SamVimes

Any plastic sheeting that's easy to bend with or without heat could be a decent option that doesn't have high tool costs/skill requirements.

Depending on context, value is also often required. That can be in the form of nutrition, taste, flavor, preservation, or appearance. Take edible gold leaf, sugar free fairly nutrition free candies, spices, or hot sauce as examples. Their ingredients too, there's wood fiber derivatives used as fillers sometimes.

On the flip side, a gold wedding band can pass through a digestive tract quite safely, and is materially identical to edible gold leaf. Generally not considered edible though. A sheaf of printer paper? Not edible. Some small paper wrappings, often edible. Similarly a marble would pass through with no danger unless chewed. In many ways safer than a very strong hot sauce or some baking ingredients. And yet...

Edible is quite a wiggly term.

This is a delight piece of work, and well worth the research needed to make it.

Sometimes you have to draw a line in the sand about strange low-stakes terminology opinions you're passionate about.
I had a similarly passionate "what counts as a jumpsuit" debate not too long ago. The key difference in opinions was about sleeve length.

I will begrudgingly call a jumpsuit with short sleeves a jumpsuit, but once it has no sleeves at all it cannot hold the title anymore. Jumpsuits were designed as full body garments for jumping out of planes, fancy dress overalls just aren't jumpsuits, regardless of the slow bastardization of the term fashion has allowed. There's no great title for it, overalls shares a similar niche but not quite. Romper also comes close, but requires shorts, not full length legs.

Thanks for the rant.