It was a cold morning in mid-April when we ran out of food. We sat on tree stumps at four thousand feet above sea level and watched as Mom rummaged through our shabby backpacks in search of something edible. After several minutes, she managed to round up a half-empty bottle of olive oil, several handfuls of rolled oats, a few cloves of garlic, and a small container of sea salt. We were four days into our journey and had to hike another fifty miles to collect our next food parcel in the closest middle-of-nowhere town in Southern California.
Earlier that year, in January of 1998, my parents decided that as part of our adventurous lifestyle and home-schooling experience, we would hike the entire Pacific Crest Trail, which stretches from Mexico to Canada along the West Coast. Our team consisted of my mom, dad, sister, cousin (who was visiting from Russia for a year to get a well-rounded American experience), and me. None of us had hiked much, but what we lacked in practice we made up for in drive. My mother spearheaded the idea of a six-month, 2,650-mile walk after she read a book about the adventures one thru-hiker had on the Appalachian Trail. She decided on the Pacific Crest Trail because it was more wild and had less traffic than its East Coast sibling. At first my father was not too keen on such a long trek, but my mom’s determination quickly appealed to his adventurous side and he fell in line. There is a saying in Russia, “The man is the head of the family, while the woman is the neck, and the head cannot turn without the neck.” As the neck, my mother steered our Chevy Astro van into a parking lot in front of a Play It Again Sports store in Escondido, California. There we equipped ourselves with top-of-the-line used backpacking gear in preparation for the journey ahead.
Once each of us had a rucksack and sleeping bag, my mother initialized phase two—food planning and management. Since we could not carry six months’ worth of food on our backs, we had to plan how and what to eat in advance. According to the Pacific Crest Trail guidebook, the trail intersects with a small town every sixty to one hundred miles. A backpacker could visit a small grocery store or pick up a general-delivery package full of grub in town. Our finite vagabond budget made it clear that shopping for food along the way was out of the question. My parents invested all the money they had in bulk food, which we repackaged into twenty-six resupply parcels. Because we had little overnight backpacking expertise, we made an educated guess as to how much food five hungry hikers could consume. Our average resupply parcel contained roughly five pounds of rolled oats, six dates per person per day, assorted dried fruit, mixed nuts, sea vegetables, an eight-ounce bottle of oil, random seasonings, and a few other essentials. Once I had wrapped each parcel with a thick layer of tape, my parents shipped them off. Then we packed our rucksacks and had a friend drop us off at the trailhead on the Mexican border.
Within a week of our April 3 departure, we realized that our calculations were off. Each food parcel we collected lasted four to five days instead of the intended week. Hiking hungry was not only more difficult, but less enjoyable. At the rate we were running out of food, we would almost certainly not make it to Canada. So there we were, at the top of the world without food. No one said much as my father rationed out the last few spoonfuls of oats and olive oil. Group morale was low, and quitting our adventure seemed inevitable. Our stomachs grumbled; we understood that if we were to succeed, we needed to acquire more food. Before we took off from our campsite that day, my mother ventured down to the nearby creek to wash her face. As she knelt on the sandy bank, she noticed a plant that looked a lot like celery. She picked it and brought it back to camp for further investigation. Though the stalks of the wild plant were thinner than store-bought celery, they looked and smelled the same. We knew better than to eat unknown things, but hunger and curiosity got the best of us. My father decided to take the first nibble to see if it caused any negative reactions. After several minutes of chewing, the verdict was that it was indeed edible. We picked all of the remaining stalks near the river and stashed them in our packs for dinner.
When we made it into town, my parents bought a used copy of Edible Wild Plants by Lee Allen Peterson at a local bookstore. It noted wild celery, as well as many other wild foods, as being edible and readily available. Flipping through its pages, we got the impression that nature was full of food. We had a family meeting that night to discuss how to proceed. My parents asked each hiker to share his or her concerns in order to determine whether we should continue hiking the trail. The unanimous decision was to attempt the next section of the path while foraging for wild edibles. If this did not work, we would abandon the Pacific Crest Trail.
Like all new things, venturing into the world of foraging was intimidating and awkward. During our downtime, we surveyed our surroundings and tried to identify the flora around us. When we found a potential match, someone from our expedition would eat a small quantity while the others observed. If the eater experienced no negative side effects after fifteen minutes, we deemed the vegetation fair game. We familiarized ourselves with plants such as miner’s lettuce, wild mustard, wild onion, mallow, sorrel, chervil, watercress, and clover. Adding these edibles to our meals allowed us to conserve our prepackaged food. Our food shortages stopped. And not worrying about going hungry allowed us to relax and enjoy our time in nature.
Furthermore, because wild food grew in such abundance along the trail, it soon became our staple. By trail’s end, 60 to 80 percent of our diet was composed of wild edibles. All of the new plants we used in our meals were fresh and extremely nutritious. Our diets grew in diversity and led to improved health. We were astonished how much we enjoyed the flavor of our food and always looked forward to the next meal. In short, discovering wild food enabled us to successfully finish our hike.
