[esjeon]

The whole business sounds very shady. It's likely that the plant is sourced from the side of roads, untended fields, forests, construction companies (selling anything they find for coffee money), etc. It's a completely black area, outside of food regulations, so they can't expose the actual source, no matter what.

This can also explain the confusing reports from multiple researchers, because academic "species" don't matter in places like this. The vendors simply sell what looks similar to what they used to sell.

[trompetenaccoun]

It's Indian street food so I'd say what you describe is the optimistic scenario. Worst case it's an industrial product of sorts, produced backyard factories. South Asia has a huge variety of culinary plants and snacks, some of which are unknown even to locals, especially if it's a regional thing. But that no one would know and no one wants to talk about what it is, that's highly suspicious.

It's really sad, China and India have among the best food in the world but they also have among the worst food safety record. Almost anything can be faked or adulterated for profit, from cooking oil that makes people go blind to instant baby formula that kills the infants.

[acchow]

With multiple layers of middlemen, it's possible the vendors don't even know what the source is.

[achow]

This would be thin margin, low volume business and usually these cart owners source all the raw materials directly.

[achow]

There is no food 'regulation' for the snacks sold in open cart. There are innumerable varieties of such snack which are not 'mysterious'.

This seems to be 'mysterious' because of the writing skill of the author. She successfully managed to create a buzz.

If finding the answer was the goal it could have been easily found out by offering 10X-50X (approx $150-$700 = Annual income perhaps) the money they offered mentioned in the article as a proposition to take over their business and as part of that asking them to show the source of the 'supply'.

[stinos]

This seems to be 'mysterious' because of the writing skill of the author.

While 'mysterious' is hard to quantify objectively, the thing is: it is not known for sure what it is yet widely available, sounds mysterious enough, right? Or is your point that it actualy is known, but the author doesn't happen to know?

it could have been easily found out by offering 10X-50X

What makes you so sure the author can easily come up with what you call an 'annual income perhaps', just to pursue some story?

[simonh]

Not if it’s actually toxic. In that case revealing the source could get them in serious trouble and wouldn’t be worth it at any price.

[crooked-v]

For a year's income the person involved could show them, get the money, and book it to a different part of the city where they'll be impossible to find again.

[sombremesa]

> impossible to find again

Except, apparently, for people who are offering

> a year's income

To informants

[yunohn]

The author isn’t looking to setup a roadside snack business. Throwing money at a “problem” is not a real solution.

I think the people in the article have made a good-faith attempt to research and find out more about the snack.

[Cederfjard]

If paying enough to incentivize vendors to share the secret works, and why wouldn’t it, how is that not a ”real” solution?

[yunohn]

I’m not sure where you’re coming from in this discussion. Nobody is saying bribery won’t work in such situations.

But you do understand that the author is a journalist (1), and really just aiming to research for an article that presents some intriguing material, right? Not a roadside snacks competitor, with a large budget to spend on getting these sellers to exfiltrate supply chain intel.

(1) https://www.atlasobscura.com/users/mediabarkha?view=articles

[Cederfjard]

I didn’t understand from the phrasing in your initial comment that you were saying ”yeah that could’ve worked, but it wouldn’t have been economically feasible for her to do that just for the sake of an article, so it’s not an actual solution in this context”. So I was genuinely wondering why you thought that wasn’t a real solution. Like you had philosophical objections to doing journalism in that way. But now I’m following.

[yunohn]

Why would you not read the entirety of my comment, and miss the context behind “not a real solution”? If you reread it, you’ll see the the gist of it was the same as my follow-up.