Every year after the New Year holidays, millions of Christmas trees find themselves in landfills or special processing points. However, in Belgium, some officials offered an unexpected alternative: why not eat them?
Last week, the recommendations of the Administration of the Belgian city of Gent on how to use Christmas trees after the holidays were spread in the media and social networks. The city launched a campaign that calls for locals to process their Christmas trees into useful products, in particular, to use coniferous trees. Officials even suggested several ways to use needles: cooking soups or producing oil, because the needles, as it turned out, is rich in vitamins, trace elements and essential oils. “In Scandinavia, this is a long -popular practice: you tease the needles from the branches, fill them with boiling water, then strain and dry on clean fabric. Dried needles can be used to prepare oil that can be greased on bread or toast, ”the gaunt said. However, despite the creative approach to the processing of Christmas trees, the publication caused indignation in the Federal Food Control Directorate (FASNK). In response to this recommendation, the organization has made a warning about possible health risks. It turned out that most Christmas trees are treated with pesticides for pest protection, and therefore it can be dangerous.
In the end, the Gent administration was forced to remove its posts from social networks and change the article's headline on the site with "Eat your Christmas tree" to a more cautious "Scandinavians eat their Christmas trees". Therefore, the issue of processing Christmas trees and their further use remained at the discretion of local citizens, although the reservations from experts remain on the agenda.