Upon completion of the Pacific Crest Trail in September of 1998, we all marveled at how wonderful we felt. Our endurance and energy levels were incredible. Our complexions were clear and our spirits soared. My cousin, sister, and I each gained eleven pounds of pure muscle, while my mother and father burned through the extra fat they had carried prior to the hike. All of these positive changes were indicators that we had been living a well-rounded, healthy lifestyle on the path.
Hiking the Pacific Crest Trail was the beginning of my exploration of wild edibles. Since the age of thirteen, I have continued learning how advantageous eating free weeds can be and have maintained a vigorous curiosity for foraging. Through this book, I would like to pass on to you my excitement about edible weeds. I hope that this book will plant a seed in you that will grow into a deep appreciation for plants. If I accomplish what I set out to do, you will gain from my stories and experiences and go on to safely forage and enjoy wild food on a regular basis.
My primary motivation for putting words on paper is to inspire people to live more sustainably and healthfully by integrating wild edibles into their lives. Nature’s fare gives us the incredible ability to save thousands of dollars on groceries and instead eat what nature offers for free. Moreover, this food is unbelievably nutritious and rivals the best, most expensive nutritional supplements on the market today. Over the last fifteen years, my travels have introduced me to tens of thousands of people suffering from a variety of health problems. Many of them experienced tremendous relief by regularly including foraged foods into their diet. Perhaps, after reading this book, you too will be able to tap into the benefits and healing powers of wild plants.
As a secondary motivation for writing this book, I aim to dispel the fear that prevents the vast majority of people from foraging. I would like to deconstruct the notion that foraging is dangerous and illustrate how pleasant it can be when done properly. Today’s media is full of movies and news reports about people who suffered ill fates when they mistook poisonous plants for edible ones. Many of these accounts are inaccurately portrayed and/or dramatized by Hollywood producers to induce emotion. Such scary stories have duped us into believing that we put our lives at risk each time we eat something that’s not FDA approved. Yet what I learned in practice is completely opposite—eating wild food can be as safe as visiting the produce section of a grocery store. Plant poisonings are rare and can be avoided with common sense and proper know-how.
I am not a botanist, and I don’t claim to hold any accredited certifications in the study of plants. I am a regular guy who recognized the value of wild edibles at an early age. I have been eating foraged food for over half my life and continue to thrive on what I collect. In the pages that follow, I aim to challenge you to forage. I will do my best to balance my own experiences with the latest research on wild edibles. My hope is that this will give you well-rounded, safe guidelines to edible plants. May you find value in my words and joy in the practice of collecting nature’s free food. I am excited to embark on this journey with you!
One of the first questions you may have for this book is, “Does it cover plants that are relevant to my area?” Yes, it likely does. In my books, classes, and smart phone applications, I aim to cover edible plants that are available not just in North America, but in other parts of the world. Thus, people from Colorado and Arizona, as well as Europe, Asia, Russia, Australia, and even Iceland, should be able to find at least some of my information pertinent. I won’t deny that I have a strong Oregon bias. I have lived in the Northwest for most of my life and the bulk of my plant knowledge has been acquired here. Therefore, this book might be extra insightful for an Oregonian. However, if you live elsewhere, specifically in freshwater, grassland, or forest regions, I promise that most, if not all, of the information in this book will be applicable to your area.
I have done my fair share of traveling and to date have visited thirty-one countries. As a wild food lover, I make a point to learn about local ecology wherever I go. My adventures have taught me that there is a lot of overlap among edible plant life throughout the world. Many of the plants I have come to know in Oregon grow abundantly abroad. For example, I have harvested dandelions in Germany, Thailand, Fiji, Russia, and Bolivia. One explanation for this may be that our planet is comprised of only six major climate regions, or “biomes”: freshwater, marine, desert, forest, grassland, and tundra (University of California Museum of Paleontology 2007). While the earth is incredibly diverse, each of the six biomes share similar properties, such as temperature, weather, animal population, and vegetation (Campbell 1996). Thus, a European, South American, and Canadian might be able to forage the same wild edibles if they all live in a similar environment.
Many wild edible books classify plants by their region. Some even have diagrams that depict a very specific area where a plant supposedly grows. While this can be helpful, it can also be misleading. Plants are living organisms that have the ability to travel. By attaching their seeds to animals and humans or by spreading them via the wind or through other ingenious techniques, plants can propagate offspring globally. That is why you can find native European dandelions growing around the world. Some of my favorite wild edible books were written for New Zealand, Alaska, and the eastern United States and supposedly have no relevance for the Pacific Northwest. Yet, in practice, I have found them to be very helpful. I have spent countless hours compiling plants for this book that are common in many parts of the world. It is my hope that you will find it useful wherever you reside. To illustrate this further, I would like to offer a story:
A few years ago I was invited to visit Australia to do a series of lectures on wild edibles and green smoothies. The organizers told me that people wanted a hands-on course that would take them out in the field. I was nervous, because I had never been to Australia and had no idea what grew there. Being young and ambitious, I went in spite of my hesitations, thinking that if I couldn’t find any plants to talk about, I would refund everyone’s money and go home.
