Crunkle_ForeskinCan you eat wood?
I'm trying to resolve an argument.
https://kbin.social/m/nostupidquestion[email protected]/t/188550
MythrilI just got started testing Google Bard, so I fed this question to it and got this reply:
No, humans cannot eat wood. Wood is made of cellulose, which is a type of fiber that is not digestible by humans. If you eat wood, it will pass through your digestive system without being absorbed. In some cases, eating wood can cause blockages in the digestive tract, which can be dangerous.
There are some animals that can eat wood, such as termites and beavers. These animals have special enzymes that help them to digest cellulose. Humans do not have these enzymes, so we cannot eat wood without getting sick.
What about those dried wood snacks?
dried wood snacks?
I have never heard of this and I can’t find anything online.
Got a link?
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/oak-bark
Ohh, so it seems like bark is edible but wood isn't. Definitely chimes with other answers above.
spittingimageI think our dude’s been eating potpouri.
So what you are saying is, we just need to put wood and beaver enzymes in a blender…
Bard is wrong. Look at any vitamin/supplement type pill bottle. Cellulose is listed in almost every one.
I looked up cellulose and it does say that it is used in some drugs and other consumables yeah, but it’s still indigestible, so it wouldn’t give you any nutrients to survive if eaten by itself, I guess.
3xa8yteBard says “we” cannot eat wood… OK Bard, then try a Cheeseburger.
BlueLineBaeDepends on the wood. Some wood we use for spices like cinnamon so you’ve probably already eaten that. But other types of wood are considered toxic not only to consume, but to the plants around it. Take what I say with a grain of salt as I’m certainly no expert on the matter.
Hemlock comes to mind, as with or without your proffered grain of salt, it can be eaten but is definitely not edible. Those defs are posted in a non-pedantic way above, incidentally.
Also, thanks for the chance to use the word 'proffered' in conversation, it's vanishingly rarely used outside the legal field.
SirDankbudI think you’re confusing the hemlock tree en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsuga
With poison hemlock en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conium_maculatum
The tree makes the best bedtime tea I’ve ever had. The herb is a common poison notorious for killing Socrates. You’re still technically accurate, but they’re very different plants.
rnerclei remember how in some parts of the world (north America?) they used to process the wood of some trees to use as flour.
Humans do eat anything, I think the question should rather be "Can eating wood be nutritive or pleasant (or ethical 🤷)? "
Oh right, I just remembered that Norway did make something like “bark bread” in the past during famines, and that linked Wikipedia article says:
The inner bark is the only part of a tree trunk that is actually edible; the remaining bark and wood is made up of cellulose, which most animals, including humans, cannot digest.
I should think you can, depending on the wood, many can be toxic.
The bark of a Willow tree is used to make Aspirin, we smoke paper and eat many plants with less woody stems. There are certain other barks and cambium (the soft layer between the bark and the wood) that contain nutrients, such as birch, pine, elm and a few others that have been eaten by our ancestors for centuries and even have medicinal properties.
The real issue is that the hard cellulose in the actual wood part is not particularly digestible and basically pure fibre and devoid of any real nutrient value. So it would need to be boiled or blended first I imagine, or steeped as a tea. It would be revolting or taste like nothing and probably give you constipation but I doubt you would die.
As a raw bite of a chunk of wood, no. It would be considered inedible.
Cinnamon is tree bark.
One of my favorite YouTube videos from William Osman How Much Sawdust Can You Put In A Rice Crispy?
How Much Sawdust Can You Put In A Rice Crispy?
WxFischFood theory covered this in terms of Christmas trees. The answer is yes, mostly, with a lot of caveats, and also probably not really.
Food Theory: I Ate My Whole Christmas Tree... And So Can You!
MooseGasYou can eat absolutely anything at least once.
“All mushrooms are edible. Some are only edible once.” - Terry Pratchett
cedarmesaI too have been through the trial of the sword
Eat: put (food) into the mouth and chew and swallow it.
Edible: fit or suitable to be eaten.
Can you eat wood? Yes. Is it edible? Not generally.
There's only one way to resolve this argument and one of you isn't going to like it
DessertStormsCellulose is an ingredient in a lot of foods, and some might call it wood pulp?
Wood is less than half cellulose by weight, so wood must be safe to easy.
This mercury sandwich is less than half bread by weight, so it must be safe to eat.
still at least part of wood though, a part that's edible, as far as I'm aware, mercury has none of those (adding the bread, and extra ingredient, is cheating).
If somrthig is part edible and part not, then it really depends on the nature of that not edible bit. If it’s inert, then great. If it’s not, then you could be kinda fucked.
The fact that somrthig is 45% edible says precisely nothing about whether or not it is edible.
I never said otherwise (nor argued that all wood was edible in its entirety), but your comparison was still a bad one.
You think a mercury sandwich isn’t a realistic representation of wood.
Wow, you know, after careful consideration I think you may be right. Thanks for your wisdom. Truly enlightening.
srasmusI think that completely depends on your definition of wood.
