Tapioca pearl
By adding different ingredients, like water, sugar, or some other type of sweetener like honey, tapioca pearls can be made to vary in color and in texture.
The introduction of cassava from South America during the colonial era added another starch source to Southeast Asian cuisine, resulting in cassava-based versions of Southeast Asian dishes that were formerly made from native starch sources.
In Chinese, the word boba (波霸) is a slang expression for "big breasts" or "buxom lady".
McDonald's restaurants in Germany and Austria were temporarily selling the dessert beverage as part of their revamped McCafé menu in 2012.
Another method is to feed the moist flour into open cylindrical pans, which rotate for a certain amount of time and at a specific speed to form the pearls.
While the pearls are heated over a moderate fire, it is stirred continuously with large forks to prevent burning.
When this hand-baking process is applied to manufacture pearls, irregularly shaped beads may be obtained, inferior in color and in other qualities.
[citation needed] In addition to the shorter cooking time, another benefit of partially cooked tapioca is that it lasts longer, with a shelf life of 8 months compared with the shelf life of 6 months for raw tapioca.
Then, if they're to be used as something sweet, such as in bubble tea or as a dessert topping, the tapioca pearls are soaked in a sugar solution for ten minutes.
The tables below list permitted additives in tapioca pearl products regulated under different regions.
[25] German researchers from University Hospital Aachen tested the tapioca pearls from an unnamed Taiwanese chain.
Chemicals found included styrene, acetophenone, and brominated substances, which were not permitted as food additives.
[27][28] But the German reports did not specify the amount of substances they found in the tapioca pearls, and were not published in peer-reviewed medical or scientific journals.
[30] DEHP, a type of phthalates, was reportedly found in concentrated juice beverages, tea drinks, and other food supplements.
This low cost substance had replaced regular food additives, which would normally be an emulsifier for the contents inside the drinks to generate a more attractive and natural appearance.
Over-consumption of phthalates can lead to very serious negative health effects such as endocrine disruption, malformation of reproductive organs, infertility and abnormal neurodevelopment.
[33] In 2013, the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority of Singapore recalled tapioca pearls from bubble tea shops after 11 kinds of Taiwanese starch additives that contained maleic acid were discovered.
An experiment done on dogs and rats also found kidney and liver damage when they were given daily doses of maleic acid for two years.
[35] In June 2019, there was a case where a 14-year-old girl from China was admitted to the hospital after she described her stomach pain and constipation.
After Dr. Zhang Louzhen, from the Zhuji People's Hospital, gave her a CT scan, he saw over one hundred small, grey spheres sitting in parts of her abdomen.
[36] The starch that tapioca pearls are made of, in combination of thickeners and other additives, when consumed in large amounts may lead to bowel obstruction.