On the night before my first class in Perth, I was invited to go salsa dancing with my hosts. I agreed, without really knowing what I was getting myself into. On that particular weekend, Perth was hosting the International Red Bull Air Races, and the streets were teeming with people. After several hours of dancing in a packed nightclub, I got separated from my hosts and was left to fend for myself. At one in the morning I decided to make my way home. I had my host family’s address in my pocket and figured that I could hail a cab to take me there. This plan didn’t work out. There were thousands of other people with the same idea, and the lines for taxis were miles long.
My hosts lived twenty miles outside of Perth, which limited my options for getting home. I decided to get a hotel room for the night and sort things out in the morning. Again, the air races made this impossible. Every room in every motel, hotel, and hostel was booked. Then I recalled that the railroad tracks ran from the city center to within a few miles of my host’s house. Not knowing what else to do, I took a deep breath and started walking. It turned out that this was the best thing that could’ve happened to me. The tracks were lit by street lamps, which illuminated the plants beneath them. For six glorious hours, I walked and laughed out loud as I recognized plants I was familiar with back home.
When I walked in the door of my hosts’ house at seven the next morning, I found them on the phone with the local police filing a missing-persons report. They were startled but relieved to see me. When I told them where I had been and what I had done, their worried faces only got more serious. “You walked twenty miles?” they exclaimed. I told them about my night and assured them that I wasn’t too tired to teach my wild edible class that day.
COMMON NAMES VERSUS LATIN NAMES
Naming plants can be problematic. I am always tempted to refer to wild edibles solely by their common name (the local name given to a particular plant species, such as lamb’s quarters, dandelion, or purslane), because these titles seem friendlier and are easy to remember. But common names vary depending on whom I’m talking to and what country or region I’m in. Thus, common names can lead to confusion and frustration.
On the other hand, Latin names (the names used by scientists for the genus and species of a plant) remain the same the world around and are a foolproof way to communicate specific plants and plant species. Why not use Latin names, right? The drawback to this approach is that few people outside the science community are familiar with these naming structures. Latin names are long and hard to pronounce, and sometimes scare people away from the main objective—harvesting and eating delicious wild edibles.
In an effort to create a book that reaches out to a broad scope of people, I have decided to use both. I mostly refer to plants by their common names, but offer the Latin alternative for those interested. When I need to make note of a specific plant, I use the scientific naming system to avoid misunderstanding.
During my first trip to New Zealand, I was stuck in an airplane for twenty hours while crossing the Pacific Ocean. I decided to kill some time by making a list of as many advantages to wild edibles as I could think of. As I brainstormed, I tried to give every thought an equal chance, no matter how silly it seemed at first. Within forty-five minutes I scribbled two full pages of benefits. In this section I would like to elaborate on the top reasons for foraging.
Mint, an online budgeting website, claims that the average American spends roughly $581.46 on food and drinks each month. According to Mint’s aggregated user data, a typical grocery store trip costs $41.97, while a meal in a restaurant averages around $28.47 (2011). Additionally, the United States Department of Agriculture reports that the Consumer Price Index for food increased 0.8 percent between 2009 and 2010 and is forecast to increase 3.5 percent in 2012 (United States Department of Agriculture 2012a). Food is expensive and continues to rise in cost. Since I value healthy food and fresh produce, my grocery expenditure is substantially more than that of the average person. During the cold months when wild edibles are not available, my weekly trip to the health food store costs me between $80 and $100. Some months it is difficult to spend so much money on groceries, but eating good food is my form of health insurance, and thus I continue doing it.
On the other hand, wild food is plentiful, free, and available to everyone. During the spring, summer, and fall months, I embrace nature’s gifts and gratefully welcome them into my belly. Over the last five years, I’ve managed to lower my grocery bills significantly by foraging. On a typical summer day I’m likely to kick-start my morning with a freshly made smoothie of chickweed, purslane, frozen berries, and ripe seasonal fruit. At lunch I indulge in a salad or wrap made from garden veggies and edible weeds. I finish my day with a hearty dinner consisting of dandelion pesto, quinoa patties with assorted wild edibles, and coconut energy balls for dessert. These meals are pleasant to eat and provide me with hardcore nutrition. While I don’t abstain from shopping for food during the summer months, I go to the grocery store far less frequently, and my food bill diminishes dramatically.
