[mapt]

They do not stay sharp.

On hard material and when overloaded, they will chip in large, unfixable chunks.

On softer material, they continuously sharpen their edges at a microscopic scale, fracturing away tiny chips as they're worn, to new glassy ceramic molecular edges. A well used ceramic blade becomes micro-serrated.

This sounds fantastic until you think about what is happening to the shards of hard glassy ceramic which briefly become part of your food before becoming part of your gastrointestinal tract.

[Zigurd]

How much mineral and metal grit does one consume on a regular basis? The ceramic material from a ceramic knife blade is, obviously from just looking at it, very small. I bet the amount of grit I've eaten from having a taste for raw oysters vastly outweighs what I'd get from a lifetime of using ceramic knives.

[mapt]

"grit" is usually spherical or close to it, because it has seen chemical and mechanical weathering. It is often calcium crystals of some type.

This is neither. These are long dagger shapes, significantly larger than a diatom, very hard, sharpened to a fine edge.

[tedk-42]

They aren't giving you 'microcuts' in your gut, any more than anything else.

Why? The force applied isn't in a uniform downward direction like you would with a knife.

[dyauspitr]

Grit is shaped differently than ultra sharp shards.

[Retric]

People can work up to eating fairly large shards of glass. Eating tiny bits of ceramic occasionally are unlikely to be an actual issue any more than ingesting a little bit of sand.

[tbrownaw]

> People can work up to eating fairly large shards of glass.

Sorry, what? Could you perhaps elaborate on this a bit?

[Retric]

Glass eating is a real thing with a surprising number of documented cases. In some cases it’s classified as Hyalophagia a form of Pica where people focus on glass, but it doesn’t necessarily have significant negative side effects. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pica_(disorder)

There’s also a magic trick where people eat sugar that’s very clear and looks like glass, but that’s a different thing.

[IAmBroom]

Your defense of how safe eating glass is, is to point out that mentally ill people sometimes do it?

[Retric]

No, I’m saying some mentally ill people consume vast quantities of glass and medical professionals are only concerned with the most extreme cases. It’s like saying the forces involved in a boxing match are a useful benchmark for brain trauma, on that scale a 6 month old infant punching you is so far below that benchmark you don’t need to worry about it.

Which means if you’re worried about consuming 1/100,000th as much it’s clearly not a big deal.

[qingcharles]

I saw this guy eat a Dell PC once:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Lotito

[malfist]

If your body didn't have ways to deal with sharp things you eat, we'd never eat fish due to the risk of pin bones. Microscopic shards of ceramic pose very little risk.

[nerpderp82]

Unsubstantiated claim has me convinced!

[account42]

Found the asbestos salesman.