There´s reocurring joke that 6 guys died trying to find when to eat a venomous fish that needs 7 days to cook, In Brazil ppl eat mandioca leaves, also 7 days, how the hell folk back then decided they needed to eat that and how they came to the number of DAYS needed to cook that thing clearly unfit for human consumption?
In: 5
In most cases, these things work on a sliding scale. Cooking something for a short amount of time will destroy some of the toxins, and cooking it for longer will destroy all of them. So the joke is (shockingly) not scientifically accurate in the sense that it implies that the fish is fine if cooked for 7 days but incredibly deadly if cooked for 6. The people who ate it too early would maybe get sick but not necessarily die. It then doesn’t take much genius to think that maybe they should cook it for longer next time.
And for what it’s worth, I’m skeptical of these extremely long cook times. Most common ways of processing mandioca/cassava take a day or two, if that, and these are much gentler than just boiling it.
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