To further illustrate my point, I would like to describe how non-traditional greens saved a retreat my family conducted in Australia in May of 2011. In the year leading up to our retreat, Australia suffered some really cold, wet weather, and food prices were astronomically high. The seventy people who were attending expected to partake in a seven-day, all-you-can-drink green smoothie challenge. Three days into our retreat, however, we had already surpassed our budget for ingredients. It became clear that if something didn’t change, the next four days would empty our bank account and put us in the red. Luckily, I discovered that there was a small organic farm on an adjacent property. I walked down to negotiate a bulk purchase with the owners. They were very friendly and eager to help. As I toured the farm, I began noticing an abundance of edible weeds, such as dandelion, purslane, lamb’s quarters, yam leaves, and countless others. I asked the farmers how much they would charge me to pick their weeds. They started laughing; they told me that they ought to pay me for helping them weed, and gave me permission to harvest to my heart’s content. For the remainder of the retreat, the Boutenkos were blending local Australian weeds for free. Our guests were ecstatic. They couldn’t stop raving about how good they felt on edible weeds. Many of our retreat-goers swore that smoothies made from wild ingredients were more satiating and provided higher energy levels. Thanks to wild herbs, we were able to benefit financially, and we introduced seventy people to foraging. As the retreat neared the end, our participants demanded a weed walk on the farm. Once again, the farmers obliged. They were so amazed at the stir their weeds had created that they later confided in me that they were going to sell weeds at the next farmers’ market in addition to their cultivated produce.
An abundance of wild edibles harvested in one afternoon.
A. An abandoned fruit tree in an Oregon park produces an abundance of sweet plums.
B. Collecting fruit benefits you and the tree. You get free food, and the tree is able to produce more the following year.
C. Rotting fruit is a common sight under neighborhood fruit trees.
When talking about free food, I like to include forgotten fruit. Over the years, I’ve noticed many apple, apricot, fig, pear, and persimmon trees scattered around my hometown. These trees have been abandoned and are rarely sprayed with pesticides. Many are easily accessible and drop fruit on public land. This ripe, local fruit is delicious and should be collected and enjoyed. I’m bewildered that people will bypass an apple tree in their own backyard, only to go to the grocery store and buy nonorganic apples for $3.99 a pound. I’ve asked people on many occasions why they don’t eat the fruit from their trees. The typical reply is “it doesn’t taste good” or “the fruit has brown spots.”
Last fall, while gleaning apples, I came upon a magnificent tree loaded with beautiful red fruit. This tree was on private property, so I marched up to the front door to ask permission to pick some fruit. The lady at the door asked me why on earth I wanted her “wormy” apples, before giving me the go-ahead to pick her fruit. I sliced the apples I had collected and dried them into thin chips in my dehydrator. When they were ready, I packed a small bag and brought them back to the woman. She was surprised to see me again and gratefully accepted my offering. Now, whenever I run into her around town, she can’t stop raving about how delicious her own apples are. Hopefully, tasting her own apples will make her consider picking them in the years to come. Next time you see a lonely fruit tree or a bountiful chickweed patch, harvest it and enjoy it.
Another wonderful advantage to wild edibles is their immense nutritional value. Like store-bought greens, wild food is loaded with vitamins, minerals, fiber, carbohydrates, and phytochemicals. All of these elements contribute to a healthier state of being. Unlike conventional kale and arugula, wild foods have not been tampered with and remain pure. Most domesticated produce has been hybridized and selected for flavor and transportability, and is increasingly genetically modified (Kallas 2010). According to Adam Drenowski and Carmen Gomez-Carnero, such practices have the tendency to reduce the nutritional value of our food (2000). In addition to producing less nutritional food, large-scale, commercial food growers often deplete the soil of minerals through poor farming techniques. In this respect, wild edibles are also superior, because they grow in areas where soil quality remains high.
Even if you eat weeds that grow in depleted soil, they are likely to be more nutritious than conventional crops. Weeds are hardy and accustomed to surviving in harsh environments. Many have root systems that are deeper than those of domesticated plants (Schofield 2003). This allows them to draw water and minerals from deep beneath the earth’s surface. Next time you spot a dandelion on your lawn after a prolonged dry spell, notice how it remains green, while the grass around it has started to turn brown. If you would like to investigate this matter further, try pulling a dandelion. Is it tough? Does it fight to stay grounded? This is likely a sign that it has deep roots and a high nutritional makeup. For this reason, I make it a point not to weed my property. If I notice lamb’s quarters sprouting in my garden, I allow them to grow.
In addition to being healthy for your body, harvesting wild food is more kind to the planet, because it reduces the amount of waste created. When I walk into a supermarket, I sometimes feel uneasy at the thought of how many resources have been wasted on packaging. Chips are sealed tight in a plastic bag, and crackers are double-packaged in plastic and a box, because that’s a requirement of modern food-safety rules. Once I consume the chips or the crackers, the bag will be thrown into a landfill, where it will remain for thousands of years. On the other hand, eating wild edibles or homegrown vegetables creates zero trash. Any scraps left over from meal preparation go into my compost pile, where they break down into rich soil that will eventually aid in the growth of more food. For me, this is reason enough to keep eating homegrown and wild-harvested food.
