[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Mark the Merciful:
Given how many possible combinations of protein and polysacharride (it's a long time since I've had to spell that...) there are, it's hard NOT to image a carbon-and-water based alien bio-chemical ecosystem that's like ours, but not like ours enough to be edible (or at least, nutritious when eaten...)

Ok, well what I was thinking was that here on earth there are lots of different combinations and we can still eat a lot of them. Of course in the wild maybe that's not so true. The closest I get to vegitation normally is the produce section of my supermarket, and almost everything there is edible.

Not to mention that we humans have been shaping our landscape for millenia, so even the "wild" plants and animals have been affected in ways that maybe we can't even know.

I still think it reasonable that some edible plant material could be found. Sure not everything would be, but not everything here is either. But the large number of different species present in your typical ecosystem would allow for some to be useable as food just from basic probability.

Geoschmo

P.S. Dogscoff, check your PM?