Things That Is Wood
Recently, I made a social media post asking why we eat some wood (almonds) and not other wood (teak, mahogany). This raised some questions, so I figured a slightly longer form medium would be appropriate to address some questions and concerns about what wood we can and cannot eat. What follows is my non-comprehensive list of things that is edible wood and things that is inedible wood.
Edible Wood
Anything hard and dry, tastes good
- Almonds
- Pine nuts (literally from pine trees but somehow okay??)
- Most nuts, actually. (The clear exception is, of course, Grape-Nuts.)
- Cinnamon
- Coconut
- A little bit of sawdust
- All beans (coffee, black, cocoa, vanilla, rice1)
- Bay leaves (we don’t eat them but we let them swim in our soup?)
- Cloves (nature’s wooden nails we eat)
- Nutmeg (the grated cheese of the wood world but only for desserts)
- Maple syrup (tree juice we decided was fine)
- Cardamom (tiny wood pellets that make chai taste good2)
- Bamboo shoots (baby wood that’s somehow okay. Less ethical than eating veal because all baby cows go to hell anyway)
Inedible wood
Anything hard and dry, doesn’t taste good.
- Trees (too woody to eat)
- Cedar planks (forbidden, but decent gum feel)
- Mahogany (cannot eat, it is the inner-flesh of a nice Volvo)
- A lot of sawdust
- IKEA table (technically edible but frowned upon due to woke)
- Guitar (music wood that society has deemed “too important” to eat)
- Baseball bat (sport wood, would be a waste to eat)
- Pencil (wood we write with instead of eat, for some reason)
- Book (smart wood, possibly made of pencil (which makes it wood))
I hope this helps clarify my position. Thank you for your attention.
God bless America,
Sam