Joe:

What are you referring to? Are you referring to the obvious, or do you discern something BEYOND the obvious?

Personally, I don't see anything relevant or practical.

HerbDoctor

This post was edited by HerbDoctor on Thu, Mar 14, 13 at 16:23

I am referring to eating only wild edibles in your area exclusively.
What do you guys think about living solely off wild plants in your area?

Very idealistic, but not practical.

HerbDoctor

I hear you herbdoctor. But what is not pratical about living off the land and taking advantage of what nature gives you? What is not practical about free food and no grocery bills? It is very feasible, this man, and I'm sure many others been doing it for years... I really appreciate your input, wish there was more than a handful of people on this particular forum!

Joe

"I'm sure many others been doing it for years"

There was a guy named Euell Gibbons who became quite popular urging people to do this.

Obviously there are considerable limitations on the practice today - a shortage of "wild" land on which to harvest, heavy metal and pesticide contamination (especially in roadside areas), and concerns about plant species that are endangered by overharvesting (examples include ginseng and goldenseal).

Supplementing your diet through "weeds" that grow on your land can be practical and desirable - I've eaten wild violets and purslane that constituted "free food", for example. Subsisting mostly or entirely on such harvesting long-term? Very impractical if not impossible.

Mr. Gibbons seems a lot like me! Thanks for your input Eric!

As for the wild food talk: I am with you on the limitation you would have due to pollution,etc... It depends How you look at it as well.. Limitations for foragers, yes... There is far far more safe wild edibles than there is produce from the store.. People used to eating out of the store, their minds would spin, they wouldnt know where to begin.. But yes it is sad you have to be concerns about pollution,etc.. Another thing you have to take into
consideration, is how safe the food really is at the store... Yes i understand they are probably lab tested and rules and regulations,etc... But do you really know exactly what your eating at the grocery store? Not even takin into consideration some of the produce is shipped from thousands f miles
away, if not from another country...

Sustainability: saying it is impractical, if not impossible... I wouldn't go quite that far... If you use common sense and don't take the whole plant at once, and just take a portion of the many,many plants out there, I believe they will regenerate quicker than you could eat them. In my experience...

Now to be fair, i think it is not ideal, to say the least, to go from an average Americans diet to a diet of pure, wild edibles... You don't have the necessarily time to adapt, etc.... Is it possible, yes..

I value your opinions, thanks guys

Joe

What do you guys think about living solely off wild plants in your area?

Logistically not feasible. The amount of work required to provide enough food to sustain everyone in the house PLUS put enough aside to sustain us through the 6 months we have freezing temperatures here where nothing grows would mean that everyone would have to quite their jobs and school to work all day just to get to a subsistence level....maybe. We would probably literally be starving at this point of winter.

The Native Americans that lived here first, the Haudenosaunee (aka Iroquois), grew a number of different crops such as the Three Sisters (Corn, Beans & Squash) and didn't live exclusively on whatever wild edibles they could gather or hunt. I'm not saying they had all the answers, but if it was easy or possible to survive solely off of wild edibles, why do the hard work of agriculture?

FataMorgana

Canning is a great alternative.

HerbDoctor

Not really. I've wildcrafted, canned, made jams/jellies, dried, froze, made tinctures, made vinegar,made dandelion wine, and so many other such things. I understand exactly what kind of time commitment this work takes. For example, it would take a whole afternoon to dig a small bucket of dandelion roots, wash and scrub them, chop them, and lay them out on screens so they can dry. Once dried you only have a couple of cups (2-3 max) of finished product for an entire afternoon's worth of work. Picking a quart of wild strawberries? I don't even want to think how long that would take. And so on.....

To support a household through the entire year on wild plants alone? In my opinion, not possible in my climate.

