AS  long as it is not directly toxic [and I have demonstrated
that at the age of 4 I was not harmed by deadly nightshade
berries by eating a handful - an act I would rather not attempt
right now ;-) ] pretty much everything can be eaten. The question
is if our bodies can digest enough of it to make it nutritionally
sensible. Hell, there are innumerable reports of people eating
everything from straw to shoe-leather to survive starvation long
enough to get a real food source. Flax is edible and a great
source of fiber - many low carbers use flax meal as a 'cream of
wheat' substitute, or add it to soy flour to make breads and
muffins. I have a 1 lb bag of fresh flax seeds living in my
freezer right now ;-)

In my youth hanging out in farm fields and woods in the spring,
summer and fall I have eaten lots of different vegetation - raw
field corn, just ripened oats [very tasty!] wheat berries, all
sorts of fruits, most anything growing in the garden right off
the plant [garden peas are incredibly yummy, as are green beans.]
I don't really see why people think that raw grain is inedible.
How would we have learned that it was edible cooked if we hadn't
tried it raw first? Chances are that the first breads were a
result of trying to dry pounded raw grains by a fire, or somebody
had pounded raw grains to feed a child and spilled some on a hot
rock by a fire and eaten it instead of wasting it. Many forms of
grain would have been gathered by our ancestors before starting
to farm - how else would they ave gotten the idea of trying to
plant them to have a steady supply? Would you just plant
something that you found in the woods if you didn't know whether
it was edible or not?

I would consider taking a good book of survival grazing [one of
the outward bound books, or one of ewell gibbon's books] out into
the woods and fields and see what instinctive grazing you can get
into ;-)
margali
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The Quote Starts Here:
> my thought was that we are not suited to pick flax, chew it, and
> digest it.  thanks for correcting me.