave. Agave roots are very fibery and dry, there's almost no moisture in them and you wouldn't be able to cut such thin slices like the article points out, agave roots are mashed up to start the Tequila process, here are some pics http://www.todomezcal.com/Elaboracion/molienda.html

Source: I've cut open both Agave and Jicama plants, I grew up in Mexico. You can find Jicama/(fruit) street vendors in most Mexican cities main streets or outside Mexico a mexican market is also a safe bet. They have rough peel, like a potato but rougher, and they're about 90% water.

"This looks like a giant variety of Jicama"... A giant variety that has heretofor been unknown to the world? Hacker News, we cracked the case!

Edit I feel like I should explain the snark. The comment I'm replying to is coming from a classic flaw in human reasoning. "This looks kinda like this other thing I'm familiar with. So clearly it must be some variety of that!" Then it's couched in some authoritative sounding words so folks nod sagely and say "yes, that must be it" and press the upvote button. The fact that the commenter is hypothesizing a heretofor-unknown giant variety of a major world food crop is, well, sometimes sarcasm is the appropriate response.

Meanwhile, the actual article tells us a lot more about the thing including a bunch of evidence for why folks think it's a variety of agave. Along with some mysteries, yes! But none saying "oh maybe this is actually jicama".

Also if you're going to go with "this reminds me of this other vegetable" it might be useful to have a bit more breadth of understanding of the world's food staples. There are more than quite a few stachy tubers, roots, and stems like this. Cassava, taro, about six different things all called "yam" in English, potato, turnip, radish. There are many, many cultivated plants like this. The distinguishing characteristic of this one is its huge size. Something that jicama doesn't have.

Respectfully, you inferred the conclusion "So clearly it must be some variety of that!". GF doesn't say that, they merely say it may be like that and that the explanation given in the article doesn't agree with their experience.

Respectfully, GF quite explicitly also dismissed the claim that it is agave.

Meanwhile the article states that there is established scientific evidence that it is (probably the Sesalana species), in the form of an 89% DNA match, but more likely the trunk part of the plant rather than the root (as initially claimed by vendors).

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 shape, size, and colour. In Hindi, it is known as mishrikand (मिश्रीकंद). It is eaten during fast (उपवास) in Bihar (India) and is known as kesaur (केसौर). In Odia, it is known as (ଶଙ୍ଖ ସାରୁ) shankha saru."

> can't be sliced that thin.

Loló in San Francisco slices jicama that thin to use in place of a tortilla in tacos:

http://cyneats.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Screenshot-201...

Jicama can absolutely be sliced that thin. It’s very similar to a turnip or potato.

According to the article it’s not actually the root, that’s just a story the vendors tell, it’s the stem.

I think it could be the trunk of the agave. I just looked at pictures of agaves and some have short palm like trunks that the leaves come off of at the top instead of being right on the ground like you usually see with the aloe and agave type succulents.

The trunk looks about the same size as the photos of the food object.

The agave sisalana wiki article shows it: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sisal

Yes, all of that was in the article that you apparently didn't read:

> In 2010, after a long anatomical study, they performed DNA barcoding on a slice of the snack and found it to match that of agave’s by 89 percent. There are several species of agave, but the lab test narrowed it down to Agave Sisalana, a plant sometimes used to make a tequila-like drink. They did a field visit soon after and plucked out a Sisalana only to find mesh-like, shallow roots. Next, they chopped off its leaves and there it was: the fat, white, watery trunk familiar to millions of Indians from food carts. They ate a slice from it, and it was tasteless and crunchy just like Ram Kand.

Well, that's the theory. They're still not certain it's actually agave.

In 2010, after a long anatomical study, they performed DNA barcoding on a slice of the snack and found it to match that of agave’s by 89 percent [narrowed] down to Agave Sisalana. [...] Next, they chopped off its leaves and there it was: the fat, white, watery trunk familiar to millions of Indians from food carts. They ate a slice from it, and it was tasteless and crunchy just like Ram Kand. The findings were published inCurrent Science the following year.

When I look at the Jicama plant it doesn't even remotely look like an Agave. It certainly doesn't seem to me that DNA barcoding would yield an 89% match with Agave Sisalana.

The source code for two applications might match 89% and yield completely different results

I'm not sure that I get the point of your analogy.

To be clear, I'm saying that genetic match supersedes any list of superficial attributes to determine identity. If it's established that X and Y are an 89% DNA match, even though X tastes and looks like Z, the fact that Y and Z belong in distant genetic branches should be enough to dismiss X as a possible Z.

Humans and chimps share 98% of their DNA, We also share like 84% with pigs.

89% doesn’t really seem like a case closed kind of stat.

You should look up DNA barcoding. We don't have an 84% barcode match with pigs.

My point is that being an 89% match doesn't necessarily mean very much.

If this is an agave, it would be different from the plants that you're familiar with since it grows in a different country, no?

Edit: Growing conditions can drastically impact the development of a plant, am I wrong?

It’s so cool how even when teams of scientists have failed there is a random commenter on HN with the answer.

With a guess.

Pretty sure the parent poster forgot to tag their comment /s

It looks much more like a peeled and shaped west african giant yam than it does any kind of jicama.

