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Yes.  But.  “Two cassava roots contain...” and a deep-fried ball or two are two very different measures.  Also, I’m with the vendor on this, deep-fried is “well cooked.” Of course, then she popped a couple and got sick too.  So we’ve either got severely mutant cassava here or there’s more to this story than meets the eye.

I’d check for pesticides before I’d jump right on blaming the vendor or even the poor cassava root.

You’re both right—and ‘mouse, I didn’t mean to imply that the vendor was at fault.  Considering what I know (admittedly, very little) about cyanosis and pesticide poisoning, the symptoms of the kids and the vendor do sound more consistent with pesticides than with improperly cooked cassava.  It’s just too soon to tell.

Nevertheless, I stand by my original two points:  1.  Until today, I didn’t know that cassava had to be thoroughly cooked to remove its toxicity, and 2.  I wish I had learned this another way than by reading a story about the death of dozens of children.

And I didn’t mean to imply that you had so implied.  It was the linked CNN story that had that flavor.

Funny tho.  In the nature of strange coincidences, what I learned about cyanide (last night reading a murder mystery that may or may not be accurate) is that the ability to smell cynanide is a recessive trait that about 1/3 of women have and almost no men have.  Supposed to smell of bitter almonds to those who can smell it.

It is very strange that the Bakerina didn’t know about cassava/tapioca toxicity before.  But since you know so much other important stuff, you’re forgiven. 

Is it really insensitive of me to now be craving some nice warm tapioca made with my new, homemade vanilla extract?

Ahhhh...Anna and Tvindy have taken the conversation in a direction with which I have a vague familiarity.  I did know that the inner kernels of stone fruits were toxic in quantity.  What I’ve always found interesting is that in my British cookbooks, the cook is frequently encouraged to extract a few kernels from, say, apricots, and pop them into the jam kettle, but my American cookbooks, for the most part, discourage this vigorously.  Jeanne Lesem, in Preserving in Today’s Kitchen, calls the kernel advice “extremely dangerous” and says that the reason Native Americans were able to eat them without incident was because they were able to denature the poison by cooking them.  But I have fairly recent cookbooks from the UK that still recommend the use of kernels, saying that the small amount required in a recipe wouldn’t be enough to cause cyanide poisoning.

One thing that I have always found interesting is that about (I think) six or seven years ago, the New York Times food section ran an article about the use of apricot kernels in confectionery.  The writer basically presented both points of view, then ran a recipe from Lindsey Shere, the pastry chef at Chez Panisse, for bitter almond ice cream, which called for a lot of kernels.  I would have thought that this would be the kind of treatment (grinding the nuts and infusing them in cream) that would release a lot of cyanide, but apparently the ice cream is just rich and bitter enough that very small portions will suffice—and, as a rule, children don’t like the bitter flavor.  I’ll admit that I’m fascinated by this recipe, but I haven’t made the leap to trying it yet, partly out of fear but mostly out of laziness—you have to crack a lot of apricot stones for this, and I can think of better ways to expend that kind of effort. 

Yikes.  Thanks, Santos.  Of course, I’m glad that this is not a matter of bad cassava handling, but the whole question of how the pesticide got in the cassava—how it got in the frying pan—makes the whole event even more horrible.  God.