In 1969 the US Department of Defense performed a comprehensive nationwide study to determine the average distance food travels from farm to plate. The study found that produce traveled an average of 1,200 miles to get to consumers (Brown and Pilz 1969). Brian Halweil, a researcher at the Worldwatch Institute, claims this figure is likely higher today—sitting somewhere between 1,500 and 2,500 miles. Some of the disadvantages of such practices include loss of freshness, food being harvested and eaten before it is ripe, and a massive waste of the earth’s finite resources. Halweil says, “We are spending far more energy to get food to the table than the energy we get from eating the food. A head of lettuce grown in the Salinas Valley of California and shipped nearly 3,000 miles to Washington, DC, requires about 36 times as much fossil fuel energy in transport as it provides in food energy.” If this same lettuce is shipped overseas, the ratio of fuel energy consumed to calories provided jumps to 127 (Halweil 2002). When I lived in Hawaii, I found it impossible to buy a Maui-grown pineapple, because they were all exported off the island. If I was craving pineapple, I had to go to the store and purchase one grown in Costa Rica or Ecuador. Likewise, when traveling in New Zealand, it was hard to find apples not grown in Washington State, and here in the apple-producing Northwest, grocery stores regularly sell apples from New Zealand. This is completely absurd and goes against any kind of logic and reason.
Some researchers estimate that eating regionally sourced meals could reduce petroleum consumption by four to seventeen times (Halweil 2002). Wild edibles are a textbook example of local food. If you find weeds growing in the park across the street from your house, you can avoid petroleum expenditure altogether. By walking over to the dandelion patch and harvesting yourself a meal, the only energy expended is your own. This is commonly referred to as “exercise.” Such routines benefit you, while helping you to reduce your carbon footprint.
In addition to being friendlier on the environment, local food may help our bodies acclimate to their surroundings. In Discovering Wild Plants, Janice Schofield writes, “Eating plants in your local area is the best way to become acclimated to climate and resistant to illness” (2003). I know this to be true firsthand. While traveling the world, I’ve found that if I begin incorporating local and wild food into my diet from the moment I arrive, I’m much less likely to feel sick during the adjustment phase. Consuming greens such as dandelions, mallow, and purslane aids my body in overcoming jet lag and enables me to recuperate faster after traveling. Likewise, during the cold months of winter, if you can find or grow fresh edible weeds, eating them will boost your immune system and ward off seasonal illnesses.
As modern food growers and manufacturers continue to streamline the food supply and strive for convenience and profit, our diets become less diverse and our health diminishes. For example, apples that keep well during transportation and have a uniform appearance trump the thousands of older varieties and those that nature has provided. In his book In Defense of Food, Michael Pollan writes that the average American eats a substantially less diverse diet now than his or her ancestors did. According to Pollan, humankind has historically consumed upward of eighty thousand species. Today that number has dropped to around three thousand (2008). When you think of pizza, pasta, hamburgers, bread, decadent desserts, and beverages, it may seem like a wide scope of food. The building blocks of all these eats, however, are things such as corn, corn by-products, wheat, meat, and sugar. We have homogenized our food into what is most economical, not what is most healthy.
I believe that as hunters and gathers, we ate wildly diverse diets comprised of thousands of ingredients. Have you ever heard the phrase “eat a balanced diet”? I have pondered this expression many times. It’s so simple, yet so wise. Perhaps the person who first mumbled it was referring to the abundant environment around him. Maybe he lectured a captivated group of Neanderthals about eating things from the fields, mountains, and lakes. There is much evidence of this when we look at the diets of indigenous cultures. According to Daniel Moerman, an ethnobotanist, precontact Native Americans are known to have used thousands of plants in their diet each year (1998). Such diversity is possible today through foraging. Wild edibles are a fabulous way to expand your diet, as there are thousands of them. When you learn to identify just one plant, you have the potential to expand your diet exponentially. For example, the common dandelion has two hundred relatives (Wildflower Finder 2012). If you learn to recognize a dandelion, you could potentially increase your diet by two hundred ingredients.
Another benefit we gain from eating a diverse diet is added nutrition. John Kallas writes, “The most nutritious diet is a diverse diet of healthy foods” (2010). Wild edibles give us many more options. Different foods contain different amounts and kinds of vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients. For example, Granny Smith apples, pomegranates, and wild strawberries are rich in iron, while pumpkin seeds contain high amounts of zinc. The more variety you can add to your diet, the better your chances are for nourishing your body and maintaining health.
Wild edibles increase food diversity.
In the interest of good health, I would like to mention that meal diversity is best paired with moderation. In my relatively short life, I’ve experienced many types of foods. I was born in Russia, where I lived until I was five. During that time, my family ate a typical Russian cuisine, which consists of lots of meat, dairy products, and processed food. This diet led my body to develop the early symptoms of diabetes. When we immigrated to America, we were shocked by the wealth and variety of food available. As a family, we embraced traditional American food and in less than three years fell prey to serious health problems. In 1993, after my mother, father, sister, and I were all diagnosed with supposedly irreversible illnesses, we began eating a diet based on raw plants, and we regained our health. In addition to reversing diabetes, asthma, hyperthyroidism, and arrhythmia, our new lifestyle instilled in us a desire to seek total perfection. Just feeling healthy was no longer good enough. We strove to attain our maximum potential and again disregarded the need for a moderate diet. Under the guidance of experts in various fields, we began experimenting with different practices. We committed several months to a radical fruitarian diet (a diet consisting solely of fruits). Some months were spent fasting on water or juice. There were periods when we ate nuts and times when we didn’t. We sprouted, took supplements, and even ate nothing but greens.
