You can't eat dollars. They have no industrial use.
You can't eat gold. It has very little industrial use (unless, of course, when there's blood in the street, those with product to sell will want gold so they can give their sweetie a nice birthday present).
Gold and, for that matter money, might as well be tulip bulbs.
Just because some in the past put some mystical value in gold doesn't mean it's true today. In fact I think that salt was a far better form of specie.
Tulip bulbs don't exactly have a multi-thousand-year history of value, and now that transportation makes a trip to the beach a simple matter, salt doesn't quite have the rarity thing going for it any more.
Hey Tex, Gold has held its purchasing power for 5,000 years. There is nothing else on this planet that has been such a store of value, nothing.