60 points

Depends on the exact composition but most lavas are going to be way more viscous than honey.

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43 points

Does “very thick” mean nothing to you?

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10 points

So… Treacle?

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2 points

Ohh, wow, you solved a long-standing mystery to me! I’ve been listening to a lot of discworld novels and could not figure out what “treacle mine road” was supposed to translate to. Now that I know the spelling I could finally look it up. Thanks! ❤️

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1 point
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43 points

You can eat anything once. If your brave enough.

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35 points

When does something count as being eaten - once you swallow it? I don’t think you’d succeed at that with lava.

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8 points

You’d be able to taste it which I think would fulfill the requirements of knowing its texture.

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3 points

pretty sure the taste buds die before they can send their report to the brain.

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19 points

Just shove an insulated hose through your esophagus and out your bunhole and pass lava through it

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8 points

Holy mackerel

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3 points

Silicon coated fiberglass should work. Just make sure the cuts are clean or you’re gonna get itchy.

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16 points

In fact, lava is so nutritious it will fill you up for the rest of your life!

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34 points

I’ve had it in cake form. Pretty good.

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6 points

I choose to believe you’re taking about having pica, not eating a molten chocolate cake.

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1 point

you’re missing out

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32 points

The viscosity of most lava is about that of ketchup, roughly 10,000 to 100,000 times that of water

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lava#:~:text=The viscosity of most lava,100%2C000 times that of water.

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46 points
*

Alright so I got curious. For the non people-who-know-what-viscosity-is-measured-in people out there, viscosity is measured in centipoise, which is 1/100 poise. Water is 1 centipoise, hence why we use centipoise over poise. Don’t ask me any more than that because I have no idea what I’m talking about.

Lava is anywhere between 10,000 - 1,000,000 cP. According to this chart, there are many edible things that fall within that viscosity. Now lava is very hot, so if we’re going to simulate the experience of eating lava in a safe way with edible ingredients, we need something that is that viscous at high temperatures. This page (PDF warning) says that 140f (60c) is the highest temp food can be without burning you immediately.

There isn’t much on the above chart that is both edible and has its viscosity measured around those temps. The most promising one was chocolate, which is about 25,000 cP. But it doesn’t have a temperature listed. According to lived experience and my ass, melted chocolate has a pretty consistent viscosity at various temperatures, making it a suitable stand in for molten lava.

However, viscosity isn’t the end all be all of a lava eating experience. Lava is rocks and rocks are dense. Lava also looks like it would be sticky. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find anything on the chart that matches the density of lava that is still edible (2600-2800 kg/m^3 for those who were curious). And there is also no unit of measurement for stickiness. But google tells me that some lava is sticky like peanut butter. So our edible lava needs to be considerably dense (thus, chewy) and sticky.

With these things in mind (viscosity, chewiness, and stickiness), I think the best edible stand ins for molten lava would be hot peanut butter (250,000 cP), with honorable mentions being rice pudding (10,000 cP @100C), and hot toothpaste (70,000 cP @40C). Color them bright orange and maybe throw in some Carolina reaper for authenticity and baby you’ve got some edible lava going

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12 points

hot orange toothpaste with carolina reaper? michelin star

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2 points

mount stHelens star

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1 point

It’s called molecular gastronomy and it’s art, m’kay?

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9 points

That seems suspiciously low viscosity. When we see lava running down a volcano it’s already cooling down, and is much more viscous. I think that’s the image OP has in mind when thinking of honey. Lava with the viscosity of warm chocolate would be lava fresh out of a volcano.

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3 points

If we use hot peppers to stimulate the nerve endings sensitive to “hot”, then we can probably cool down the chocolate such that it has the desired viscosity.

Melted hot pepper chocolate with orange coloring, that would sell!

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2 points

well check how many things on that list are 1M cP

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4 points

Delicious comment

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4 points

now is that kinematic or dynamic viscosity?

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3 points

Idk. I’m an EMT with two semesters of community college under my belt lol. I was just googling and correlating things that I have no practical knowledge of

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22 points

And it’s quite heavy, being rock and all. So imagine very weighty honey.

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12 points

Yeah. You know all those is movies and stuff where people sink in lava?

Nope. It’s too dense. You’d be so buoyant you’d just stay on top.

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2 points

Who you calling buoyant?

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2 points
*

Hey, asshole, don’t you tell me how dense I am, I’m an AMERICAN

jumps into lava for freedom and sinks

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2 points

I always thought that it just looks like they sink because their bodies are instantly vaporized at the point where they meet the lava.

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1 point
*

I must not watch the right things, I don’t recall ever seeing media of a person sinking in lava. The closest was the Terminator being immersed in molten metal, but he was probably more dense than the molten metal being made of room temperature metal

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1 point

Gollum at the end of Lord of the Rings. Apart from that I’m not sure

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