I have eaten it many times, vendors say it's a root. But the last time I ate it, it was little more fibrous and hard and I ate little more than the usual. For the next couple of days my tongue was itching and I had little difficulty speaking. Then I googled it and read somewhere that it's not edible.

It's surprising experts don't know what the thing is given it's so commonly available.

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.

Most cultivated edible plants have been selected against having too many raphides. Though people can still be sensitive to fresh pineapple and kiwifruit which contains proteases that amplifies the damage done by the oxalate needles.

Wild plants, on the other hand , has not been subject to the same selection process and could easily contain a dangerous amount of oxalate.

This has been enlightening. I've sometimes definitely had this feeling when eating some pineapple but not other pineapple. Interesting.

That's extremely interesting. Nature never ceases to amaze.

May be, but it surely scared the hell out of me.

Usually I don't bother with nits but in this case:

> had little difficulty speaking

Has exactly the opposite meaning of what you intend unless you turn it into:

> had a little difficulty speaking

Not too confusing in this particular comment, but I could see this causing problems down the line for you.

TFA says it's probably Agave. They also say:

> However, it may not be so healthy. “Agave has lots of alkaloids. It can be poisonous if eaten in large quantities. Maybe that’s why they sell thin slices,” Dr. Yadav, now retired, warns.

There are over 270 species of agave, that doesn't really answer anything.

If you read the article they say the specific Agave that they linked to using DNA analysis.

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!

Brassica and domesticated dogs diversified because of controlled breeding. Unless you get a bunch of totalitarian eugenicists with differing goals, I dont know how this could happen with people.

I could imagine it happening if interstellar colonization ever becomes a thing, maybe.

TIL that the vegetable aisle has half the species I thought it did.

Oh yeah. Brassica rapa has your turnip, napa cabbage, bok choy and rapini/rabes. Brassica napus gives canola oil, swedish turnip, and rutabaga. Mustard comes from B. juncea, B. nigra and B. hirta.

Also those species names aren't really even guaranteed to be accurate because biologists, botanists, geneticists, etc, can't even really agree on where to draw the line.

There's a whole genre of Brassica memes and it's fantastic.

https://mobile.twitter.com/faineg/status/1386522223901618177...

I think napa cabbage and a few others are also all the "other" brassica.

From the paper

> The similarity search showed 89% identity with the partial sequence of the plastid locus maturase of Agave sisalana

89% isn't very similar though.

The DNA analysis didn’t identify the exact variety.

Trade secrets are trade secrets.

> "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?

Depends, mainly because 'academia' is far too broad of a term. For starters not all professors teach the same amount of hours (don't know all rules across all universities but there might very well be professors who do not teach at all but instead have PhD students do it, or post-docs). Professors which have anough funding can hire people for administrative work; though they'd still have to take care of getting funding usually whih is also a huge time sink. In some fields professors actually do practical work themselves, or are very close to it. Not all fields can realy on the same amount of literature-only studies. In some fields with novel research there might not even be literature to use. And so on.

In the Foundation series by Isaac Asimov this exact meme is lampooned.

A character describes how they went to the library, read all the old books, wrote a paper and called it new research.

Dr Asimov may have seen the bleak future of academia, what with it being his other trade.

Mayhap we need more Dr Indiana Jones types with tenure?

Indiana Jones wouldn't get tenure, yes he found the ark of the covenant, but what did he find afterwards (which was delivered to the gov/museum?)

Indiana Jones and the Street Snack of Bangalore. Kid getting ready to take bite of snack, then, "This belongs in a museum." Cue theme song.

Episode 5?

The Cross of Coronado

Read it in context

They’re talking about a guy who wrote an encyclopedia, obviously he’s going to rely on sources and not personally go and visit every plant

An encyclopedia is a summary

Usually the professors have a bunch of PhD students working on topics the prof specializes in. So yes and no.

As someone in academia… no. But I can’t speak for everyone and I am sure it varies by field.

I was struck by the same comment. Forgot to add that they get tenure by volume of papers, which exacerbates this farce.

Yes.

Isn't it a bit... terrifying to buy and eat food, when nobody wants to tell you what that food actually is??

My logic is: If others eat it, it’s fine. It also helps to eat it with someone who’s somewhat familiar with it.

My first time in Thailand I ate a disgusting salty soup with a spoon. It turns out you’re supposed to dip vegetables in it. What I did was the equivalent of eating ketchup with a spoon, except it was many times more flavorful.

Now I love it: น้ำพริกกะปิ

> My logic is: If others eat it, it’s fine

People used to eat radium, inhale mercury, and play in piles of asbestos before we came to understand their long term health effects.

You might want to rethink this.

That risk is fine to me. I meant it more as a “people eat it, so it must be likable” than “people eat it, so it won’t kill me.”

Do you feel that way when you walk into a Subway?

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/22/subway-sandw...

De-AMP-ed link (mine was redirecting to the favicon):

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/22/subway-sandw...

I wonder whether it's canned, and whether sterilizing it can make the DNA unreadable (broken down).

