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How was rhubarb found to be edible? It certainly isn鈥檛 palatable raw. (continued)

Guy Cox
Sydney, Australia

The idea that rhubarb 鈥渋sn鈥檛 palatable raw鈥� is totally bonkers. During the second world war, food supplies were scarce in England, so councils divided up unused land into allotments, let out to households at a nominal rent, to encourage people to grow their own vegetables. My grandfather used his to grow tobacco.

By 1952, when I was seven, many of these had been abandoned, and my mates and I used to explore them looking for something tasty to eat. Rhubarb was a prized find, and I can assure you we loved eating the stems raw.

Ron Dippold
Bath, UK

First, never underestimate thousands of years of hungry people desperate for things to eat. Cassava is deadly poison if it isn鈥檛 cooked and slowly paralyses your legs if it isn鈥檛 carefully processed. Eating this isn鈥檛 something you would just stumble upon, but people figured it out, presumably because they were hungry.

Rhubarb is slightly different, though. Its leaves are poisonous, like those of potatoes and tomatoes, so it was initially just a medicine, used thousands of years ago in Chinese Mongolia as a laxative and digestive. It reached Greece and Rome around the 1st century AD and was imported into Europe during the 14th century. At the time, it was more precious than saffron or opium. In the 1700s, it reached the UK and the climate was perfect for it, so it was widely grown there, especially in Scotland. By the 1800s, it was so common that people were eating it as a food. The timeline was similar in the US.

It isn鈥檛 hard to imagine that people who were used to eating it as a digestive would get used to and then crave the bitter taste (like coffee) and then realise you could add sugar to it to make it more palatable (also like coffee).

Rhubarb is hardly the weirdest thing people have realised they could eat!

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