Wood smells like we should be able to eat it, but we can't.

2 years ago by hperrin to c/showerthoughts

MHanak 214 points 2 years ago

A beaver wrote this

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suction 5 points 2 years ago

Huh, always had Beavers down as ThinkPad T-Series users...

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levi 4 points 2 years ago

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MHanak 1 point 2 years ago

To be fair like every good joke i stole this one

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intensely_human -3 points 2 years ago

We gotta keep it from being upvoted too far

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TimewornTraveler 1 point 2 years ago

don't beavers eat wood

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aphlamingphoenix 83 points 2 years ago

Cinnamon and sumac are two common spices that are made from grinding up tree bark.

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echodot 16 points 2 years ago

Also ginger.

And technically wormwood too, although that's more you drinking water that is soaked into wood.

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die444die 22 points 2 years ago

Ginger is a root, maybe you’re thinking of something else?

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creditCrazy 1 point 2 years ago

Eh what is a root if not wood that is covered in dirt

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die444die 18 points 2 years ago

So is a potato wood? A carrot?

Ginger is not a tree. It’s a flowering plant.

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Silentiea -3 points 2 years ago

I think most would consider most tree roots to be "woody"

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die444die 12 points 2 years ago

It’s not a tree root.

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echodot -5 points 2 years ago

The root of a tree. Made of wood.

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die444die 12 points 2 years ago

No, ginger is not a tree.

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pbbananaman 13 points 2 years ago

You using a different kind of sumac than the rest of us? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumac#In_food

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aphlamingphoenix 11 points 2 years ago

I stand corrected on that one. I assumed it was sumac bark, and you know what they say about assumption. It makes an ass out of u and mption.

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Fermion 2 points 2 years ago

The bit about powdered sumac (bark?) being a powerful dye for marble is pretty interesting. I wish there was an example photo.

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Willdrick 55 points 2 years ago

That's what whiskey is for

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Muscar 23 points 2 years ago

And smoking anything, it's definitely part of food as a taste just not the wood it self as an ingredient.

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nomous 3 points 2 years ago

Being used to make the fire/smoke that cooks the food is a really good point, wood is definitely food adjacent even if it's not strictly edible.

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lord_ryvan 48 points 2 years ago

It what? Who thinks wood smells edible?

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hperrin 18 points 2 years ago

We burn different kinds of wood under our food to make it taste like that wood. Mesquite, apple, hickory, all come to mind. Wood smells really good.

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Illuminostro 14 points 2 years ago

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JudahBenHur 41 points 2 years ago

it still is?

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stangel 54 points 2 years ago

It still is, but it used to, too.

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cmbabul 12 points 2 years ago

RIP Mitch

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SethranKada -20 points 2 years ago

Only the expensive luxury stuff. The kind sold in tourist traps. Most maple syrup sold in stores is flavored corn syrup, which keeps the price down.

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WR5 33 points 2 years ago

I think at that point it's called "corn syrup" or just "syrup". Maple syrup is still made from maple.

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elephantium 10 points 2 years ago

Hmm. I just went to Target's website and searched "maple syrup" -- even though they have a notoriously bad search, the first row of products were actual maple syrup. The second row had a mix between "pancake syrup" and actual "maple syrup"

OTOH, searching "pancake syrup" was the opposite -- 5 corn syrups before any actual maple syrups.

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OutlierBlue 5 points 2 years ago

"Maple syrup" is a legally protected name, the same way "butter", "ice cream", and "chocolate" are. There are legal requirements for their contents in order for you to call it that on the label. That's why you see descriptions like "chocolatey" or "buttery" on cheaper products.

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creditCrazy 3 points 2 years ago

In my experience unless you're in Vermont that is quite true but yeah in Vermont just about everyone makes their own maple syrup if I recall correctly we I believe banned corn syrup maple syrup because everyone here takes maple syrup very seriously

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intensely_human 2 points 2 years ago

My friend Winona for one

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DarkCloud 2 points 2 years ago

The big brown beaver?

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antlion 40 points 2 years ago

Maple syrup is tree blood. Kind like tree vampirism.

I don’t think wood smells like food. But I wonder… apparently termites have a bunch of gut bacteria to digest wood. Maybe if you eat raw termites and bark beetles, you can then eat some sawdust. If you continue the process eventually you may be able to eat wood or paper with your own gut biome. Maybe start with a termite, sawdust, and banana smoothie and move up from there. Best of luck.

