HOW GOOD ARE WILD FOODS

Image Gallery [1] The day lily (Hemerocallis fulva), high in phosphorus.

With the prices of most commercially available foods (which are, in many cases, of questionable nutritional value) skyrocketing, a multitude of Americans not only have turned to organic gardening as an alternative source of many wholesome edibles, but also supplement their homegrown diets with free—for-the-finding wild foods.

And, although most foragers have assumed right along that the gratuitous fare-free of additives and genetically untampered with—is naturally whole0000some, the increased public interest in wild food plants has created a demand for some hard facts on the nutritional quality of such edibles.

HOW GOOD ARE THEY?

Having taught courses in foraging for some years, I've been challenged many times with the query, "How do you know this plant is nutritious? " In most cases, I could only quote the author of a book on wild foods as my source, who—often as not—referred to an earlier writer, who may well have based his statements on folklore.

This lack of solid data led me to work up a systematic collection of all available scientific research on the subject, and then to compare each particular wild edible with the Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) established by the National Academy of Sciences' Food and Nutrition Board ... which represents the absolute minimum requirement for nutrients in normal, healthy people.

A typical male adult, for example, needs 5,000 I.U. (International Units) of vitamin A per day, and he can get much more than that in a scant half-cup of cooked dandelion greens! Or take that bane-of-the-farmer, amaranth: Just 10 ounces of the leaves or tips of this prolific plant can provide an adult's daily calcium needs, plus almost all the iron requirement for men and half that for women ... while only 3.5 ounces of the greens will meet the daily needs for vitamin A, thiamine, and ascorbic acid.

You see, then, that you can assure yourself of a well-balanced diet by combining produce from your garden with wild edibles in season. Beyond that you can freeze, dry, can, or pickle many of your surplus wildlings for out-of-season-use.

TABLE TALK

The blank spaces in the accompanying chart—"The Nutritional Composition of Wild Food Plants" —indicate that an edible has not yet been analyzed for those particular food elements. Some nutritional variation from the figures given can be expected with differences in climate, soil conditions, and time of harvest. Similarly, where "spp." is noted, it's an indication that more than one species in the genus is edible, so some differences can be expected among species. Usually, however, such variations are comparatively small and don't affect the food's overall nutritional quality. You'll also find a number of fruits, berries, and field crops included in the table which are actually cultivated varieties that can often be found in the wild.