Turning Grass and Trees Into Food: Neo-Malthusians Mocked by Human Ingenuity Again
18th April 2013
During famines, desperate people often try to survive by eating things like grass and tree bark. That doesn’t do much to alleviate their hunger since trees and grass are chiefly composed of cellulose which people’s guts cannot digest. Starch, found in wheat, corn, rice, and potatoes, makes up a big portion of the modern human diet. Now researchers at Virginia Tech have announced in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that they can turn cellulose into edible starch.
Think of it as biodiesel for people.
April 18th, 2013 at 09:38
Anyone remember: “Ever eat a pine tree? Many parts are edible.” ?
Euell Theophilus Gibbons (September 14, 1911 – December 29, 1975)