There are biochar aficionados and then there are the ‘cHardcore’ biochar aficionados. I used to think I was in the latter category, but apparently not. Recently the CHartist informed me that he consumes biochar with yogurt on a daily basis. Not long ago another biochar buddy told me that she is a char chewer AND has started to brush her teeth using biochar. Suddenly I felt that I just might be missing out on something really good here.
Although I am aware of many of the benefits of feeding biochar to animals, and I know that vitamin shops sell activated carbon for humans, for some reason I just hadn’t taken this next step on the char ladder. Could this one minor change to eating habits be one small step for mankind and one giant step for the planet? I admit that is too big a question for me to answer in one small blogpost but still something to ponder!
It’s not that I am a total char ingesting virgin mind you. The Biochar Knight was kind enough to bring biochar covered peanuts to the 2013 Biochar Symposium so I had a little nibble there (I’m very curious as to whether this combo would make nuts safe for those with peanut allergies!). But biochar in my yogurt? This morning I took the plunge (ok really I just dipped my toe in since I only ate one spoonful!) and I have to say, well, my puppy and cat loved it! Me, not so much. Perhaps it was the size of the biochar I used. The ones pictured in the (heavily doctored) pictured above show biochar made from cherry pits and boy were they crunchy. Next time I’ll have to try some biochar which is more powdery – like biochar made from coffee chaff.
Of course I had to google around to learn more about the benefits of ingesting charcoal or activated carbon. Although it is definitely not a new practice, one of the questions that occurred to me was whether it could help with the bioaccumulation of certain metals like mercury which seems to be increasingly prevalent in the air, in rivers and in some of the sea food that we eat. Or could it help purge the accumulation of the arsenic that is increasingly being ingested via apple juice or rice. Both of these seem to be in the news a lot more recently and few treatments seem to be available and the treatments that are available seem to be costly. How fantastic would it be if some kind of ‘Charfait’ product could sit along-side the pro-biotics that can be found more and more in our grocery stores?
