So I looked up “Sunflowers” in ‘Secrets of Wildflowers’ by Jack Sanders (great book, btw).
Sunflower buds, before flowering, are pretty tasty boiled & eaten with butter, vinegar & pepper ‘in a manner similar to artichokes’.
Sunflower petals have been used to make yellow dye.
Of course, the seeds are the most useful ... roasted, ground (meal/flour), make sunflower oil, source of linoleic acid, etc.
The seeds are also good for fattening chickens, hogs & milking cows.
The leaves have been used as a tobacco substitute & the flavor was like “a mild Spanish tobacco”.
The leaves are also used for animal fodder.
Stems & seedless heads, when dried, serve as litter in poultry houses.
The pith of the sunflower stalks “is one of the lightest natural substances known, having a specific gravity of 0.028, compared to 2.24 for cork.” It was used to stuff life preservers.
The stalks have also been burned in heaps to obtain large quantities of potash from the pith to use as fertilizer.
Early settlers, especially in Canada, fed it whole to livestock.
The National Sunflower Association has a recipe for “Sunflower Cookies” & other recipes:
https://www.sunflowernsa.com/health/Recipes/CookiesBarsDesserts/SunflowerCookies/
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The way food supplies seem to be headed, we may be eating sunflower parts, before it’s all over.
Sunflower hulls; Like Cedar or Walnut, the hulls have something in them to suppress plant growth so use for weed suppression, but not in compost! https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/composting/ingredients/sunflower-hulls-in-compost.htm