Wonder no more. The answer is that the NYT is likely overstating the power of the testing they did.

https://www.seafoodsource.com/news/foodservice-retail/subway...

Subway is perfectly willing to admit that most of their cold cuts are turkey-based, so it seems extra unlikely that they'd go to the trouble of creating an ersatz tuna and then hiding that fact. Especially considering how cheap tuna is, comparatively. The way you cheap out on tuna salad is adding more mayo and thickeners and other fillers, not by inventing some kind of psuedofish.

Thanks. Corrected.

Does cooked and processed food normally contain intact DNA that can be sequenced? Seems like those researchers suck at their job if they failed to figure out what the tuna is made of and still insist on drawing a conclusion based on their lack of success.

Yes. That is why I don't.

Not to mention the use of plasticizers in their bread (the same kind used in car tires.) And most importantly, factory farmed meat, contributing both to climate change and immense sentient suffering.

No, the wellness scammer who started the rumors about "yoga mat chemicals" successfully managed to pressure Subway to remove azodicarbonamide from their bread. I'm sure they replaced it with some other equally harmless dough conditioner.

I don't know much about the wellness scammer but that's a poor way to support your stance.

Azodicarbonamide has been banned in quite a few countries. It's only listed as safe at 40 parts per million. It has possible carcinogenic products in the form of other carbazides. It doesn't have a large amount of research/testing on it. It is a known lung irritant and caused respiratory issues in factory workers who produce it.

You may be okay with random hydrocarbons being added to your food. But not everyone is as naive as you.

Notice, you changed the topic to a kook and then invoked ad hominem. Very bad intentions. Much lack of substance. Dishonest attempt to convince others through baseless assertions. So shameful.

I don't know why you thought that personal attacks were merited here, but the fact remains that Subway removed azodicarbonamide from their bread years ago, as did many other fast food chains.

https://www.eater.com/2016/8/8/12403338/subway-yoga-mat-chem...

That doesn't make a difference. You called azodicarbonamide harmless. Companies have a culture. Their history reflects that.

Just a pedantic observation. They never claimed any specific level of harmlessness. What they said was:

> I'm sure they replaced it with some other equally harmless dough conditioner

That could easily mean they replaced a toxic chemical with an equally toxic one.

That being said, the words used certainly imply the thought that the chemical is 'mostly harmless'.

I know, I thought that was funny. But does anyone really know what's in a Dodger dog?

Sure do - you could even buy them yourself with ingredients list and everything until they switched vendors this year: https://www.amazon.com/Farmer-John-Dodger-Wieners-Package/dp...

Best worst stadium left in the country. Just a great mix of fans. And I never skip a Dodger dog. I'm amused but not surprised (guess I knew) that Farmer John is retailing the contents of that long, succulent piece of head cheese street meat around the country. It really always was special dog. But what sort of sick lunatic would order a pack of that shit off Amazon? If you ever catch me eating a dodger dog outside of chavez ravine, please just take me to the hospital and have me committed.

coke secret recipe, KFC secret herbs and spices

For both of those, you can put them through some chromatography/spectrography/etc. and figure out essentially what's in them — what ingredients, in what ratios. What you won't find out is the particular process required to get those ingredients "formatted" the right way to taste like the result.

(E.g. Coke apparently does some fancy, hard-to-replicate-at-home kind of micronized emulsification to the flavoring oils that go into it, to get them into suspension in a water-based drink in a way that results in a smooth—but not viscous or lingering—mouth-feel. That process doesn't change what's in Coke; it just changes how it's in there.)

Also, in both of those cases, FDA inspectors know not only the what but also the how, as they check the manufacturing process to ensure that they're putting in what they (privately) claim to be putting in, no more and no less. And we can then trust the FDA to not let them put anything too "weird" in there, while they can also trust the FDA to not tell everyone what they know about the process.

When I was in college in the 70's we went to a Miller brewery where they told us about some blue liquid they poured into Miller High Life that allowed them to ship the beer in clear bottles instead of brown. It came in tanker cars full; they claimed the FDA didn't know what it was (don't think I believed them).

I don't know what they used in the seventies, but now they use hop oil extract. The extraction process eliminates the possibility of the skunking/lightstruck reaction. Most colorless glass bottled beer use that today, though not all. The green bottle beers mostly don't, though they're still susceptible to skunking.

Likely was just a kind of food coloring. Simply by changing the tint of the beverage, one can prevent absorption of a band of light.

They at least have to be generally regarded safe. I will say that as a vegetarian, "natural flavors" can be pretty annoying.

KFC recipe is out there. Saw it on Reddit a few years ago. Followed it. Damn good chicken.

I thought that process required a pressure fryer. Do you have one?

I don't. You can get the flavour w/o that cooker, but the juicy-ness requires it.

Those things are like boats tho. Better to have a friend with one ;)

one's sugar water, one is at least identifiable chicken! it would be closer to KFC secret herbs and spices on bushmeat

Health authorities know those. Street food isn't regulated that way.

Don't they have to follow strict regulations and pass various tests?

Cut Me Own Throat Dibbler made an entire business of selling "meat" pies.

On several continents. In differing time periods.

