Boba: more than tapioca beads

Boba debuted in Taiwan in 1983. Apparently tea shops did a great after-school business there, and some entrepreneurs began adding fruit to the tea. Kids loved it; they called it "bubble tea" because bubbles formed when it was shaken. A tea-seller named Liu Han-Chien added the large tapioca beads and boba was born.

From Taiwan, boba spread to Hong Kong, the Philippines, Hawaii, and North America: Canada, Southern California, and on and on. It took its name from its appearance: bubbles=boba. Bubble-tea, black pearls, momi tea, or nai cha . . . it goes by many names. More than one site claims that boba is Mandarin for nipple, which may sound more enticing in that language than it does in English. Other sites claim the "nipple" allusion is actually to the texture and size of the tapioca bead.

At $3 or $4 a shot, what are you getting? After all, for the same price you could pump yourself up with a heavy-duty caffeine buzz from Starbucks. What's in a boba?

The drink usually starts with green tea, infused with added flavors, sweetener, cream or milk, and the tapioca beads. Instead of tea, coffee or juice can be used.

Boba beads are made up of sweet potatoes, cassava roots, and brown sugar--it's the last ingredient that gives boba beads their dark color. There is a white or translucent version made of caramel, starch and chamomile root extract.

Suppliers claim that it's easy to prepare: if you can cook pasta, you can make boba with their ingredients. Beads are boiled in water then soaked in a sugar solution, and a batch of beads lasts about 4 hours.

It's the cassava (in the dark beads) that really caught my eye. Cassava is manioc, a root product used in the Americas, Africa, and Asia for millennia. And, as I now learn, almost all tapioca comes from manioc, which is pure starch.

Boba shops often claim that because the beads contain cassava and sweet potato, and because some of the drinks have fruit in them, that these are actually healthful and rejuvenating libations.

Truthfully, they are about as rejuvenating as a mocha frappacino, and if you swallow a calcium pill with them, they may be as healthy as a root beer float.

OTOH, I like root beer floats and mocha frappacinos. I like bobas too, but I'm not sold on that nipple allusion.