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Anyolduser 13 points 2 years ago

"Tree vampirism"? Naw dude, we boil the tree blood down first. It's concentrated tree vampirism.

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intensely_human 7 points 2 years ago

Kinda like centrifuge blood taffy?

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suction 2 points 2 years ago

Oh, you mean CTV?

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olafurp -2 points 2 years ago

Yeah, it stops being healthy because it's ultra processed.

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Anyolduser 8 points 2 years ago

My dude, it's pure sugar. It was never healthy.

Also, I'm not sure that boiling something down to thicken it counts as "ultra processed".

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anindefinitearticle 4 points 2 years ago

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suction 1 point 2 years ago

In the US, a little less sugar = "healthy"

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JasonDJ 11 points 2 years ago

5/7 with rice. Thank you for the suggestion.

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Prok 5 points 2 years ago

A grading scale like no other

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Lexam 39 points 2 years ago

If you've eaten shredded cheese from the store, then you've eaten wood.

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Aurenkin 10 points 2 years ago

Eating shredded cheese and wood is certainly a lifestyle

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muntedcrocodile 33 points 2 years ago

U can eat it. Its just not particularly nutritious or paletable.

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blanketswithsmallpox 5 points 2 years ago

I still wonder why if we need more fiber in our diets we don't just toss wood pulp in everything.

Apparently supplemented processed fiber gives you liver cancer though.

Tldr: Inulin bad.

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/...

I wonder how depression era sawdust bread would work though.

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Akareth 5 points 2 years ago

The study that your article references is a mouse study, so the relevance to humans is questionable.

In addition, fiber is shown to be beneficial to humans primarily when comparing the standard American diet to a high-fiber diet. This is likely because fiber is mostly non-digestable by humans (as we've lost the ability to digest fiber more than 2-million years ago unlike our closest living great-ape cousins), and acts as a physical barrier to the absorption of sugars and starches which also helps to lower insulin spikes.

If you do not eat a high-carb diet (such as a ketogenic diet), then eliminating the undigestable matter (i.e. fiber) from your diet is probably beneficial because you'll be able to absorb more nutrients and get rid of constipation-related issues.

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muntedcrocodile -1 points 2 years ago

A lot of processed foods do have wood pulp in it. Often labeled celulose to hide that they just putting wood pulp in ur food.

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acannan 27 points 2 years ago

For the majority of human history, we've eaten around wood (around a campfire, a hearth, etc), it makes sense it would become intertwined with our food palette

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bjoern_tantau 24 points 2 years ago

Skill issue.

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BlackJerseyGiant 20 points 2 years ago

We can, and do, eat wood. It's listed as "cellulose" in the ingredients, and it's in everything. Your ice cream, your bread, probably up in yo closet doin your Mamma right now

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hperrin 5 points 2 years ago

That’s made from plants, including trees, but that’s not really what I’m talking about.

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suction 0 points 2 years ago

Daaayum

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FartsWithAnAccent 16 points 2 years ago

OP confirmed for beaver with dental issues.

It might interest you to know that we do eat wood when we eat that sprinkled parmesan or romano cheese in the plastic containers: It contains wood to prevent the cheese from clumping (and it counts as fiber)

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Cosmonaut_Collin 6 points 2 years ago

Thank God I can eat cheese to get my fill of wood for the day.

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FartsWithAnAccent 5 points 2 years ago

Mmm, anti caking agents...

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intensely_human 0 points 2 years ago

I just call it laxative

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scutiger 3 points 2 years ago

If you consider cellulose to be wood, sure. They don't put actual wood in there.

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XTL 2 points 2 years ago

What cellulose do they use then?

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scutiger 1 point 2 years ago

Cellulose can come from just about any type of plant. Cotton is almost entirely cellulose, for example.

I don't know what their cellulose comes from, but saying cellulose is trees is like saying milk is cheese.

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Pandantic 1 point 2 years ago

All shredded cheeses, I believe.

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scutiger 4 points 2 years ago

Many shredded cheeses are mixed with corn and/or potato starches rather than cellulose (which is not wood either)

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Pandantic 2 points 2 years ago

Thanks for the info!

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abbadon420 16 points 2 years ago

Wood is notoriously hard to digest. After wood evolved, it took millions of years before funghi and bacteria evolved the ability to decompose it. And that's why we have oil now.

