What it is
The corm Polynesian voyagers carried across the Pacific, pounded into poi in Hawaii — a starchy staple with a culture attached.
Why your biology objects
An endorsed starchy ancestral corm, providing digestible starch, resistant starch and potassium. The footnote is mandatory cooking: raw taro carries needle-like calcium-oxalate crystals that irritate the mouth and throat, which boiling and the traditional pounding destroy. Cooked it's a staple; raw it's inedible.