The bag of Baked! Lay’s Naturally Baked Potato Chips (what would be Unnaturally baked?) I bought today lists Modified Food Starch as its third ingredient. A couple of questions about that:
- Modified from what?
- What is meant by food? That’s a vague word in this context.
Modified food starch is a starch that has been treated physically or chemically to modify one or more of its physical or chemical properties. The ‘starch’ could be from corn, wheat, potato, rice or tapioca–it depends on the manufacturer.
Next question: what the hell is tapioca? According to Yahoo!:
Tapioca is basically a root starch derived from the cassava, or yuca plant. It’s often used to thicken soups and sweeten the flavor of baked goods, and it makes a dandy pudding.
This is never going to end: what’s a cassava, or yuca plant? I found information and a picture of it; nothing special except the Bitter Cassava variety is toxic if eaten raw.
Thus ends today’s food research.