People eat "kebab" "gyro" or whatever the local term is for doner (suspiciously has a single n, shouldn't be pronounced the way it is) meat in a pitta regularly after large quantities of alcohol, whereas they eschew the things when sober.

I'll eat shawarma, gyros any time day or night. Food of the gods.

UK style doner I'm a little more circumspect about but that's mainly because of processing rather than provence.

What on earth is in a Cheeto? Far more mysterious than this snack, which is clearly some plant matter with some salt and spices that other people eat regularly without falling over dead.

Cheetos are extruded cornmeal paste that's been fried and dusted with powdered cheese, salt, and MSG

That powder is a trade secret. Every year they make it finer, to coat your taste buds more perfectly and have a more intense flavor. But nobody is questioning if eating microscopic particles of (what?) is healthy or has side effects. It's tasty! Don't get between me and my Cheetos!

Corn meal, powdered cheese, oil, and salt, mostly.

The powder is a cheese-like seasoning. It is not cheese. First ingredient of the seasoning: whey. Whey is not cheese; it’s the leftover product you get while making cheese.

I feel like there is a strong possibility that the sources vary. Possibly even some of them aren't so edible.

How else could it have been readily available for decades without a clear source being well known?

I read this article elsewhere. I don't quite get why it says no one know's, then it's genetically and visually matched to a type of agave, and then they go back to not knowing? It seems some of the counter argument is assuming that "Agave" are all the same when specific types will have specific traits. Otherwise it's an interesting read.

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 well as agave, that's why.

To complicate things, I have inspected agave (its length and girth) closely and I find it impossible to believe that it can hold within it such a fat and smooth thing. But I am no scientist.

I went to a village recently, which has agave growing left, right and centre. One woman suggested it could be Eetha Gadda, a palm, and my heart sank because its stump did look very fat. But then other villagers said it wasn't possible. They think it's most likely Agave and their ancestors probably ate in the past, during drought.

I plan to do a behind-the-scenes vlog for the article to explain what all I have tried and what all you may take further. For starters, a reader from the US says something similar from Agave is eaten in Mexico. A reader from Iraq says this may belong to a palm tree but the stump isn't as fat.

I hope you and botanists will tell me more.

Good luck.

What does it mean to be "89% close to" Agave when it comes to DNA? Are we talking genetic similarity, or estimated likelihood of a match?

Considering that a human's genetic similarity to a cat is 90% and even to a banana is about 60%, 89% doesn't sound like all that much.

Interesting article. I also can’t imagine that it’s either sisal or Americana exactly, both are so tough & fibrous, and are in such widespread cultivation that this preparation would be more well-known. The agave heart or “piña” used for mezcal is somewhat similar but not that similar. Agaves very quickly grow some massive asparagus-shaped flower stalks before they die, is it possible this is the base of an enormous stalk rather than a stem? Never seen one this big but maybe it’s out there.

I also would not discount the possibility that these are not raw exactly but prepared/treated somehow. Obviously the fact that they taste like water limits the possibilities, but maybe a stem is placed in water for awhile to make it way more engorged than it would ever become naturally. Or maybe it’s soaked or boiled after harvesting, and flushed with clean water to improve the texture and reduce toxic effects. Raw agave contains calcium raphides, a painful irritant (experienced by another commenter upthread, btw) so some kind of preparation might be necessary.

I always love a good nerdy mystery story. Good luck on your search :)

We have the americana all over central Texas; the stalks that grow here are more like vertical rope, smell like death & are green/brown all the way through. They’re also segmented & don’t get nearly fat enough as shown.

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. Species names are conventionally written with the specific epithet entirely in lower case, like 'Genus species'. In the article, you have frequently capitalised the specific epithet. This is a small issue but made the article quite hard to read for a details-focused botanist such as myself.

Came to say the same about naming. Just want to add that after the first full naming, they should be shortened as 'G. specie', and not 'Specie' like they do.

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.

Have you looked into any processing steps between harvest and serving? I am curious if they are soaking/fermenting/acidifying it in some way which would account for the differences described from straight agave.

I Just looked up photos of agave sisalana and it actually has a palm like trunk/stem about the size of what is shown being served.

Whereas the agave americana doesn't and seems to grows it's leaves right out from the ground.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sisal

Edit: well I guess after looking further I shouldn't say agave americana doesn't have a trunk coming out of the ground. Probably all agaves could if they grow long enough. But it does look like this snack is the trunk of an agave.

where can we find your vlog?

But nobody knows which agave, and at least one botanist insists that neither of the 2 likely agave candidates are quite right. Maybe some special selectively-bred version?

It seems like we will get more answers after Covid when field research (eating parts of various agaves) can recommence.

Look at the wikipedia article for agave. The varied species are quite different from each other.

The whole business sounds very shady. It's likely that the plant is sourced from the side of roads, untended fields, forests, construction companies (selling anything they find for coffee money), etc. It's a completely black area, outside of food regulations, so they can't expose the actual source, no matter what.

This can also explain the confusing reports from multiple researchers, because academic "species" don't matter in places like this. The vendors simply sell what looks similar to what they used to sell.

