Due to its frequent use in sweet treats, it's no surprise that home cooks might think that rhubarb is a fruit.
And in , a U. Customs court in Buffalo, New York, even deemed rhubarb to be a fruit, because cooks primarily use it that way. By legally classifying rhubarb as a fruit, the court made it so that rhubarb could be taxed with smaller import fees — even though rhubarb wasn't really a fruit.
Wait, what? Yes, despite the legal classification, rhubarb is actually a vegetable in botanical terms. The rhubarb's stalk can be defined as a petiole , which connects a leaf to a stem. In botanical terms, the edible petiole officially marks rhubarb as a vegetable.
But if you want to go on calling it a fruit, Richter certainly won't blame you. Typically, you would only eat the stalk of a rhubarb plant, which is safe to eat both raw and uncooked, according to Richter.
The stalk contains no poisons, and you will normally not get sick eating it, though you'll likely want to sweeten or cook the stalk before eating it to make it more palatable. Rhubarb leaves, however, are a different story, and should NOT be consumed, unless you are looking for a nasty bout of food poisoning. Rhubarb leaves contain a lethal toxin known as oxalic acid. Although other plants contain oxalic acid in small amounts, rhubarb leaves contain a more potent dose of it, which makes them more toxic to humans.
True, you're unlikely to eat a lethal dose of oxalic acid in one sitting of crazy rhubarb leaf consumption, but the risk is definitely still there. You may also suffer from nausea or vomiting even when consuming lower doses of oxalic acid. So, to be on the safe side, do not consume rhubarb leaves.
But rhubarb stalks are perfectly fine to eat. There are endless ways that you can prepare rhubarb. The most common would be in a pie. Rhubarb is so closely associated with pie-making that it's earned a common nickname, according to Richter: the pie plant. Any rhubarb cookbook worth its salt will feature strawberry rhubarb pie , pairing the sweet flavor of the strawberry with the slightly tart flavor of the rhubarb.
It's also common to combine apples with rhubarbs. But what if you're hankering for some other creative ways to make use of your new favorite vegetable?
Richter suggests a rhubarb crisp , much like an apple crisp. Or, you can try one of Richter's favorite methods of preparing rhubarb, which involves cooking down rhubarb in a pan, combining it with sugar to taste, and cooling it down before spooning it over vanilla ice cream.
Other popular sweet rhubarb recipes include rhubarb cobbler, rhubarb bread , rhubarb cake , and rhubarb cookies. For savory rhubarb meals, you can try baked Brie with rhubarb chutney , rhubarb chicken , rhubarb fish and rhubarb soup.
And if you're looking to test out your brewing chops, you can even make a fine rhubarb mead. But if you're not up for cooking, you can always grab a raw rhubarb stalk and dip it in sugar for a crunchy snack, according to Richter, who enjoyed this treat as a child. I love Brazil Nuts and several years ago munched on them an entire weekend.
Really, I waaay over-indulged! By Sunday night I was very ill. Nauseated but not vomiting, sweating, aching all over. I crawled to my computer and entered the name of my primary food for two days. Brazil Nut Poisoning popped up. It took two more days to recover. BTW, the were professionally shelled and sold in a health food store. The Million Gardens Movement doesn't just help you grow a garden, we're also bringing gardens to kids across the country — and you can help.
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By Dan Nosowitz on August 27, Dan Nosowitz. Beware of these plants - or parts of these plants - which you probably eat and enjoy often! Jo Jakeman , Flickr. Sign up for your Modern Farmer Weekly Newsletter.
Notify of. Most Voted Newest Oldest. Inline Feedbacks. J S Carter. View Replies 2. View Replies R White. View Replies 5. Parsley — 1. Rhubarb leaves — 0. Spinach — 0. If rhubarb leaves are too toxic to eat because of the oxalic acid, why do we eat these other vegetables? Why are we not warned that carrots are as poisonous as rhubarb leaves, and that spinach is twice as poisonous?
The reality is that oxalic acid is not as poisonous as people believe. Some other foods that have high levels of oxalic acid include tea, coffee, draft beer, chocolate, berries and tofu.
Oxalic acid is the acid form of oxalate, the latter being more common in plants and animals. When gardeners talk about a concern for oxalic acid, they are usually talking about oxalate. Oxalate forms soluble salts with potassium, sodium and magnesium.
It forms insoluble salts with calcium and iron and these usually pass through our body without being absorbed. There are stories on the net about rhubarb leaves being eaten during the first world war and some people died from eating them. These stories may or may not be true. People may have died from something else and rhubarb was blamed. Or the leaves might have been sprayed with toxic pesticides which were in common use at time. Postmortems did not find oxalic crystals in the bodies suggesting that death was due to other reasons ref 3 and 4.
Plants make thousands of chemicals and many are toxic. Rhubarb makes anthraquinone glycosides which have been proposed as the likely candidate for deaths. The reality is that there are almost no reported deaths due to eating rhubarb leaves and the science on what is the most poisonous thing in the leaves is inconclusive.
But oxalic acid is not the culprit. I am still recovering from oxalate toxicity. Rhubarb has an insanely high amount of oxalates. Scientific investigation is showing more and more the full effects of oxalates on the body beyond just kidney stones.
If your healthcare practitioner is unaware of the new studies, please tell them to go to the experts in the field doing all the research to learn more:. If a safe daily level was mg, then things like carrots and spinach would be considered toxic. Yeay, thanks for this. From a similar background as yourself, Robert, this has been an unresolved topic in my head, awaiting the moment I could sit down and look into it.
But I also wondered if it was simply taking the blame for some other toxin or part of a joint operation where two separate chemicals work together to provide toxic impact.
Came across this and another article trying to work out if rhubarb pesticide was effective. Thanks for saving me some time and effort trying it out! It apparently has a much lower bioavailability when consumed in carrots and several other plants. Serious harm or serious discomfort can happen at a non fatal dose… As a young daughter of a friend of mine accidentally learned today. Two reasons. Now we need a nutrition fact sheet on rhubarb LEAF , anyone find one?
My county Yorkshire is the home of rhubarb in the UK. Your article is absolutely fascinating and a tribute to your inquiring mind. I will cross it off my list as a way to go. I lay the discarded leaves under the plant as mulch. The answer is to eat seasonally and in moderation. If you have a kidney condition and eat a lot of foods and drinks containing oxalic acid then you have to balance it with bio available calcium. Thanks Robert for a great post.
Great post! Not closely related at all! Both common in supermarkets. Why do I ask? Idiot botanists made massive phylogenetic trees that were WRONG because they simply bought stuff in the supermarket.
Science needs to be replicatable. I was derided at a BSA meeting where I pointed this out and have never been back. The red-faced idiots had to republish everything 8 years later.
You would have to find the original study to find out.
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