Can you eat wood?
Can you eat wood?
I'm trying to resolve an argument.
EDIT: Yes, you can. But you can't digest it. The only edible parts of a tree are some specific types of tree bark. Thanks, everyone!
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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.
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.