It's Indian street food so I'd say what you describe is the optimistic scenario. Worst case it's an industrial product of sorts, produced backyard factories. South Asia has a huge variety of culinary plants and snacks, some of which are unknown even to locals, especially if it's a regional thing. But that no one would know and no one wants to talk about what it is, that's highly suspicious.

It's really sad, China and India have among the best food in the world but they also have among the worst food safety record. Almost anything can be faked or adulterated for profit, from cooking oil that makes people go blind to instant baby formula that kills the infants.

With multiple layers of middlemen, it's possible the vendors don't even know what the source is.

This would be thin margin, low volume business and usually these cart owners source all the raw materials directly.

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 mentioned in the article as a proposition to take over their business and as part of that asking them to show the source of the 'supply'.

This seems to be 'mysterious' because of the writing skill of the author.

While 'mysterious' is hard to quantify objectively, the thing is: it is not known for sure what it is yet widely available, sounds mysterious enough, right? Or is your point that it actualy is known, but the author doesn't happen to know?

it could have been easily found out by offering 10X-50X

What makes you so sure the author can easily come up with what you call an 'annual income perhaps', just to pursue some story?

Not if it’s actually toxic. In that case revealing the source could get them in serious trouble and wouldn’t be worth it at any price.

For a year's income the person involved could show them, get the money, and book it to a different part of the city where they'll be impossible to find again.

> impossible to find again

Except, apparently, for people who are offering

> a year's income

To informants

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.

If paying enough to incentivize vendors to share the secret works, and why wouldn’t it, how is that not a ”real” solution?

I’m not sure where you’re coming from in this discussion. Nobody is saying bribery won’t work in such situations.

But you do understand that the author is a journalist (1), and really just aiming to research for an article that presents some intriguing material, right? Not a roadside snacks competitor, with a large budget to spend on getting these sellers to exfiltrate supply chain intel.

(1) https://www.atlasobscura.com/users/mediabarkha?view=articles

I didn’t understand from the phrasing in your initial comment that you were saying ”yeah that could’ve worked, but it wouldn’t have been economically feasible for her to do that just for the sake of an article, so it’s not an actual solution in this context”. So I was genuinely wondering why you thought that wasn’t a real solution. Like you had philosophical objections to doing journalism in that way. But now I’m following.

Why would you not read the entirety of my comment, and miss the context behind “not a real solution”? If you reread it, you’ll see the the gist of it was the same as my follow-up.

Hah, I've lived in Bangalore for about ~20 years and I've never heard of this. Very fascinating.

YouTube Video of the mystery street vendors:

https://youtu.be/v7sn42heQ2w

Why do they keep saying "anybody can eat this"?

Technically the truth, anybody can eat this. They didn't say it's a good idea to do so ;)

I can't access this website on mobile. All I can see is a cookie banner that tries to force me to accept all cookies at once with a big unique "accept" button. There is an almost hidden link to a cookie policy page which itself has a small link to revoke consent which… does not work.

Seriously why would a website do that?

Is there a copy of the content I could read somewhere else that respect their readers?

Just install uBlock Origin and disable JavaScript by default. There's no other practical way to actually use the web on a mobile device these days.

For what it's worth it was a great and very entertaining article.

ublock on mobile? good luck installing extensions, since your only options are buggy slow Firefox or just days ago released updated Kiwi Browser

Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler would be proud.

I know the name, but what's the reference?

edit: ah wait, is it the thin slices?

Terry Pratchett.

that's the author, not the reference

I don't get it, rather than using the tools of botany and DNA analysis why not just pay a PI to follow the vendor -> supplier -> source trail?

>Probe them and they’ll cart away. “Forest officials in Maharashtra have tried to spy on them, but it was futile,” Dr. Nimbalkar recalls.

Thanks somehow I missed that. Incompetent reading!

Obviously we're not in possession of all the facts here but it sounds like incompetent spying to me. Much more difficult operations are carried out every single day.

They might not have had the amount of budget necessary to observe them from a drone for months

This and also botanists at universities can easily explain budget expenditures on DNA testing but not on hiring PIs.

A drone seems like overkill.

Perhaps they are getting bribes from the street vendors to look the other way, and that reduces they spying abilities.

SYAC summary: Street vendors thinly slice "tree trunks" to order, and tell similar impossible stories of where they source it. In the end, one confirms from photos it is a type of Agave plant and they paint it red.

meta: how can atlasobscura.com operate legally in Europe when the only cookie option is 'confirm'?

I have blocked the popup and I block third parties requests and I have only two cookies at the moment :

    ao_cookies_ok:0
    eu_origin:1

So it's not ok (the irremovable popup), but it could be worse.

I have installed the "I don't care about cookies" plug-in. All cookies are deleted when I close my browser.

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.

TBH there isn't even a domestic enforcement of cookie preferences, no one actually gives a damn it seems. Violations of handling personal data – fines do happen for that. Cookies – nope, you won't even get a notice.

In the same way popups saying "by continuing to view this site you consent to cookies" do? The user is informed and the cookie is(/should be) only set once they click a link / button / scroll past the initial view, which means they have taken an 'informed' action regarding cookies.

