We were recently invited to a friend’s house for new year’s day. I had just been experimenting with sweet potato greens as a salad, and had decided to bring a fresh salad direct, with love, from our garden. We had a bit of cassava root lying around and I thought it would be good to chop it up into small pieces to provide an accent and texture. I peeled the root, then cut it up into tiny pieces (~2 cm). I tasted one, to be sure of it’s flavor. It had a light sweetness to it, which I thought was delightful. I wanted to share it with Matt, so I gave him a small piece too. “Eat it!” I said. “What is it?” he said. “Just eat it!” And he did.
I was so excited about the flavor. Surely, all the clever recipes would be online. I went to the device and looked up “raw cassava root food.” I think the top result was “even ONE bite of the uncooked CASSAVA root can be fatal.” The following results also spurred fear and terrible thoughts….
Matt and I were frantic. So far, we learned cassava has a defense mechanism (a toxin) which can give a person cyanide poisoning if ingested. I tried to vomit, but couldn’t. I called Kaiser and Matt called Rosa. Kaiser was unwilling to offer advice, since the nurses are not licensed in Belize, but they gave me the number for poison control. Rosa had never heard of anyone dying from eating cassava, but she gave Matt the number to the Hospital. He called the hospital and I called poison control. (I continued to try to vomit during this time, but could not)
The hospital also, had never heard of such a thing. Poison control must have had slightly better internet skills, or resources than I, as they told me the toxicity level was very low. She thought it was unlikely that we would get sick. I wasn’t so sure. “If we do get poisoned, how quickly will it happen?” I asked. “2-7 hours,” she said, “but on average 2.5 hours.”
“Go to the emergency room if you start vomiting or feel sick, and they can keep you comfortable,” she said. Oh great, we all know what ‘keep you comfortable’ means, I thought; we’re going to die. Matt was glaring at me with impassioned eyes, “Ask if there is an antidote!” he said. “Genius!” I thought.
She said there is an antidote. If available, it could prevent the toxin from taking over. She encouraged me to go to the nearest pharmacy and get some purified charcoal, which could help counteract the poison... I tried to explain that we were in the jungle in Belize, but sometimes that’s hard to get across. I guess she understood that I was crazy when I asked if I could eat charcoal out of my yard. In any case, she did help a lot. I thanked her and got off the phone.
Matt and I agreed that we should check with Sandfly, so he paddled up to the front in the dark and asked him. He was back home quickly, running to the door. “SF said that no, this is not the kind that has poison. ‘People eat it raw sometimes, just like hicama… No, we have the nice one’” he said.
He felt considerably better, but it took quite a bit longer (and more online research) for me to chill out. I’m still a bit anxious about it all. I mean we both were living with the reality that we may have eaten something described online as “highly toxic and fatal.”
While I was fairly confident that we wouldn't be dying soon, I still felt inclined to stay awake to 3:30am to pass the 2-7 hour window, but I only made it to 12:30. (4 hours from the incident – and 1.5 hours past the average reaction time of 2.5 hours) It was New Year's Eve and we were happy to be alive.
I was even more happy when I woke up alive, and when Matt did too. Tetra slept through the whole thing, so until she can read this blog, she’ll be oblivious to our 'near death' experience.
OH - some other things we learned
- all varieties contain the toxin
- the bitter varieties contain more toxin than the sweet
- the sweet variety is the one that is normally cultivated and sold
- the toxin is more concentrated in the skin of the root and the leaf
- the toxin, when mixed with stomach juice turns into cyanide
- cyanide poisoning is pretty brutal
- all sorts of other fruits, veggies and seeds can poison you too… if you eat enough of them
- it’s safer to cook the cassava before eating it
- some children have been prescribed raw cassava juice over number of days to fight a rare life-threatening bacterial infection
 |
| I decided not to add the raw cassava to the salad. |
