Acorns: Food or Folly

Question: Can Humans Eat Acorns?

Background:

It's last fall in the the Northern Hemisphere and squirrels, red, brown and funny ones with banded tails, are scampering around bloated and fat, ready for the winter. Since these lovable critters seem to eat nothing but acorns, it seems that maybe humanity is wasting itself running back and forth to McDonalds when we could be eating the pounds of yummy acorns right out of our yards. Only one problem: Are acorns edible?

So What's the Answer:

We did a little poking around and found that not only are acorns edible, they probably pre-date grains as a source of flour. Early Northern European cultures gathered, cooked and ground acorns as flour. There are two catches:

Catch 1:

Acorns are very high in tannic acid, the acid used to soften leather, and simply cracking them open and eating them is nasty tasting and bad for you. In order to make acorns edible, you have to boil them not once but twice. The acid boils out (save that water for your leather working projects) then you can toast, roast or grind your acorns into whatever form you would like.

Catch 2:

The squirrels seem to have a corner on the whole acorn market and pissing off squirrels is a bad idea. To understand why we here at the Dumb Facts Exploratory Committee (DFEC) live in mortal fear of squirrels, please watch this short, educational video we found online in which a fun, cuddly squirrel tears the punk ass out of a snake:

Conclusion:

While acorns may be a fun and archaic food source, we choose to view them as the rightful bounty of our noble squirrel overlords. (Hey, he really tore that snake up okay?)