See this Reddit Showerthought here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Showerthoughts/comments/8883e9/milk_and_honey_are_the_only_foods_that_werent/
Really? Hmm, gotta ponder that.
From the linked thread.
I’m pretty sure salt wasn’t originally alive.
Pssst, mods. Please fix the typo in the title. Sorry.
Good luck with sorting through all those sweeteners man makes. Are they food?
And the question is…?
Fixed.
Presumably whether the factoid is true. I confess, I am having difficulty coming up with counterexamples, but there must be some, at least other secretions.
Some cultures consume cow’s blood directly the source. It seems that if milk counts, so does blood.
How are we defining “originally alive”? One of the components of milk is protein-does that count as “alive”?
Eggs (especially unfertilized like they most commonly are)
Blood contains living cells.
As far as edible exudates, all I got is snot. A billion kids can’t be wrong*.
OK, and solidified saliva - in the form of birds nest. One suspects this is not far off snot.
If you allow honey, clearly the source nectar must count.
- Q. What is the difference between broccoli and snot?
A. Kids will eat snot.
Blood has living cells in it, milk does not.
Damnit, ninja’d.
The food doesn’t have to be currently not living-it has to be originally not living. If it were the former, then a well-done steak would count.
Wait, did I miss something? Is eating birds nests a thing now?
I would think that sugar would count as not having been alive, if honey is.
Kaolin?
One particular bird’s nest. Edible bird's nest - Wikipedia
Ah. This makes me think of Rhino horn. Is/was Keratin alive?
Sugar is a funny one. Given most sugar we buy is derived from the mechanical processing of plants - beet or cane mostly, it involves the destruction of a living thing to produce. Honey is made from nectar that is deliberately formed by the plant to attract insects, and is harvested not only with no harm to the plant, but with a side benefit of pollination. That said - beekeepers will feed hives with syrup made from commercial sugar in hard times.
I was thinking of keratin - hair and fingernails as well. I think it counts as never being alive. No actual cells in there. But since we don’t seem to have the capability of digesting it, it doesn’t seem to pass the “food” requirement. Maybe there is a viable way of processing keratin to make it into a useful food. Maybe I could teach my cats to process their hairballs.