Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/05/22/these-people-on-a-remote-japan.html
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In Finland, wild mushroom and berry gathering is a huge part of the culture. People are very protective of their “special” secret spots. There is a 5 point rating system for the mushrooms to rank flavour and toxicity. One particular variety has 5/5 flavour AND 5/5 toxicity. You have to boil them twice, for a certain amount of time, with different water. After that, I’m told, they are perfectly safe to eat! 
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In the country where I grew up people have long been picking, drying, and smoking the leaves of the poisonous tobacco plant which evolved a poison that acts as an insecticide and in large doses can be fatal to any animal.
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In Japan they also make laquer from tree sap that has the same highly alergenic substance as poison oak and poison ivy. From the wiki:
"The sap of the lacquer tree, today bearing the technical description of “urushiol-based lacquer,” has traditionally been used in Japan. As the substance is poisonous to the touch until it dries, the creation of lacquerware has long been practiced only by skilled dedicated artisans. "
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I read an Oliver Sacks book years ago about a neurodegenerative paralysis endemic on Guam. It was connected to their similar consumption of the cycad plant. The afflicted were very much like his patients in ‘Awakenings’. The other story in the book, about the Island of the Colorblind is equally fascintating.
[removing link because it turned out to be to a bad company - and not the Paul Rodgers kind]
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There’s also the arctic shark which is also poisonous and has to be cured for a certain amount of time to let the toxic compounds break down and leave the processed carcass. I’d be curious to try it but i understand it tastes very rough.
As far as the Cycad plant goes the story why the Japanese island people were persistent in figuring out how to eat it makes sense. It was an abundant local plant and they were desperate, it is heartwarming that they were able to safely eat it and survive off it against all odds. Seeing them talk about the plant in such high regard makes me happy, i really like how the Japanese folk tend to have a very close relationship to the nature around them.
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Cool video, but one of the world’s major sources of calories, cassava (aka tapioca, mandioca, manioc, yuca, etc.), is similarly poisonous if not prepared correctly. Raw, it’s full of cyanogenic glycosides. People die every year from mis-prepared cassava.
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There’s also sweet yuca and bitter yuca varieties. The sweet type is the one most people typically find in stores, just peeling it removes most of the toxic parts of the root but the bitter variety needs to be processed a particular way to make it safe to eat. Being from Venezuela unfortunately with the social/political situation there many people have been attempting to eat the bitter yuca out of desperation without knowing what they need to do to render it safe (or eating it without realizing its the wrong variety)
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Even ordinary cooking right here in the states regularly uses a food that is poisonous unless prepared right, and is bought from grocery stores that way: dried kidney beans.
From the wiki:
Raw kidney beans contain relatively high amounts of phytohemagglutinin, and thus are more toxic than most other bean varieties if not pre-soaked and subsequently heated to the boiling point for at least 10 minutes. The US Food and Drug Administration recommends boiling for 30 minutes to ensure they reach a sufficient temperature long enough to completely destroy the toxin.[2] Cooking at the lower temperature of 80 °C (176 °F), such as in a slow cooker, can increase this danger and raise the toxin concentration up to fivefold.[3] Canned red kidney beans, though, are safe to use immediately.
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Green potatoes can also be bad business for people to consume, typically this isn’t an issue as no one would eat a green potato but if slightly green it wont do major harm.
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I am reminded of this passage from John Brunner’s dystopian 1972 novel The Sheep Look Up:
“—and the unlikelihood of anyone stumbling on it by accident, it’s always struck me as one of the clearest proofs of supernal intervention in the affairs of primitive mankind,” Mr. Bamberley declaimed. “Here’s no comparative triviality like oxalic acid, but the deadliest of poisons, cyanide! Yet for centuries people have relied on cassava as a staple diet, and survived, and indeed flourished! Isn’t it marvelous when you think of it like that?”
Maybe. Except I don’t think of it like that. I picture desperate men struggling on the verge of starvation, trying everything that occurs to them in the faint hope that the next person who samples this strange plant won’t drop dead.
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Ha, you’d think so, but I had a hard time convincing a friend not to cook the potatoes she’d left on the counter that had turned green. Maybe not lethal, but still…
I’d put the spoiled green potatoes in a slightly different class than the foods that are routinely eaten by preparing them a special way to reduce or eliminate poison, though.
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It’s poisonous unless it is properly prepared by drying and fermenting it.
You mean like a lot of foods, like cashews?
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I’ve always wondered how older civilizations did their trial and error on potential new food sources, sometimes the method to make something edible (or to make a medicine) is so incredibly specific that its a marvel someone figured it out.
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What I want to know is who decided that treating olives with poison made them safe to eat. How many different poisons did they have to try before settling on lye? 
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It really is remarkable to be out in the country seeing someone prepare cassava the traditional way, with rustic equipment. There are a lot of steps in the process, grating, boiling, fermenting, drying… It is very far from a crop one can pick and put directly in one’s mouth, like apples, or even throw in a sack like beans. One asks oneself why grow this thing?
And then one sees the farmer chop off a hunk of the stalk, stick it back in the ground, and say “There, done planting.” I can’t do that with my apple trees.
So maybe they developed a difficult method of processing (and a consequent million ways to eat it) because it’s so easy to grow.
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That’s an extremely shady site to refer people to. It tries to lure you into verifying a ‘free’ account with credit card data. Thanks but no thanks 
edit. changed the dangerous link to preven people accidentally clicking it.
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Yeah from one of the sources i found online on yuca it says that the plant is very hardy, extremely low maintenance, and highly pest resistant so the initial part is very low effort with most of the work coming in after harvest when typically for other crops its the other way around. But putting most of the work in processing seems better than toiling away at a field.
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A lot of sourpusses today!
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Yikes! Sorry about that. It was just the first result that I found that had a synopsis of the book. I should’ve done more homework, I guess.
Here’s a wikipedia link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Island_of_the_Colorblind
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