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There are records of lichens being used as food by many different human cultures across the world. Lichens are eaten by people in North America, Europe, Asia, and Africa, and perhaps elsewhere. Often lichens are merely famine foods eaten in times of dire needs, but in some cultures lichens are a staple food or even a delicacy.

OOh Lichen, yum, I have a hard time not snacking when I'm tree pruning

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For example, the adrenals to cure scurvy or other ailments. We do a direct analysis of adrenals, and find all kinds of therapeutic things in there. We conclude, that's why they chose to eat adrenals. No, cuz they never did any kind of direct analysis. The reason they chose to eat adrenals is empirical, through trial and error, they ate it, looked at the effects, drew conclusions.

I tend to believe that at some point, we had some intuitive sense about what we should be eating. So for instance, the body senses a deficiency in certain vitamins that are high in organ meat, we taste organ meat, it tastes "more-ish", we eat the organ meat. Body needs protein, you crave an Angus steak (based on previous tasting of a steak, and how the body reads it). Uncivilized animals seem to operate this way, why wouldn't we before the advent of modern foods and advertising.

I also tend to believe that we had (like animals) an intuitive sense of what would poison us (before refined sugar). Certain compounds would send an immediate signal that this was not edible. Now that we are eating "parmesan cheese" made out of wood fiber, we've completely lost the ability to pick up on those subtle signals. And of course if you are starving, you'll eat just about anything in desperation. So if our bodies are "starving" for nutrition, and we're just filling our stomach with crap, not getting the vital nutrients we need, then we'll just keep eating to try and fill that void--even if it should signal as "poison".