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If Fremen ride them, couldn't they also eat them?
There some passages from Kynes about the ecology of Dune that dive deep into the biomechanics of worms, but maybe I am missing something.
Someone that has made the change could feasibly eat a sandworm sandwich and not be poisoned. Alternatively, it could be a vector for the change.
The Dune Encyclopedia strongly implies that sandworm flesh is inedible and almost certainly poisonous.
The resulting electrons passed to an electron acceptor believed to be a cupri-cyanide compound, the reduced form of which accumulated in the worm body.
and
Our knowledge of the metabolism of the sandworm is necessarily incomplete, not only because of the size of the creature, but also because of the presence of many acidic compounds in the worm body. Besides the organic acids, concentrated hydrochloric and sulfuric acids have also been detected. In some way the living worm buffered itself against these acids, but once the worm died, the body was rapidly digested by them.
While eating something that contains poisons isn't necessarily impossible, it's hard to imagine what processes you could use to remove cyanide and highly corrosive and toxic acids from the meat before eating it.
