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January 21, 2007 10:51 PM   Subscribe

two part question: Can I ingest cellulace by eating assloads of termites or would my digestive system break it down into its base parts before it hits my blood stream? Second part - If i can get it into my body in a usable form, about how many would I have to eat before I could derive nutritional benefit from eating grass/paper/wood?
posted by Tryptophan-5ht to Food & Drink (13 answers total) 4 users marked this as a favorite
 
Cellulase is a protein; unless its conformation protects it from denaturing, the acid in the stomach and base in the duodenum would denature it, and the peptidases (like trypsin) secreted by your stomach and pancreas would break it up into its component peptides and amino acids.

There's a reason cows have 4 stomachs -- cellulose is a pain to digest, I would imagine. You wouldn't have to eat much; your body could use the carbs and amino acids just fine.
posted by gramcracker at 11:47 PM on January 21, 2007 [1 favorite]


I assume you're referring to cellulose here, which our bodies do to digest due to our inability to break beta acetal bonds. It would pass through your intestines as fiber and, AFAIK, never enter your bloodstream. While the bacteria in termites' guts can break the beta acetal bonds, any cellulose present in their bodies would pass through yours just as would cellulose from any other source. You wood derive nutritional benefit from any number of termites you ate, but it would be due to the energy (mostly fat and protein) in the termites' bodies that they derived from cellulose metabolism. Seems they are quite energy-dense, too: per 100g, termites provide 613Cal and 14.2g protein versus beef at 219Cal and 27.3g protein. The disparity is due to fat content. Data from May R. Berenbaum's Bugs in the System: Insects and Their Impact on Human Affairs
posted by chudder at 11:51 PM on January 21, 2007


do not digest
posted by chudder at 11:53 PM on January 21, 2007


And on further search I realize you were probably asking about cellulase, an enzyme that breaks down cellulose; in termites, beta-Glucosidase and endo-beta-1,4-glucanase. Sorry about that, and gramcracker has it right.
posted by chudder at 12:02 AM on January 22, 2007


chudder, the poster is referring to cellulase, which is the enzyme that breaks down cellulose. The question is whether you could ingest this enzyme and have it be an effective means of digesting cellulose.

The answer is yes, but with some caveats. First of all, most of the cellulase will be degraded by proteases or denatured by pH, so you'll have to take a fairly large amount for it to have any effect. This situation is very analagous to lactose-intolerance, and there are lactase supplements available to help lactose-intolerant people. (Lactaid is one brand, IIRC). In molecular terms, they do contain a huge amount of enzyme.

By eating enough termites, you could also conceivably seed the cellulase-producing bacteria into your digestive tract, and they could help out your digestion. With lactose-intolerance, one of the treatments involves slowly building up the amount of dairy you consume, to help establish colonies of lactose-loving bacteria in your gut. This sort of thing might also be possible with the right kind of cellulose-digesting bacteria.

As for nutritional benefits: First of all, I can almost guarantee that you currently have some microbes digesting cellulose in your gut. The portion that they can break down, compared to the vast amount of bulk fiber sliding through your gut, is very small though. In order to subsist primarily on cellulose, humans would need some major adapatations - something like the four stomachs of the cow, to slow things down and allow lots of time for microbial action.
posted by chrisamiller at 12:13 AM on January 22, 2007


humans would need some major adapatations - something like the four stomachs of the cow, to slow things down and allow lots of time for microbial action.

Some of the other tricks needed by herbavore animals to digest cellulose might be possible without major surgery though.
Eg, cows, in addition to their four stomachs, have to chew their cud. So after eating your grass and giving it some digestion time, you could provoke vomiting into a (clean) bucket, then re-masticate and eat your vomit, thus lengenthing the amount of time it spends in the digestive tract. Um, yuk. :)

Likewise, many herbavores that lack four stomachs need to eat their excrement (on the first pass) to give the stuff the necessary time in the digestive tract. I guess that that's, um, possible for a human to do, but I imagine there are serious heath risks involved... not to mention other major unpleasantness :-/
posted by -harlequin- at 12:30 AM on January 22, 2007


Yeah, the trick is really in getting a cellulase-producing bacterium to a) adhere to your gut (at a spot of suitable pH), or b) reproduce fast enough in your gut that it's OK if it doesn't adhere. And no, I don't know particular biochemical how-tos for either of those. Good luck.
posted by eritain at 5:13 AM on January 22, 2007


You might have a little more luck using viral-mediated gene transfer to induce cellulase expression in your GI tract.
posted by exogenous at 7:17 AM on January 22, 2007


Clearly, the bionic stomach tech sector is about to EXPLODE. Get in now!

Seriously, though, great question.
posted by mkultra at 7:19 AM on January 22, 2007


I wonder if you could build an implantable bioreactor to do this.
posted by delmoi at 7:45 AM on January 22, 2007


Eat termites? As in, the bugs? Perhaps it's because I just saw the episode of House two minutes ago, but I'm pretty sure that's a bad idea.

Termites contain Naphthalene, a toxin.
posted by jesirose at 11:09 AM on January 22, 2007


We humans already have a splendid method of eating cellulose. We call 'em 'cattle'. I like mine medium-rare.

Seriously, that is how humans (and all the other top-of-the-food-chain types) get nutrition from hard-to-digest cellulose. We eat something that has already digested it.

Goats, as another example, are pretty efficient.
posted by davereed at 12:37 PM on January 22, 2007


Surely, grass and termites in a blender = cellulose smoothy?
posted by greytape at 2:17 PM on January 22, 2007


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