How was rhubarb found to be edible when it tastes bad raw? (Part 2)

One reader finds the idea that rhubarb isn’t palatable raw to be “totally bonkers” and another argues that we became accustomed to its sharp taste in the same way that we grew to love the taste of coffee

3 May 2023

Farmer harvesting organic rhubarb from her kitchen garden. Rhubarb can be harvested many times through the year. Photographed at an ???off grid??? home on the island of Moen in Denmark. Colour, horizontal format with some copy space. — ClarkandCompany/Getty Images

How was rhubarb found to be edible? It certainly isn’t palatable raw. (continued)

Guy Cox
Sydney, Australia

The idea that rhubarb “isn’t palatable raw” 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…