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AnyOldName3 14 points 2 years ago

Coal, not oil, but it's still an interesting fact.

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ripcord 5 points 2 years ago

There was a point during that millions of years where there were areas of thousands of feet deep layers of dead trees. It still boggles my mind.

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Amanduh 3 points 2 years ago

Would you be willing to find a good article explaining this further? This sounds really neat and I'd like to know how scientists figured this out :O

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magikmw 3 points 2 years ago

Wood is the reason for climate change!

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intensely_human 2 points 2 years ago

And now these hippies want to plant even more trees.

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XTL 2 points 2 years ago

Who are they to stand in the way of climate change‽

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intensely_human 1 point 2 years ago

(the oil helps us digest wood)

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Thorny_Insight 15 points 2 years ago

You can. I know a guy who eats a birch log every year. He literally sits on the couch pulling splinters from the log and chews on them while watching tv. He also grinds his egg shells and mixes with oatmeal.

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ThrowawaySobriquet 17 points 2 years ago

Are you sure your friend isn't just three beavers in a long coat?

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ripcord 10 points 2 years ago

This sounds like a terrible idea in the long-term.

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zaphod 2 points 2 years ago

Why? It's basically just fiber.

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intensely_human 1 point 2 years ago

Wood is a renewable resource

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OutlierBlue 6 points 2 years ago

Why wood he do such a thing?

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Pandantic 4 points 2 years ago

Is this a thing? Why does he do it?

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Thorny_Insight 1 point 2 years ago

He believes there's some health benefits to it

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DrSteveBrule 3 points 2 years ago

A friend of mine doesn't peel shrimp tails

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NotMyOldRedditName 3 points 2 years ago

🤢

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intensely_human 5 points 2 years ago

I don’t peel shrimp tails either. I don’t eat shrimp.

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obre 15 points 2 years ago

You can bake sawdust into bread lol https://youtu.be/MTC_ETWa3JA

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GingeyBook 7 points 2 years ago

Or a Rice Crispy if you'd rather

https://youtu.be/AKDal51f5LU?si=mhnNuCnT4FCiUHxe

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Taako_Tuesday 4 points 2 years ago

Also if you believe the stories ive heard from pizza chains like Papa Johns and Domino's, sawdust is regularly added to pizza dough to make it cheaper to produce

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Ballistic_86 15 points 2 years ago

I’m guessing it sort of came from the fact that we cook food with burning wood. Less so now, but burning wood meant cooked food for 200k years.

I don’t think wood smells like it is edible, but a fire can remind me of food through smell.

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xep 15 points 2 years ago

I'm... not so sure about this. Also we can eat paper and that's just mashed up wood, right?

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hperrin 23 points 2 years ago

We can consume it, but we can’t digest it.

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otter 18 points 2 years ago

Also, we should consume it (or other types of dietary fibre)

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/...

Dietary fibre is that part of plant material in the diet which is resistant to enzymatic digestion which includes cellulose, noncellulosic polysaccharides such as hemicellulose, pectic substances, gums, mucilages and a non-carbohydrate component lignin. The diets rich in fibre such as cereals, nuts, fruits and vegetables have a positive effect on health since their consumption has been related to decreased incidence of several diseases. Dietary fibre can be used in various functional foods like bakery, drinks, beverages and meat products. Influence of different processing treatments (like extrusion-cooking, canning, grinding, boiling, frying) alters the physico- chemical properties of dietary fibre and improves their functionality. Dietary fibre can be determined by different methods, mainly by: enzymic gravimetric and enzymic—chemical methods. This paper presents the recent developments in the extraction, applications and functions of dietary fibre in different food products.

Not that we should go around gnawing on wood like beavers, but maybe that's why some indigestible foods seem like we should be able to eat it

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elephantium 3 points 2 years ago

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showerthoughts

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Rules

All posts must be showerthoughts
The entire showerthought must be in the title
No politics
- If your topic is in a grey area, please phrase it to emphasize the fascinating aspects, not the dramatic aspects. You can do this by avoiding overly politicized terms such as "capitalism" and "communism". If you must make comparisons, you can say something is different without saying something is better/worse.
- A good place for politics is c/politicaldiscussion
Posts must be original/unique
Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct and the TOS

If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.

Whats it like to be a mod? Reports just show up as messages in your Lemmy inbox, and if a different mod has already addressed the report, the message goes away and you never worry about it.

go to feed...