https://soundcloud.com/rhubarb-rhubarb-rhubarb/a-mass-of-pop...
Minecraft update 1.22 part 1 (of 5) comes out, rhubarb and rhubarb seeds were added
The structure that rhubarb seeds are found will be added in part 2 (scheduled for 2029)
Rhubarb pie will be added in part 4 (scheduled 2032)
It's a mid tier food with worse saturation than chicken
From the Wikipedia article...
The Rhubarb Triangle is a 9-square-mile (23 km2) area of West Yorkshire, England between Wakefield, Morley, and Rothwell famous for producing early forced rhubarb. It includes Kirkhamgate, East Ardsley, Stanley, Lofthouse and Carlton. The Rhubarb Triangle was originally much bigger, covering an area between Leeds, Bradford and Wakefield. From the 1900s to 1930s, the rhubarb industry expanded and at its peak covered an area of about 30 square miles (78 km2).
(PDOs granted pre-Brexit continue to be in force, though new ones can't be granted for UK stuff)
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/does-rhub...
> Chard and spinach, in fact, contain even more oxalic acid than rhubarb—respectively, 700 and 600 mg/100 g, as opposed to rhubarb’s restrained 500. Rhubarb’s killer reputation apparently dates to World War I, when rhubarb leaves were recommended on the home front as an alternative food. At least one death was reported in the literature, an event that rhubarb has yet to live down.
> Oxalic acid does its dirty work by binding to calcium ions and yanking them out of circulation. In the worst-case scenario, it removes enough essential calcium from the blood to be lethal; in lesser amounts, it forms insoluble calcium oxalate, which can end up in the kidneys as kidney stones. In general, however, rhubarb leaves don’t pose much of a threat. Since a lethal dose of oxalic acid is somewhere between 15 and 30 grams, you’d have to eat several pounds of rhubarb leaves at a sitting to reach a toxic oxalic acid level, which is a lot more rhubarb leaves than most people care to consume.
That actually sounds like I should be careful with how I consume my spinach (or chard or rhubarb), but more for the sake of kidney stones. I wonder if adding milk or other calcium-rich foods helps?
[one search for calcium-rich foods later]
So spinach is apparently rich in calcium? I'm getting really confused now.
No vegetable is really rich in calcium, which is why it is recommended for vegans to take calcium supplements.
After you ingest oxalic acid, it will find calcium in your body, where it is abundant in blood and in the other extracellular fluids (like sodium and chloride, most calcium stays outside the cells).
Too much oxalic acid will form insoluble precipitates of calcium oxalate, i.e. small stones, which may happen to form in undesirable places, from where they cannot be eliminated.
Overall these are plants defense mechanisms. We know they work well as anti bug measures, ruminants have more complex digestive systems to break them down; it's not always clear what prolonged use on humans will cause.
Carnivores advocate against eating oxalates rich food and when you start a diet with no oxalates you will experience some weird symptoms, you can read about oxalates dumping: https://www.doctorkiltz.com/oxalate-dumping
There are plenty of people with "auto immune incurable" diseases who stopped eating vegetables and were relieved of their symptoms.
I personally started experiencing problems after 10 years of a 95% vegan diet and went carnivore, getting rid of a number of weird health issues I couldn't explain.
The trick is to bind the oxalates before they get absorbed in the body and require removal. So making things like traditional creamed spinach (or other things like turnip or collard greens) removes the potential hazard from chronic intake.
Incidentally the whey portion of dairy also seems to chelate the form of vitamin B12 found in plants, making it much more bioavailable. The casein portion of dairy doesn’t seem to have this same effect.
It’s fascinating to see how the preparation for so many traditional foods basically mitigates the sources of low level toxicity issues while increasing nutrient update, when as a “modern” person I tend to look at it from the perspective of taste.
If you eat too much of it, yes. All Oxalis leaves are edible but only in the correct (small) dose.
There are many things which have it, particularly in the wild edible category, and those who have dietary restrictions which limit them to mostly such foods have serious consequences from the presence of it.
I know first hand it can do serious harm.
Do not downplay it.
In the original British understatement:
> Since a lethal dose of oxalic acid is somewhere between 15 and 30 grams, you’d have to eat several pounds of rhubarb leaves at a sitting to reach a toxic oxalic acid level, which is a lot more rhubarb leaves than most people care to consume.
Treating bees for varroa more takes about 25g of oxalic acid per box of bees. I’d kind of hoped the leaves might have more oxalic, then I could have tried putting rhubarb leaves in there instead of battling fumes, glycerine and strips of paper.
The calcium in those neutralize any potential issues of the oxalic acid.
Thinking dairy is the only source of calcium is meme-nutrition like eating bananas for potassium especially when talking about a food already high in calcium.
Rhubarb was grown and used throughout China for thousands of years. It then found its way to St Petersburg where the Romanovs developed a flourishing trade in the plant to the rest of Europe. James Mounsey, a physician to the Tsar, brought back seeds from Russia to Scotland at considerable risk to himself. He passed some of the seeds to Alexander Dick and John Hope. Both these physicians then grew rhubarb at Prestonfield and the Botanic Garden (both in Edinburgh), respectively. Eventually rhubarb, in the form of Gregory’s powder, became a common and popular medicine throughout the UK.
[PDF] https://www.rcpe.ac.uk/sites/default/files/jrcpe_47_1_lee.pd...
My biggest take-away was that Slingbys Rhubarb Gin is delicious!
By the same token, the choral singer who forgets the lyrics during a performance can sing "watermelon, watermelon" until she gets to a place where she recalls the words. The philosophy is that, as long as you get a convincing vowel in there, people will believe anything you sing.
Source: was married to a professional actor; saw this used on sets many times.
We have a very productive rhubarb patch. Right beside the zucchini patch.
Chop it into pieces, put it in a pan with some sugar and possible a little bit of water. Heat it up and the sugar should help draw out some liquid and cook it until the pieces become soft or disintegrate. Takes about 5-10 minutes.
The crumbled rusk is meant to give the cooked rhubarb a thicker structure and the sugar is meant to counter the sourness.
Quite delicious imho.
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[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rusk#Netherlands_and_Belgium...
[0] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhabarberkuchen#/media/Datei:R...
In general you can often use it as an alternative for lemon zest or juice. I'd say though that it is one of those veggies you buy when it grows locally. I love rhubarb, but if you have to import it, there is probably a better local alternative.
https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1023153-khoresh-rivas-sa...
I had a huge list of allergies developed in my late teens but now they're gone after a couple decades, due to natural age related changes in biochemistry according to the docs.
I really would love rhubarb to grow here but it is almost impossible to find, even in big cities.
IME a very easy perennial, if you can prevent drought. Plant and forget. Like artichokes.
