Our first 'cooked' food was bark, not meat?!?!?

[Polyvore]

do you mean rot the outside bark after I have eaten the inside bark?

[Dorothy]

That is great Dorothy, thanks!

Do you have any studies or anything on the compounds found in slippery elm?

This might be a place for you to start?
http://www.mdidea.com/products/proper/proper01903.html

Alive - that's an interesting idea breaking down the wood with mycelium. I would think the best way to do it would be to just seed a regular piece of wood with the outer bark intact like mushroom growers usually do and let the mushrooms wear away the bark eventually until you have the inner bark with the mycelium left and then see if that inner bark is edible and how it is different from fresh inner bark. I've always wanted to try growing mushrooms and will be part of an area of my garden in the shade one day as ground cover. I plan on inoculating at least one of my garden areas with an edible mushrooms - but also on the side of my house in the shade one day want to have a garden of some of those wonderful bark growing mushrooms like shitake and maitake growing. I have too many projects planned though. And on that note I should get out of this chair and head to the garden!

[Polyvore]

I just found out why barks are ketogenic!

Soluble fibre ferments into butyric acid and other short chain fatty acids, which are very strong ketone bodies... There might be some other mechanisms too, but I will learn more as I look deeper...