So, in Book Two, Section II, there's a line which, knowing Bren's experiences with cuisine, is... well, it's very something:

There was, in their reliance on food from orbit, a most pressing reason to identify grasses, and dissect seeds, and figure out their processes and their chemistry, where it was like Earth's and where it was different: ecologically different, the Guild had said, probably full of toxins, not to meddle with.

But the Guild was going to be wrong on that one, if the results held—God, the tests were looking good, down to the chemical level where it really counted: there were starches and sugars they recognized, no toxins in the seeds that, the Phoenix histories informed them, could be processed and cooked in ways human beings had done for a staple food for thousands of years.

I really, really wonder when the humans first discovered that plant life, animal life, and atevi food and drinks were the All Alkaloids All the Time Channel. Was it the first meal Ian shared with Manadgi? I mean, if Bren had to worry about not being poisoned by accident, Ian didn't even know that there were foods that would be deadly poison rather than delectable tea. (On the other hand, Ian might have tested everything to make sure he could eat it...)