I recently have been reading of the benefits of resistant starch. I noted that tapioca was not on any of the lists I came across reporting good sources for resistant starch (potato, beans. banana, grains). Looking further I found that tapioca is a base from which resistant starch is being made, specifically Actistar by Cargill. In other words tapioca is being modified in order to make it resistant. This then leads me to believe that unmodified tapioca is not high in resistant starch, otherwise why the need to modify it??? Hmmm….now my curiosity is piqued!
So I started reading about tapioca in general and I didn’t find any mention of tapioca having a high proportion of resistant starch or having beneficial effects as a prebiotic. Instead I found it described as a rapidly digested starch.
Next I hit pubmed and the few studies I found that evaluated the pre cecal digestion of tapioca reported pre cecal digestion of tapioca at 99%. In other word very little made it to the colon undigested. The only study I found in which a significant portion was presented to the colon unchanged was when raw tapioca was fed. But of course the tapioca in kibble has been cooked.
So now I’m frustrated as I can not find one shred of evidence to support the idea that tapioca is nearly 50% resistant starch. Does anyone have any???