The result of all these extremes was more or less the same. Whenever I leaned too far in one direction, my health would suffer. For example, after months of eating only sweet fruit, my teeth developed cavities. Likewise, when I ate a diet consisting solely of greens, my body accumulated too many alkaloids, which made me feel nauseous and ungrounded. Despite such observations, I had to go through several more health issues before I was willing to look at my convictions critically.
In the past I’ve known people who abandoned conventional food when they discovered wild edibles. Based on my previous trials and tribulations, I strongly discourage this behavior. While foraged food is among the healthiest available to us, it can cause problems if we overindulge. Your body does not like to be shocked by drastic dietary shifts. Ease into wild edibles slowly. Once you’re sure that eating edible weeds agrees with your body, it is okay to increase the amount you consume. Then you can go out and enjoy all that nature has to offer in addition to the foods you know have always made you feel good. Learn to trust your body and its cravings. Though this can be difficult, following cravings and repulsions always yields the best results. Unfortunately, because we are all unique, I cannot provide an exact recipe for what a moderate, diverse diet looks like. This is something we each have to figure out individually.
Being less reliant on purchasing food from a grocery store allows you to be more self-sufficient. This is a valuable skill. While I’m not hoping for a major world disaster, I take comfort in knowing that, if one occurred, I could provide food for myself and loved ones by foraging. I have attended several major survivalist conferences and listened to numerous keynote speakers proclaim with certainty that a major economic collapse will occur in the near future. Most of these presenters advise stockpiling food and ammunition. I find this type of thinking amusing, because if civilization came to an end, any saved rations would sooner or later run out, and you would be back at square one. To me, stockpiling isn’t the same thing as being prepared. I feel equipped to face troubled times because I have the know-how to continue meeting life’s basic needs in any situation. Stockpiling is merely a way to postpone struggles. Knowing what I can eat in my surroundings is liberating. If I needed to sustain myself for years on wild food, I could do it. I would, no doubt, have to adjust my comfortable, modern lifestyle, but nature is bountiful, and I am certain that I could live off the land in a pinch.
Foraging can and should be done with family and friends. Going on food hunts is engaging and fun for people of any age. Think about how much you bond with your loved ones when you share a meal together. Now imagine how much more connected you might feel had you harvested the key ingredients for the meal from the wild. Group foraging can provide memories that will last a lifetime. And don’t forget to engage your children. Foraging as a family is a great way to spend time with your kids in nature. When your children accompany you on a wild edible excursion, you also have the benefit of having more eyes to help you find tasty trailside nibbles.
Organic farmers can increase their profit margin by selling edible weeds that grow on their farms instead of throwing them away. For the past two summers I have been volunteering on a friend’s farm in Missoula, Montana. The amount of purslane, mallow, clover, chickweed, lamb’s quarters, nettles, and plantain growing on Dave’s land is hard to believe. Easily 50 percent of his crop is comprised of unintentional food. As an organic farmer, Dave barely makes ends meet. He has lots of expenses, and his prices can never compete with those of large-scale conventional farmers and supermarkets. As I got to know Dave better, I began telling him about the benefits of the weeds going to waste on his farm. I could tell that he was absorbing my information, because his eyes lit up at the mention of such exotic greens. Finally, after many conversations, Dave began selling wild edibles at the local farmers’ market. His booth offered a service that no store could provide, and his profits increased significantly. Best of all, Dave’s team barely had to do any work to capitalize on this niche market, because the weeds were already growing on his farm. Throughout my travels, I have met many other farmers who have shared similar stories.
If you are still not convinced that wild edibles have the power to enrich your life, consider this: they get you outside. Once in the outdoors, you breathe fresh air. Your skin is exposed to sunlight, which fills your body with vitamin D. You walk, crouch, and dig, all of which is excellent exercise. Furthermore, many researchers have concluded that simply looking at an outdoor environment is conducive to better health. Roger S. Ulrich, director of the Center for Health Systems at Texas A&M University, discovered that patients whose hospital rooms overlooked trees had an easier time recovering from surgery than those whose rooms looked out on brick walls. Patients able to see nature got out of the hospital faster, had fewer complications, and required less pain medication than those forced to stare at manmade environments (2002). Rachel Kaplan and Stephen Kaplan, professors at the University of Michigan, claim regular access to nature improves concentration, helps the body recover from physical illness, decreases mental fatigue, eliminates stress, increases a sense of well-being, and improves mood (Clay 2001). Anyway you look at it, nature is healthy. Foraging is simply another reason and another opportunity to get outside.
