Belgium Warns Against Eating Christmas Trees After Ghent's Suggestion

Following a creative but potentially dangerous suggestion from Ghent, Belgium, the country's food safety agency has issued a warning against making edible products from Christmas trees, highlighting safety issues with harmful tree treatments and poisonous varieties.

Belgium’s federal food authority issued a peculiar advisory, urging citizens not to consume their Christmas trees after the city of Ghent proposed a creative recycling method: making "spruce needle butter" from leftover tree needles. The suggestion was made during a push for environmentally conscious practices on the city’s website. The post proudly proclaimed that converting your holiday tree into a tasty delicacy could reduce waste.

“It’s a breeze,” Ghent’s message claimed, explaining how to transform the needles into a culinary spread. However, the city also acknowledged potential health risks linked to certain evergreens. Specifically, yew, a type of evergreen, is known to be toxic, and trees treated with harmful pesticides or fire retardants pose additional dangers.

Despite Ghent's nod to Scandinavian culinary traditions, experts have disputed the claim of widespread usage of spruce needle butter among Scandinavian cooks. The country’s food agency wasted no time in countering the suggestion with serious cautionary advice against experimenting with such an unorthodox dish. As the holiday season wraps up, residents of Belgium are thus reminded to handle their festive evergreens with care—and to keep them off their plates.