Wood is mostly cellulose and lignin, which holds no nutritional value to us humans. Another comment said that termites have certain enzymes which digest it, but it’s actually the bacteria in their guts which break down the woody fibres so they can turn it into glucose. So, theoretically, maybe we could isolate those bacteria and somehow incorporate them into our guts too? I mean it probably wouldn’t work, but you never know until you try right?
KuchiKopiYour mom is mostly lignin.
Eavolutionlignin ma ballz
Kyoyeou (Ki jəʊ juː)So there is a future, where us humain, go to the restaurant and open the Wood card, and a waiter specialized in wood (certainly french too) will go, Hello, Monsieur, Madame, have you chozen your wood for tonight
And our grand kids will respond: “Yes, We will take the Cypress of Bordeaux”
And this wonderful french waiter will respond "Very Good Choice with a Fish Sir, It creates a wonderfool Surf and Turf taste
Your mind is an enigma.
Bon appetit!
So you’re saying if I eat enough termites I can gain their power?
That’s a question for an anteater. Of course, it may need to ingest something with the power of speech before it can say.
PiecemakersThat’s interesting in that it’s the termites’ gut flora that break down the woody content they ingest, considering that a mycelial presence is required to convert grassland to forest as the bacteria present in soil are unable to process the dendritic xylem in order for reuse in the substrate. Do you know if these termite bacteria are viable alternatives to fungal synthesis in reforestation projects?
Did you ever find an answer to this re: reforestation projects? Could be useful to relocate termites in order to introduce the microbes to grasslands.
AncillaryJusticeThis guy Jesse on Alone Season 5 was running out of food and had read about native tribes creating bread from tree bark, so he stripped some off a pine tree and boiled it into a mush and ate it. The video shows the aftermath, basically he had to tap out and be rescued due to severe abdominal pain. However, apparently it is a thing, I’m not sure how you could do it in a way your stomach can handle though, and most likely it has to be specific species of trees.
Alone: Jesse's Abdominal Pain Cripples Him (Season 5, Episode 5) | History
🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 🇮 🏆You shouldn’t eat anything from a pine tree. Or even cook with pine wood. You might be able to eat bark from some other type of tree, but pine is toxic.
This simply isn’t true at all and I have no idea why you would even make that up. Pine is the most diverse family of conifers with over 800 different species, many of which are used in a variety of cuisine and teas. I’ve been chewing on white pine needles all my life as they’re known to be rich in vitamins and help reduce dehydration.
Then there’s the fact that almost all species of pine produce edible nuts. The species that produce the largest nuts are cultivated for commercial sale which is why you can find pine nuts in high end grocery stores and fine cuisine.
In fact, spruce tips are a fantastic source of vitamin C and one of the main reasons why scurvy is historically all but unknown in indigenous populations in regions where spruce thrive (which is damn near everywhere). Furthermore, spruce tips have also been added to beer during brewing, and made into tinctures, bitters, etc. for thousands of years. There are very few conifers that are unwise to harvest from, and most of them have flat/fanned needle sprays, so they’re easy to avoid. 🤘🏼🤓
They’re probably thinking of treated pine. Fairly common construction material, and toxic to cook with because of the things it is treated with, like arsenic, to make it a better, longer-lasting construction material.
Because I’ve been told by every single scout master and naturalist my entire life that pine resin is toxic and not to eat pine needles, cones or bark or to use pine wood in a cooking fire.
They were always referring to a singular type of tree. Not the entire family Pinaceae. If that tree has another name, I don’t know it.
EntropyYou can eat anything if you’re brave enough
NineMileTowerI know a guy that once ate an entire sandwich from Arby’s. How he’s not dead, I’ll never know.
I once ate a burrito that was free if you could finish in one sitting, it was 6lb. It weighed around the same as my first child when he was born.
For the first few hours of his life, all I was thinking was “how the fuck did I eat something the same weight as you”
myxiMaybe because it was free and you were hungry; who wouldn’t love a burrito for free?
Depends on your definition of "eat".
If you mean "Can be chewed and swallowed without causing undue harm", then, yeah, you can eat wood. Well, most wood, I'm sure there's some out there that are some level of toxic to humans.
If you mean, "can be consumed as a source of nutrition", then, no, you can't eat wood. Humans lack the capability to digest it.
Saw dust have been mixed with flour multiple time in history during famine period. However it was mostly done to increase profit and multiple bakers have been killed by angry mob because of that.
So while eating wood may not kill you, serving it could?
William Osman and crew attempted to find the breaking point on this in his video “How Much Sawdust Can You Put In A Rice Crispy?”
How Much Sawdust Can You Put In A Rice Crispy?
kamihekuYou can ingest it, but it won’t provide much if any nutrition. It might make you constipated though.
So a good suggestion for the no-poop three days challenge !
The real question is “Can a woodchuck Norris?”
Wood has no nutritional value to humans, but a few things come close:
The center of banana tree trunks are cooked and eaten, and a common parts of some asian dishes, but they aren’t really “wood”.
The inner part of tree bark is digestible by humans, but it is not classified as “wood” either.
Yes, and you probably have unknowingly eaten it.
