system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Why is consuming activated charcoal harmless (and, in fact, encouraged for certain digestive issues), yet eating burnt (blackened) food is obviously bad-tasting and discouraged as harmful to one's health?
gpt
As similar as those two things may seem, they are quite different. Activated charcoal is generally pyrolyzed, meaning it is heated to high temperatures around 800 degrees C, under inert atmosphere. This process gives a product which is quite close to pure carbon. Non-carbon elements are almost completely burned out.

In contrast, burnt food stuffs often contain a range of byproducts from incomplete burning, most famously acrylamide. These compounds can be distasteful and carcinogenic, but are also responsible for some of those "smokey" and "grilled" flavors that many people enjoy, when subtly present.

If you would pyrolyze blackened food, it would become charcoal.