• A Phlaming Phoenix
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    4 months ago

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

    • Muscar@discuss.online
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      4 months ago

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

      • nomous@lemmy.world
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        4 months 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.

    • hperrin@lemmy.worldOP
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      4 months 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.

        • SethranKada@lemmy.ca
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          4 months 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.

          • WR5@lemmy.world
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            4 months ago

            I think at that point it’s called “corn syrup” or just “syrup”. Maple syrup is still made from maple.

            • elephantium@lemmy.world
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              4 months ago

              I think this might be a Kleenix vs. tissues type thing for some people. All syrup gets called “maple syrup” regardless of provenance? Then “real maple syrup” vs. “the fake stuff” makes a bit more sense.

              Damn, now I want pancakes…

            • QuantumSparkles@sh.itjust.works
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              4 months ago

              At least in the US, most “maple syrup” is literally maple flavored corn syrup or sometimes a blend but is just called Maple Syrup on the front of the bottle. Sometimes it’s called “pancake syrup” for legal reasons

              • I_Has_A_Hat@lemmy.world
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                4 months ago

                Pretty sure the fake stuff has to call themselves maple-flavored syrup, pancake syrup, or just syrup, and only the real stuff is called “maple syrup”

              • Bertuccio@lemmy.world
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                4 months ago

                No idea why you’ve got any downvotes.

                This is very true. You have to search for actual maple syrup in the US.

                EDIT: Yeah. I know how to find actual maple syrup, folks. There was a time long ago when products actually looked like what you were buying and weren’t all imitation crap. There was no such thing as corn-syrup labeled “breakfast syrup” or “maple-flavored syrup” or “Real syrup” in giant bold text and “with maple flavor” in tiny font somewhere distant.

                Stop defending deceptive product labeling.

                • Ben Hur Horse Race
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                  4 months ago

                  he’s getting downvoted cause what he said isn’t true.

                  If it says Maple Syrup, it is. From wikipedia: In the United States, a syrup must be made almost entirely from maple sap to be labelled as “maple”, though states such as Vermont and New York have more restrictive definitions.

                  your guy is calling corn syrup stuff maple syrup when all you gotta do is look at the dang label

                • Classy@sh.itjust.works
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                  4 months ago

                  I literally have never had a hard time finding real maple syrup unless I’m in a gas station or something.

                  Maybe it’s because I’m in the Midwest and sugar maple is absolutely everywhere, but it’s very, very easy to find real maple. Yes it’s more expensive, and absolutely yes it tastes far better.

                  Maple syrup to “pancake syrup” is like real butter to hydrogenated palm oil. My mother uses the Blue Bonnet margarine, and I used to use it growing up. As an adult I’ve only used real stick butter and god, going back home sometimes for dinner can really suck. Margarine is so chemical-tasting, how the hell do people butter their toast with it?

                • Duamerthrax@lemmy.world
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                  4 months ago

                  You have to search for the word 'maple". If it just says Syrup, it’s made from corn syrup. This is true everywhere.

          • elephantium@lemmy.world
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            4 months 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.

          • OutlierBlue@lemmy.ca
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            4 months 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.

              • OutlierBlue@lemmy.ca
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                4 months ago

                I’m not sure for most countries, but I know both the US and Canada protect the terms.

                • Fonzie!@ttrpg.network
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                  4 months ago

                  I’m asking because laws, especially about food, differ a lot from country to country. It’s not a protected term in my country (NL), and I’m sure it isn’t in most countries outside the anglosphere. Heck, sometimes the same foodstuff can be legally protected with completely different requirements, “pindakaas” (peanutbutter) is allowed to contain a boatload of palm fat but hardly any sugar in the Netherlands, it’s the opposite in the US.

          • credit crazy@lemmy.world
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            4 months 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

  • antlion@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    4 months 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.

  • Lexam@lemmy.ca
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    4 months ago

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

      • Akareth@lemmy.world
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        4 months 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.

  • acannan@programming.dev
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    4 months 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

  • BlackJerseyGiant@lemmy.world
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    4 months 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

  • abbadon420
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    4 months 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.

    • ripcord@lemmy.world
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      4 months 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.

      • Amanduh
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        4 months 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

  • FartsWithAnAccent@fedia.io
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    4 months 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)

  • Thorny_Insight
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    4 months 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.

  • xep@fedia.io
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    4 months ago

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

      • Otter@lemmy.ca
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        4 months ago

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

        https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3614039/

        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

  • Ballistic_86@lemmy.world
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    4 months 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.