Posted: 9/23/2008 1:15:18 AM EDT
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I've read that pine needle tea can be used to supplement your diet for vitamin C. I'm coming at this from a SHTF angle (scurvy), since I've found vitamin C to be lacking in in my food preps. I have citrus trees planted but would like a backup just in case of a freeze or disease. Most of what I've read refers to White Pine as a source but can you use "yellow pine" or Slash Pine for making this tea. Anyone know? |
You will need to be pretty desperate to drink this.  ETA: You live in Florida, I would think vitamin C would be the last thing you will have a hard time getting. 
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The last campout I did in Ocala. we did the following: 1) Made Pine Needle tea, boiled water with the needles in the cup. 2) Boiled some prickly pears and roasted over fire, cleaning them is the bitch part. But these actually didnt taste too bad. You cook them up to where they look like dried apples. 3) Cleaned and cut up some Water lily roots, cooked on open fire like potatoe. Everyone of those items is really good for you. But everyone of those items tastes like crap, like in the worst way. You want to know what they taste like, take a bite of an orange peel or banana peel, its about the same. |
You can also chew green pine needles, just enough to break them up and get the juice out, the rest is fibrous and not digestible. Tastes acidic, like a lime aid...like citric acid  I think chewing the needles tastes better than steeping them in tea. The first time I had the tea it tasted like pepper, yuck. |
Yea don't confuse "safe" to eat with "good" to eat. You can eat multiple parts of the mighty cat tail, but you'd have a hard time making it "good". Now watercress, nettles, and dandelion greens are a clear different matter, they are "good." |
| I thought onions had a ton of vitamin C in them, and there are a couple other veggies that are pretty darn high. You should get this. Very good guide to stuff you can eat in the wild. |
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White pine needles are better chewed than added to tea. Keep in mind, Vitamin C's enemy is heat and oxygen, so to hot water with your tea and it's useless for Vitamin C. Also note there are LOTS of ways to get it aside from citrus or pine, including easily grown (in a small pot) herbs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_C#Natural_and_artificial_dietary_sources Note, also liver sources from animals. Sure, if you are pinned down by zombie gunfire and only have pine to work with... while you wait for those sweet headshots... Also, my vitamin bottles expire two years from now. Maybe just get enough for a couple years and start rotating them as part of your normal diet. A balanced diet with some fresh foods in it should pretty much automatically get you enough to not get scurvy. That was something that sailors at risk from specially preserved foods i.e. dried fish would get. Not someone eating normal local (pre-industrial knowledge of vitamins) diets would get. If you are forced into a bunker for 2 years and can't maneuver or start growing stuff... you are screwed and should plan on shooting your way to safety anyway. Pine needles are not a bad thing to chomp on while wandering the woods though, so might as well do it. |
