After observing a Sunflower “flower” head up close the other day, it got me wondering if the Sunflower was edible. So after doing a little research this is what I came up with.
Food Uses of Sunflower
The edible sunflower seeds can be eaten raw, cooked, roasted, or dried and ground for use in bread or cakes, as a snack. The seeds and the roasted seed shells have been used as a coffee substitute. Oil can be extracted and used for cooking and soap making. Yellow dyes have been made from the flowers, and black dyes from the seeds. The residue oil cake has been used as cattle and poultry feed, and high quality silage can be made from the whole plant. The buoyant pith of the stalk has been used in the making of life preservers. —-from the Flower Expert Site
The edible sunflower seeds can be eaten raw, cooked, roasted, or dried and ground for use in bread or cakes, as a snack. The seeds and the roasted seed shells have been used as a coffee substitute. Oil can be extracted and used for cooking and soap making. Yellow dyes have been made from the flowers, and black dyes from the seeds. The residue oil cake has been used as cattle and poultry feed, and high quality silage can be made from the whole plant. The buoyant pith of the stalk has been used in the making of life preservers. —-from the Flower Expert Site
Cultivation and uses
To grow well, sunflowers need full sun. They grow best in fertile, moist, well-drained soil with a lot of mulch. In commercial planting, seeds are planted 45 cm (1.5 ft) apart and 2.5 cm (1 in) deep. Sunflower “whole seed” (fruit) are sold as a snack food, after roasting in ovens, with or without salt added. Sunflowers can be processed into a peanut butter alternative, Sunbutter. In Germany, it is mixed together with rye flour to make Sonnenblumenkernbrot (literally: sunflower whole seed bread), which is quite popular in German-speaking Europe. It is also sold as food for birds and can be used directly in cooking and salads. Sunflower oil, extracted from the seeds, is used for cooking, as a carrier oil and to produce margarine and biodiesel, as it is cheaper than olive oil. A range of sunflower varieties exist with differing fatty acid compositions; some ‘high oleic’ types contain a higher level of healthy monounsaturated fats in their oil than even olive oil. The cake remaining after the seeds have been processed for oil is used as a livestock feed. Sunflower heads are sold as snacks in China.—–Wikipedia