That conforms to the earlier EU cookie directive, but not to the GDPR. Under the GDPR, consent much be freely and explicitly given, and must be as easy to revoke as it is to give. Clicking a link or scrolling down is not explicit. Since use of the site is conditional on accepting the tracking, the consent isn't freely given. Since there is no button to reject the cookies, it is harder to reject the tracking than it is to accept.

Failing all three conditions for acquiring consent, my conclusion is that the site is blatantly violating the GDPR.

I have a hypothesis. What if this were agave root, but bathed/stored in something that broke down the cellulose. This would give a second reason they cut only an outside layer, in addition to being against the grain. Also it would explain the secrecy as the chemicals might be harmful.

seems like palm tree https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkSeFP5Jjt8

Palm tree heart is layered and fairly brittle, Even if you could slice it as thin as they sell the snack, it would just come apart.

The pictures in the article don't show that arrangement, it's more of a single fibrous block.

I've eaten plenty of fresh palm-tree heart, you either slice it thin it to eat raw or cook it in larger blocks, in say some curry.

yes, it is layered

Bhoochakara Gadda https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wTzOU-tt4U

Seems more likely. Texture and size seem to match the article.

Good find.

Doesn't the article debunk this in the first paragraphs?

  That night, I googled Bhoochakara Gadda. There wasn’t much. Wikipedia identified the scientific name of the plant as Maerua oblongifolia, but had no photos of it. Maerua oblongifolia is a low, woody, undershrub found in India, Pakistan, parts of Africa, and Saudi Arabia, whose tubers are sold as snacks and used as a stimulant in the ancient medicine system of Siddha, I read. Research papers showed its leaves and flowers but not the root. So I decided to dig in.
    
  I had a breakthrough a few months later when I came across a thesis paper by Dr. MS Rathore, who had propagated Maerua oblongifolia in the lab in 2011. He had seen the tree many times in the desert state of Rajasthan. “But I haven’t heard or seen anybody eating the root,” the scientist said over a call, sounding puzzled.
    
  “Its roots are sparse and inedible,” added Dr. NS Shekhawat, his thesis adviser and a retired professor of botany. “Growing in dry regions, where will it have so much water to develop big roots and be fat and juicy? [The snack] can’t be Maerua oblongifolia.”

Additionally, the plant in the video looks nothing like Maerua oblongifolia: http://inaturalist.org/taxa/505837-Maerua-oblongifolia

Oh, I've eaten this thing once while visiting Dongargarh, a Temple town located in central India.

It was the only time I had seen this thing. There were dozens of vendors selling this lined up on the stairs to the temple.

It seems the snack has gone popular now. It's quite tasteless, felt like eating soft wood.

Never expected to find this on Hackernews!

This snack has started appearing in Chennai as well. Pretty sure I have never seen it before 2-3 years here. I always was interested about the curiosity around it as a YouTube food reviewer asked some very specific questions and the vendor refused to answer.

Also pretty much everyone say it has no taste and only the lemon, salt and chili powder adds any taste but makes me wonder why it’s a profitable business if so.

I googled a little bit. There are many videos with comments about this snack.

As mentioned it could be Maerua oblongifolia Here is a scientific paper: https://www.ijcrt.org/papers/IJCRT1892916.pdf

Reminds me of the cameron apple that is a guava injected with red dye and flavored artificially.

Saw on Weird Explorer YT

That was a fascinating read on a snack I haven't yet tasted but now I want to try.

Could it be agave and other smaller plants shredded and pressed into this log shape?

It almost sounds similar to thennai kuruthu.. heart of coconut palm..

The answers from street vendors reminded me of the stories software salespeople will tell you about how the product was created.

Does anyone know how Agave is growing wild in India. I was under the assumption that agave is native to Americas.

Some Unflappable Agave Wisdom from Joey Santore , aka "Crime Pays but Botany Doesn't":

#41: Massive Flowers of Agave Shawii Ssp Goldmania

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueWGGnYlRCU&ab_channel=Crime...

>So anyway, here's that same habitat where I was filming scorpions last night, and here it is during the day time. [...]

>Let's take a look over here. This massive Agave. Which is basically just, uh, I don't know, 20 or 30 years worth of a plant manufacturing sugars. So that's about 30 years worth of sunlight put into a sugar form, which stays in the heart of that plant. They're, remember, most Agaves are monocarpic, so they flower once and then die, and it's because they take that massive amount of sugar, and put everything they got into these flowers up there, which produce tremendous amount of nectar, which are then pollinated by bees and bats. You can see the stamens up there.

>See the stamens have those anthers on 'em, those little banana shaped rads, with all the pollen. And then of course there's, for every flower, there's one central stigma, which is like the female part, it receives the pollen, so you have like six stamens and one stigma. And then when they're done, each one of those flowers turns into a tree lobed pod, which then has little tiny black flakey seeds in it. Each plant producing hundreds upon hundreds of seeds, only a few of which of course will form new plants.

>You can see there's quite a few others doin' their thing and bloomin' right now. You can also imagine fallin' on that will quite possibly kill you. This one, like I said, Agaves are monocarpic, but uh, they do send out, I don't know what the word of them would be, I just call 'em pups. But basically, just, ya know, little Mini-Me's that they send out on the sides, so that when the main plant flowers, the show is still not that completely over.

