Won't the future be grand? This snippet from 1934 talks about how science will break us free from our diet restraints, allowing us to feast on piles of wood. It's refreshing how optimistic and full of wonder visions of the future used to be.
MANY lower animals have thrived indefinitely on a diet of wood fiber, but in man’s digestive organs, it serves as roughage (“spinach” to you). Yet chemistry has been successful in producing from it – sugar, alcohol, etc.; and a German, Professor Karl Schwalbe, has made beechwood digestible with lactic acid, as in the numerous stomachs of some animals. We may look to the day when the householder will “dunk” his morning paper, page by page, as he reads it, and thus use it for toast.
Via ModernMechanix
It's called Yacaratia (Jacaratia spinosa) and by a proccess of treating wood you can eat the actual wood. Tastes really sweet and has a weird texture, it comes in little tablets, like jenga ones, and you can see the fibres and everything.
If you want, you can found out food polices by your FDA and if yuo write to me with an addres i can send you some so you guys here @ neato can try some.
I leave some links here, one has the option to read it in english but the other requires spanish:
http://www.yacaratiadelicatessen.com/
http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacaratia_spinosa