One of the best reasons to add wild food to your diet is the simple fact that many of them are leafy green vegetables. Adding more fresh greens to your meals will dramatically improve your health. After years of research and countless experiments on myself, I have concluded there is no substitute for a diet rich in leafy greens. It’s true that we are all unique. We come from different backgrounds, have distinctive constitutions and blood types, and require different practices to achieve the same results. Yet I have never met a person who did not benefit from eating fresh greens. Over the past five years, my family and I have conducted nearly twenty weeklong green smoothie retreats worldwide. During our retreats, we’ve witnessed hundreds of people heal their bodies from various ailments. After seven days of drinking smoothies made from fresh vegetables and fruits, retreat participants notice improvements in their diabetes, insomnia, psoriasis, hypertension, osteoporosis, colitis, and many other health issues. One lady lost so much weight and became so rejuvenated at our workshop that her own mother didn’t recognize her when she picked her up from the airport. Many of our retreat-goers have since implemented what they learned from us and have been able to completely reverse their “irreversible” health problems.
The secret behind leafy greens lies in their molecular makeup. Green vegetables, especially those that are dark green, are rich in chlorophyll. When you eat spinach, kale, miner’s lettuce, lamb’s quarters, and/or mallow, you are ingesting a chemical substance that is incredibly similar to hemoglobin, the oxygen-carrying pigment of red blood cells that gives them their color and helps distribute oxygen throughout the body. Chlorophyll differs from hemoglobin in its central atom, but it closely resembles human blood (Boutenko 2005). When you ingest chlorophyll, you help your body rebuild and replenish red blood cells. This boosts your energy levels and builds a hearty immune system. Additional benefits of chlorophyll include cleansing the body of toxins; fighting infections; breaking down calcium oxalate deposits; healing wounds; reducing inflammation; improving circulation, digestion, and vision; and eliminating bad breath.
In addition to chlorophyll, green leaves are also packed with life-enhancing vitamins, minerals, protein, and fiber. Vitamins A, C, and K, plus folic acid, magnesium, and calcium, help to further boost your immune system and repair anything that is out of order. Finally, the dense cellulose matter, better known as fiber, assists your body in straining away anything that’s not conducive to good health. According to Myron Winick, the molecule of fiber looks like a sponge under a microscope (1992). In the same way that a sponge absorbs spills, fiber soaks up toxic substances within your body, which are then flushed from your body via a bowel movement. Adequate fiber consumption has also been shown to positively affect high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, and cancer. According to the US Department of Agriculture, a healthy adult should consume twenty-six to thirty-one grams of fiber per day (Keefe 2011), but average Americans eat less than half of that (Winick 1992). One cup of collard greens contains six grams of fiber. If you incorporate fresh fruit, salads, nuts, and seeds into your daily routine, you could easily meet your fiber requirements.
Unfortunately, you cannot reap the benefit of greens if you don’t eat them. When compared to complex, processed food with artificial flavors, greens can taste bitter and unpleasant. They require time and preparation in order to be enjoyable, and their high-fiber content makes them tough to chew. This is precisely why blending greens in a smoothie makes sense. When you blend dark greens with fresh fruit, you create a drink that is both nutritious and tasty. Blending pulverizes but does not destroy the fiber, and the fruit sweetens the bitterness or strong flavor of many greens. Furthermore, a blender enables you to achieve a more varied diet by pulverizing greens that are spiky, fuzzy, or otherwise unappealing in their raw form. Consuming greens in liquid form is easy. Thus, smoothies enable you to eat more leafy vegetables regularly, which improves your health.
My mother, Victoria Boutenko, is largely responsible for popularizing green smoothies. In 1999, my family began running into minor health problems after eating an extreme raw food diet. After ten years of overindulging in fruits and nuts, we had developed dental cavities, felt energy lulls regularly, and suffered from constant food cravings. My mother thought these symptoms were a sign that our diet was lacking nutrients and began researching solutions. Her research led her to discover the nutritional potency of greens. Green smoothies came about accidentally, while we were experimenting with ways to easily and painlessly consume more leafy vegetables. Once we began drinking smoothies, our health problems disappeared and our energy levels returned.
Several years ago I decided to take my mother’s smoothie concept and apply it to wild edibles, and started adding them to my smoothies. At first I was skeptical this would taste good, because foraged greens tend to be more intensely flavored than even the darkest store-bought vegetables. I was pleasantly surprised, however, when the first smoothie I made tasted phenomenal! I began making wild green smoothies on a regular basis to see what effect they would have on my health and energy levels. Almost instantly, I noticed an increase in vigor. My digestion improved noticeably, and I began to feel lighter on my feet. I observed that drinking a quart of smoothie an hour before a ten-mile run would curb my hunger and provide me with high energy. After a workout, I witnessed less soreness, and my muscles took less time to recover. I enjoyed both the taste and benefits of wild green smoothies so much that they have become part of my routine practice.
Another huge benefit of smoothies is that they take very little time to make. Who among us has not put off making a salad out of laziness or lack of time? On the other hand, throwing several ingredients in a blender and flipping a switch takes seconds. Knowing how fast and simple it is to make a smoothie helps me conquer any and all excuses. I’ve promised myself that if I ever find myself unwilling to make a thirty-second smoothie in the name of health, I’ll need to change my lifestyle.
