On Friday, May 28, 2021 at 2:46:51 PM UTC-4, wolfy's new skateboard wrote:
> ..nt
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taro
>
> United States
>
> Taro leaf-stems (petioles) for sale at a market in California, 2009
> Taro has been grown for centuries in the United States, though it has
> never attained the same popularity as in Asian and Pacific nations.
> William Bartram observed South Carolina Sea Islands residents eating
> roasted roots of the plant, which they called tanya, in 1791, and by the
> 19th century it was common as a food crop from Charleston to
> Louisiana.[82] In the 1920s, dasheen[nb 1], as it was known, was highly
> touted by the Secretary of the Florida Department of Agriculture as a
> valuable crop for growth in muck fields.[84] Fellsmere, Florida, near
> the east coast, was a farming area deemed perfect for growing dasheen.
> It was used in place of potatoes and dried to make flour. Dasheen flour
> was said to make excellent pancakes when mixed with wheat flour. Since
> the late 20th century, taro chips have been available in many
> supermarkets and natural food stores, and taro is often used in American
> Chinatowns, in Chinese cuisine.

Yet it never seemed to catch on the way corn, wheat, potatoes, and rice have.

In the Darwinian pressures of starch selection, it was far from "the fittest".

If you eat meat and vegetables, you don't need taro as a "superfood". It
doesn't even have that much fiber. Poi has a paltry 1 gram per cup.

Cindy Hamilton