>See now this whole inflorescence is just alive with pollinators. It's buzzing. Imagine the amount of energy and carbohydrates needed to create a huge massive flowering stock like that. It's got to weight 150 pounds, easily. It's a 150 pound flower. Same with this one. And you can see it's already starting to shrivel 'cause its energy reserves start to diminish. If you just saw off all these leaves, you'd just have a massive, probably three or four hundred pound heart, composed almost entirely of carbohydrates.

#51: Annotated, Profanity-Laced Checklist of Desert Ultramafics

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhWLtKy8kYY&ab_channel=Crime...

>Now a quick introduction to what's called analtramafic, ultramafic soils, are almost always associated with subduction zones. They're also known as serpentine soils. And, uh, they're often very barren of plant life, being to the fact that they're toxic to most plants. That is, they have minerals like nickel, magnesium, and and excess amounts of iron, while also lacking essential plant nutrients such as calcium and nitrogen. So many plants have a hard time growin' in them, but many other plants have adapted to them. That's not to say that they necessarily thrive in them, but they're able to tolerate the soil chemistry. [...]

>But look at this nice Agave Vizcainoensis. Another endemic to the region. Look at that thick cuticle it's got in it. You can almost see it. Look at those pores. Look at that nice thick cuticle. Oh, what a beautiful plant. I love this guy.

#74: Sassy Bastards of the Last Chance Range b/w Agave Utahensis Var Eborispina

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5yViQeLpPM&ab_channel=Crime...

>Now here is somethin' that's real nice. I think you probably will like it a lot. This is a species of Agave known only from the limestone soils in Southwestern Nevada, and a little bit into Eastern California, right here on the Nevada border. This is Agave Utahensis variety Eborispinus. And here's one about two weeks shy of flowering. You can see that flower spike just came up. Now that flower, of course, will open, it will get pollenated by a variety of different bees, and perhaps some bats as well, and then it will die. But you can see it's already got another offset comin' up that will survive, and then will probably flower a couple years later down the line.

>Now the reason this is called variety Eborispina is pretty obvious when you get up close and you look at these rosetta leaf blades, which, uh, I mean, is kinda just sayin' "Leave Me Alone!" You can see the tips of these leaf blades are about six inches long, probably, seven inches in some case. A very sharp, very hard, very easy to dissuade any potential herbivores or jack asses like myself from puttin' my hand right there at the base of this large flowering shoot, the peduncle. Now look at those spines. And again, this only grows on calcium carbonate soils, on the limestone. There's three different species in this genus: Nevadensis, Utahensis, and Eborispina. There might be one more. Utahensis is the name of the species. Might not be the name of the subspecies. It's either subspecies or variety. I don't know. Don't matter. Either way: What a fuck'n remarkable plant! [...]

>These things are nice too. These peduncles, these big peduncles, 'cause you can, uh, when it's done, they're woody, you can cut them off, and, uh, beat your friends with them, etcetera.

#154: Cat-calling Milkweds, Tracking Hippies, & Consoling Grandpas

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KefiIdZR7Ck&ab_channel=Crime...

>Obsolete Racist Grandpa Trigger Warning

>Kinda glandular, too. A little bit, uh, little bit frilly, ehe? Look at those big-ass brachs. On the back of the flowers, too, huh? Like on this guy, you know? It's so nice. Doesn't that make you feel good? Doesn't that make you feel better? Maybe all those crazy white boys that are going shootin' up malls and shit, you know? Too bad they didn't know about botany, you know? Could have just calmed them right down, you know. Maybe they just should have just studied plant science a little better, some shit. You know? 'Cause it really, it's like the tissue paper that wipes the ass. You know, it gets rid of all the shit stain of modern society and civilization, huh? 'Cause you know, it's not a pretty world out there, folks, at least if you're looking at the human world. Kinda makes me wanna die. But then you just got look at that, uh, something like that monotropa, you feel a little bit better, huh? So you got much more music forest over here, and then here you got a royal like halis slope, then you got a, what seems to be an Agave Parryi. Certainly one of the Agaves. It is producing pups. So that when a, you know, the mother plant dies, you know, it's monocarpic so they die after flowering, it just sends out other pups.

https://www.chicagomag.com/city-life/august-2019/joey-santor...

>Meet the “Misanthropic Chicago Italian” Who Charmed Twitter. The self-taught botanist sounds off on going viral, preserving the natural world, and the story behind that accent.

Quite Interesting!

TL;DR; it's agave.

I was hoping it was a byproduct of recycling waste. Mystery creates buzz. The danger of a mystery food is part of why hot dogs and food cart food as a whole are popular.

What? Who eats hotdogs and food carts because of the mystery? I eat hot dogs cause they are fast, cheap, and delicious tubes of fatty salty meat. I eat food cart food cause it's just fucking delicious. I don't know the exact spec, but the Halal meat-on-a-spit is almost always lamb and beef doner kebab. The sauce is mostly yogurt, mayo, dill and oregano. I make my own sometimes.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doner_kebab

People eat hot dogs for the danger and mystery. Hmm.