Finally, homemade green smoothies give me peace of mind; I know that the ingredients in the blender are of the highest possible quality. How many store-bought products can you say that about? My typical morning blend consists of one or two seasonal greens, one or two seasonal fruits, and water. I simply love that I can count all the ingredients on one hand. The wild greens I select offer even more assurance, because I am connected to their growing environment. I am present during the harvest, which ensures me that my food has not been altered in a science lab. I highly recommend experimenting with wild smoothies, as this is perhaps the best way to incorporate wild foods into your diet. You can find my favorite green smoothie recipes in chapter 3 (this page).
Much has been written about the importance of exposing children to nature. Books such as Last Child in the Woods, by Richard Louv, have revolutionized how we see television, the internet, and video games by presenting convincing data that illustrate how exposure to the outdoors is crucial for the physical, emotional, mental, and even spiritual development of children (2008). In this section I aim to summarize “nature deficit disorder” and push you to spend more time outside with your children, brothers, sisters, cousins, and friends.
The plain and simple truth is that children need regular exposure to the natural world. Such exposure leads to reduced stress; increased happiness, self-worth, and motivation; and improved physical fitness, balance, coordination, and even brain development. Beyond all of that, spending time in the natural world satisfies a child’s need for autonomy. Though these benefits are widely publicized, nature and our children’s contact with it are diminishing rapidly. According to the Children and Nature Network, only 6 percent of children between the ages of nine and thirteen spend time outdoors in a typical week (2008). Instead of playing in the sunshine, the average American kid spends more than thirty hours a week watching television (Gold 2009). The internet, video games, cell phones, and other technological devices absorb even more time. While the United States currently leads the world in nature-deficient children, this is quickly becoming a global epidemic.
It can be tempting to scapegoat parents, the media, and all the other usual suspects that take our attention away from shrubs, trees, and grass, but the reality is that we are all to blame. Technology is captivating. As we advance, we prioritize our new electronic devices over nature. To some extent this is unavoidable, as we live in a modern age. It is important, however, to balance the time we spend plugged in with time in the great outdoors. Nature is simply irreplaceable. When we are outdoors, we connect to our deepest ancestral roots, and our instincts come alive. This cannot be achieved in the virtual realm. It can only be discovered in the wilderness.
For many of us, so much time has elapsed since we truly immersed ourselves in nature that it can feel intimidating or awkward to jump back in. But if you push yourself to go hiking, camping, or foraging, you’ll feel comfortable again in no time. Think back to a time when none of your friends owned cell phones. How were things different? How did you interact? What did you do together before you watched videos on YouTube or updated your Facebook status?
What I remember is that I spent more time outside connecting with my loved ones. My friends and I frequently met in the park and spent the bulk of our interactions in nature. Even as teens we didn’t feel too old to play in creeks and climb trees. We were not unique. I remember how the majority of the youth in Ashland, Oregon, congregated in the plaza or the park after school and on weekends to hang out until their parents forced them to come inside for the night. All the time spent outdoors was restful and incredibly fulfilling. Unfortunately, if you visit Ashland today, you will find only a fraction of the young population hanging around outdoors. Today’s younger generations are losing touch with the wild, and it is up to us to jump-start that connection once more.
Foraging is a great way to immerse children of any age in the wilderness. Learning new plants is like meeting new friends. It expands the world by encouraging a person to notice tiny life forms. Nature itself is stimulating, fulfilling, and allows the imagination to come alive. When my niece, Lily, was five years old, she struggled to keep up with the other kids in her class at a conventional school. Her parents decided to try an alternative and enrolled her in a nature school based on the principles of Rudolf Steiner. Unlike regular preschool, Lily’s class spent five hours in nature every day. Lily began making huge strides and over the next year nearly caught up to the academic level of her seven-year-old brother. My brother and his wife were so impressed with the change they witnessed in their daughter that they began spending more time outdoors as a family.
Children love to be engaged in foraging.
Make it a point to take your children outdoors and teach them about plants, animals, and everything else in nature. This may sound boring, but it’s not! When my family set out to hike the Pacific Crest Trail, we anticipated being very bored during our half-year hike. We loaded our backpacks full of cards, board games, and books to make it more interesting. Within a few days of starting the trail we got rid of all the entertainment, right down to the last card. Not only was it heavy and hard to carry, but our surroundings were so captivating that we had absolutely no desire to do anything but immerse ourselves in the wilderness around us. Even at the end of the trail, after spending six solid months playing in nature, I felt as though there was more to discover and learn.
If your children initially need additional incentive to play outside, come up with interactive games that require your kids to delve further into the outdoor world. For example, when I was a child, my mom used to challenge us to see who could collect the most blackberries in fifteen minutes. Such experiences are memorable and will vastly enrich a youngster’s life. If nothing else, spending quality time outdoors with loved ones will leave a silly grin on your child’s face.
Here is a simple test to see how aware you and your kids are of nature:
Which images are you more familiar with?
