2y ago

Can you eat wood?

I'm trying to resolve an argument.

85 comments

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. We also grate cinnamon and a few others as spice. Dog food is often bulked up with ash.
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.

Depends 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.
  
  I think you're confusing the hemlock tree https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsuga
  With poison hemlock https://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.

You can ingest it, but you can't digest it and it won't provide much if any nutrition. It'll probably make you constipated though.
- So a good suggestion for the no-poop three days challenge !

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?
- 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.
- 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!
- That'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?
- Your mom is mostly lignin.
  
  lignin ma ballz

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.

Saw dust have been mixed with flour multiple time in history during famine period. However it was mostly done to increase profit, not for its nutritional value and multiple bakers have been killed by angry mob because of that.
- 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?”
  https://youtu.be/AKDal51f5LU
- So while eating wood may not kill you, serving it could?
- See also: Bark bread, aka "pettuleipä" in Finnish

Food theory covered this in terms of Christmas trees. The answer is yes, mostly, with a lot of caveats, and also probably not really.

You can eat absolutely anything at least once.
- "All mushrooms are edible. Some are only edible once." - Terry Pratchett

One of my favorite YouTube videos from William Osman How Much Sawdust Can You Put In A Rice Crispy?

if you are a beaver Lol

Yes, and you probably have unknowingly eaten it.
https://www.bonappetit.com/entertaining-style/trends-news/article/parmesan-wood-pulp-cellulose

Does bamboo count? It's a common wood flooring and cutting board option. Lots of furniture is made from it. It's used like wood, even though it doesn't grow quite the same as a normal tree. And people have been eating bamboo shoots for a long time.

*Parmesan has entered the chat *

Sure you can but you probably shouldn't..

The real question is "Can a woodchuck Norris?"

i remember reading about 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 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.
- So what you are saying is, we just need to put wood and beaver enzymes in a blender...
- 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?
- Bard says "we" cannot eat wood.. OK Bard, then try a Cheeseburger.
- 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.

This 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 ate it. It seemed edible but hard to pass. 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.
- 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.

💀

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

I think that completely depends on your definition of wood.

Cellulose is an ingredient in a lot of foods, and some might call it wood pulp?
- Wood is just less than half cellulose by weight, so wood must be safe to easy.
  This mercury sandwich is just 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).

You can eat anything if you’re brave enough
- I 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”

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.

85 comments