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Juliana Paiva

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Hi, I'm sure this will be a dificult one, but I researched and didn't find a answer. I'm from Belém a city located in the Amazon Forest area and we have some very specific ingredients that I'd like to know if is alowed in whole 30.

Both are from cassava, one you probably know and it's tapioca flour, we put the flour in a hot pan and this get together and this turn into a disk like that could seems like a flexible taco shell (just trying put in words here), we call this tapioca and we eat with all kind of ingredients, chiken, butter, fruits, coconut... Here we can buy tapioca direct from small producers, all natural.

The other ingredient is tucupi, a yellow (pretty and delicious) liquid extracted from bitter cassava and used as a sauce, a soup or a broth in the regional cuisine in my city, As tapioca we can buy tucupi direct from producer, nothing added.  We have others  ingredients extracted from cassava: Farinha de tapioca  (like pearls of tapioca) and Goma de tapioca (tapioca flour diluted in water, the gummy transparent liquid in the photo), but they come all from the tapioca flour. I added some photos to help.

Can I have these cassava products?

 

Thank you so much!

 

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You can use tapioca flour to thicken sauces or stews or to coat meat, but the little tortilla-like rounds would be off limits, just like any other bread or bread-like item. No making pudding-like dishes either.

The tucupi liquid I'm not sure I've ever seen addressed here in the forums before. I'm going to say it sounds okay, as long as it's not being sweetened or prepared with any off-plan ingredients.

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9 hours ago, ShannonM816 said:

You can use tapioca flour to thicken sauces or stews or to coat meat, but the little tortilla-like rounds would be off limits, just like any other bread or bread-like item. No making pudding-like dishes either.

Okay, this one I don't get. This isn't a faux tortilla that was made compliant. It's its own thing, a traditional food already made of compliant ingredients. There's no danger it will tempt or lead you to something else.

It's similar to questions I have about other non-Western foods that Whole30 might disallow -- like the Ethiopian kabalagala, which would probably also be forbidden because it's pancake-like or pastry-like. But this is a traditional food (often made with compliant ingredients) that is not trying to be anything else.

Seems to me issues of SWYPO don't apply. Mightn't some allowance be made in such cases?

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The rules are clear that tortillas and their look alike counterparts are not allowed... that said, each adult is going to make a private decision on their own Whole30 as to what they're going to do with traditional cuisine based on what they'd like to get out of the program. We're not asking people to give up their traditional cuisine forever, just think outside the box and give the program 30 days.

We aren't going to go to the Amazon and police whether people are eating this item, but the rules are firm... much like how Melissa herself even says the no vanilla extract (alcohol) rule is kind of silly, it's still in there because we need hard and fast rules that apply to everyone and everything.  

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*Shrug.* What this is telling me is that the rules will have to evolve as Whole30 expands further out into the world. Whole30 was formed largely as a response to the Standard American Diet, and some of its rules are therefore parochial to this culture -- but SAD is not the way most of the world eats. So issues like this will keep cropping up the more Whole30 goes international, and the guidelines will have to be more adaptable if Whole30 is to thrive. My $.02.

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Thanks everyone who answered my question. I know The rule about food that try To mimetize junk food, I just asked this because here in my city we don't use to eat mexican food and tapioca isn't a tortilla-like for us, native indian people did it since ever, in fact I never ate a tortilla, I just know what it is, this kind of food isn't very popular here. And this was a doubt we here disscussed a lot about, we dicided don't eat, but this keeping coming around because is just hot tapioca flour, is something health around here. Just cultural diferences. Thanks again

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 8/17/2016 at 8:13 PM, QuilterInVA said:

It is still a bread like product and not allowed. In the picture you have put stuff inside taco like.

I am not trying to create any problems here, I'm just about to share my own opinion.

I am also from Brazil and doing the Whole30, and even though tapioca flour is allowed I have personally decided to not eat the tapioca that looks like a tortilla. But I have to disagree that this is a bread like product or stuffed like a taco, and the reason I say that is: people that started eating that (hundreds of years ago - maybe thousands) never ever had bread or taco. If you go to native tribes in Brazil (the ones that don't usually have contact with western culture at all), tapioca and fish are the main food. As much as it looks like tortillas or tacos, tapioca is unique, I have lived in the US for a couple of years and not for a single moment while I ate a taco or burrito, I thought about tapioca and vice versa. The taste is different, the texture is waaaaaaay different, the feeling I have when I eat them (while eating and after) is different. I understand that for Americans the stuffed tapioca could be a bread like product or even resemble a taco, but for us Brazilians it is not. That's my opinion, and I think it sounds reasonable. However I have decided to not eat them, just for the sake of it, and if I have decided to have them, I would be ok with that.

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6 hours ago, Lara Secchin said:

I am not trying to create any problems here, I'm just about to share my own opinion.

I am also from Brazil and doing the Whole30, and even though tapioca flour is allowed I have personally decided to not eat the tapioca that looks like a tortilla. But I have to disagree that this is a bread like product or stuffed like a taco, and the reason I say that is: people that started eating that (hundreds of years ago - maybe thousands) never ever had bread or taco. If you go to native tribes in Brazil (the ones that don't usually have contact with western culture at all), tapioca and fish are the main food. As much as it looks like tortillas or tacos, tapioca is unique, I have lived in the US for a couple of years and not for a single moment while I ate a taco or burrito, I thought about tapioca and vice versa. The taste is different, the texture is waaaaaaay different, the feeling I have when I eat them (while eating and after) is different. I understand that for Americans the stuffed tapioca could be a bread like product or even resemble a taco, but for us Brazilians it is not. That's my opinion, and I think it sounds reasonable. However I have decided to not eat them, just for the sake of it, and if I have decided to have them, I would be ok with that.

My opinion is just like yours. I don't eat mexican food and tapioca is far from beeing a tortilla-like food for me, but I didn't eat during my whole30, just because I was triying  something new. Now I finished it, I understand all the proposal behind avoid paleo hacks and, in my opinion, I don't think tapioca would Be a hack. As I said before, is just cultural diferences, the whole 30 community is growing so fast, is reaching people around the world and I think could Be the time To think about these diferences. 

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  • 4 months later...

I read this thread and was curious to how tapioca flour was made and found the link below an interesting read. Basically the process of turning the cassava into flour or pearls strips it of all its nutrients much like how grains are. So at the end of the day with the tortillas you would be eating something little nutritional value which kinda defeats the point.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/draxe.com/tapioca-flour/amp/?client=safari

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