Here is a fun filled article about the history of the hot dog. The time of "The Jungle" and mystery meat reminded me of the hidden origins of the plant in the original story: https://www.thehotdog.org/history-of-the-hot-dog/

> Wikipedia identified the scientific name of the plant as Maerua oblongifolia, but had no photos of it.

How about this photo?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maerua_oblongifolia#/media/Fil...

In this Wikipedia article

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maerua_oblongifolia

Maerua oblongifolia (syn. Maerua arenaria, Niebhuria arenaria) is a low woody bushy under-shrub sometimes scandent to 2–3 meters high, with a thick root stock and thick leaves, and strongly scented flowers, occurring in India, Pakistan, Africa and Saudi Arabia. In Telugu this plant is called by name Bhoochakra gadda (In Telangana) and Bhoochakra dumpa (In Andhra). In Tamil this plant is called by name Poomicchakkarai Kizhangu (பூமிச் சர்க்கரைக் கிழங்கு). This is a tuber that naturally grows in areas closer to fountains, especially in hills. Tribes and others collect the tubers, which are sold as a quick street food, in many Indian cities and towns.

There is literally a Doubt section there, the page isn't well-cited on the food bit.

What do you make of this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlwOrdciEX8

and this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7sn42heQ2w

Have you ever been to the Champavat region of Uttarakhand?

The first video shows the leaves of some kind of shrub, with no evidence to link it to the thick, fleshy stem to that plant.

The second video shows a food market selling the snack and displaying a web page printout about Maerua oblongifolia. Also not evidence.

Clearly you did not read the article. The food vendors claim it is Maerua oblongifolia. The whole point is that it cannot possibly be, as Maerua does not have fleshy, edible roots or trunks, and DNA testing points to a different botanical family.

Wikipedia is not a credible source here.

Interesting; don't speak the language but the first video showa a plant, and then a root/stem, without a link bewteen the two (i.e. harvesting). And the second shows just the stem. So still could go both ways?

“The mysterious <common thing> that has baffled <expert professionals> for <inordinate amount of time>”

— Click bait sub editor

Yeah, the headline certainly follows the clickbait tropes. But in this case, it appears to be legit - experts actually don't know and the vendors keep it a closely guarded secret.

It kills me that every researcher the writer contacted has never actually seen the plant or bothered to go look for it, including the guy that studied agave!

that's academia for you. lots of book smarts, useless at street smarts.

It's not a question of the competency of academics.

> So why is there still doubt about the identity of this snack? “Which species of agave is it—Sisalana or Americana or any other?” Dr. Shimpale says. “We can’t conclude until the vendors show the plant to us. They keep this as a business secret to create curiosity around it.”

The vendors won't give them access to the source, so the academics can't practice their botany.

According to the article, the vendors might not know the full story, since they get it from distributors.

I'm not sure what your point is; the title is an entirely accurate summary of the content of the article.

I didn't read the article because it looked like click bait.

I thought it was interesting. Who knew that Indian street food was wrapped in so much mystery?

> I'm not sure what your point is; the title is an entirely accurate summary of the content of the article.

You may not have seen this before, but that doesn't mean it is "mysterious".

Do you find Coke or KFC "mysterious"? Those are snack foods with trade secret recipes. Your story is about something similar.

A simple google search will take you to this youtube video, posted in 2015. Read the comments to dispel the "mystery".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dck923eejQA

The comments don't mention anything that isn't in the article.

A lot of "baffled scientists for decades" is more that the scientists know about it but have never taken time to look as there are other things to do. It is a ridiculous spin.

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.

> Except, as mentioned in the article, they _did_ look into it, to the extent of DNA testing it!

What do your experts make of this wikipedia article?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maerua_oblongifolia

Well, the experts which were consulted by the writer of the article have this to say:

> I had a breakthrough a few months later when I came across a thesis paper by Dr. MS Rathore, who had propagated Maerua oblongifolia in the lab in 2011. He had seen the tree many times in the desert state of Rajasthan. “But I haven’t heard or seen anybody eating the root,” the scientist said over a call, sounding puzzled.

> “Its roots are sparse and inedible,” added Dr. NS Shekhawat, his thesis adviser and a retired professor of botany. “Growing in dry regions, where will it have so much water to develop big roots and be fat and juicy? [The snack] can’t be Maerua oblongifolia.”

Which seems to provide a little bit of a counterpoint.

If you read 4 paragraphs into that article, you will find out

Try harder and follow the links

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlwOrdciEX8

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."

It's _extremely_ weird that there is a commonly sold food, and no-one can figure out what it is. In particular, the vendors are unwilling to talk about it, and where pushed vaguely claim it's an agave, but the agave expert says it's not (of course, maybe he's wrong).

The whole thing is fascinating. It's a low-stakes mystery, but a mystery all the same.

Based on the comment about

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raphide in agave can be toxic. And the fact that it is only sold in paper thin strips. My guess is the vendors are aware that it is poison but in those parts of the world life is cheap and money is hard to come by. So they just ignore this and carry on selling it. Anyone asking might be there investigating the cause of some of their health issues.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com