FataMorgana

Very interesting... Thanks so much for all your input! The man in the video, Gary Tibbo lives in Toronto Canada, right by me, and does this all winter! The deers and animals do it as well.. He says nature gives you food for now and 3 monthes ahead... Example, apple trees ripen, you eat like a king now and save what you think is adequate for the monthes to come... Same thing applys to nuts, and any plants for that matter... Watch the animals, Animals naturally stop eating as much in the winter, and adaptes... Fatamorgana: you have a great point! Is it ideal, no. Is it possible, yes.. Going in the woods
L and seeing so much food, is mind boogling. Garlic mustard for example grows so densely,it's difficult to walk through it.. It's very simple to dry wild edible leaves... Now harvesting dandelion roots, you ever chew on a raw dandalion root, that's even makes me reluctant, and I eat some really potent herbs... Canning is an option, but I'm more less talking about if you did not have all these conventional things like now-a-days.. Gary tibbo is showing
us it is possible, but he has a house and a truck, etc... I don't think we shouldn't question if it's possible, we should ask how is it possible, how does Garry Tibbo do it? You think it is difficult living off nature now, how did our ancestors do it? Is that when animal eating came into play?

Value your opinions,

Joe

Does Mr. Tibbo support only himself or is there an entire household living this lifestyle? I think once you add dependents in the picture everything changes. Because survival for one adult or maybe an adult couple is a completely different deal than survival for a family.

Plus no meat? It is not just how difficult the plant work would be but the lack of quality protein sources - how many nuts and seeds are there really for you to eat from wild plants alone? Not even our most long ago and barely human ancestors were exclusively vegetarians. We weren't designed with the digestive system of a ruminant like the deer you mention so the comparison is not valid. Our bodies were designed to be omnivorous. We do need protein sources for survival.

I live just south of you in Western NY with similar conditions. I do not think good health let alone survival can be maintained long term on a diet exclusively of wild plant material for an entire household let alone a single individual.

FataMorgana

Tibbo supports him and his wife. I understand what you are saying.. But instead of picking a handful of dandalions, pick two handfuls of dandelions.

No meat?: this is where we disagree my friend! How much protein do we need? There is tons if amino acids in greens! After you cook meat, how much available protein is there, or other nutrients for that matter? For that matter if we were made to eat me, why do we cook it, why can't we eat raw?Cooking it doesnt even satisfy us today, we have to smother it with salt and other flavor, why? No, other animals cooks there food, why do we? Why dont we just chase down a animal, ripe its guts out with our teeth, and feast? Sound appealing? Are we really made to eat meat? I understand we are not the same as another animal but for example, if you will.. Look at a horse, our strength does not compare to them, the eat only wild edibles... How about gorillas, monkey, etc? There are lots of information out there stating what we are, but do we truly know what we're made to consume? I heard national geographic channel a few monthes ago say we are made to eat fruit, they said we are fruitarians.. Even if we did eat dead animals back in the day, we sure didn't live that long, they weren't aware of what we know now a days. And they sure didn't wait for the animals dead tissue to decompose until they ate it, like we do nowadays...

Very interesting

Thanks so much for all your posts!

Joe

Joe:

Are you in your twenties?

HerbDoctor

No, why do you ask?

How old are you?

HerbDoctor

"Are you in your twenties" Herbdoctor my friend, where do you get these questions from, suppose it's just curiosity or....

raw nature, herb doctor is dissing you passive aggressive style. its a backhanded insult.

at least he's consistent, seen it many many times from him in this forum.

best to smile and go on, not to be taken seriously

Kalia, I understand quite well what he's trying to get across.. It's better to let him talk for himself... I would call it passive resistance... Sometimes people interpret text different than how it really is. It's a little more difficult to show emotion through the Internet....

Thanks,
Joe

I have studied a bit of anthropology and one of my fascinations is the diet of ancient man.

For millions of years as up-right hominids we were mainly vegetarians, part of that time we were also scavengers, but that was usually a small amount of meat, or it was once or twice a month.
My personal opinion is that we ate a lot more seafood than we do now, and Much less meat.
Vitamin D is only available from the sun, or fish.

We cook, we have been cooking for as long as weve been human (maybe not hominid) but human.

To eat like our ancestors doesnt make that much sense.
Great idea, but it doesnt always work.
Some of us have enzymes that will break down milk, someo of us do not.
These enzymes are genetic, and humans did not have them 10 thousand years ago.
Our bodies have changed and changed to eat cooked food.

I am a vegetarian, however, i am not a strict vegan.
I used to run 11 miles a day 6 days a week, the only thing close to meat, was an oyster po-boy (sandwich) once a week)

Eating LOCAL is a good thing, its great for local growers, uses less petrol for shipping etc...
BUT, i am allergic to LOCAL catfish, but NOT to catfish from central America?
I think because our genes are not local, this argument doesnt seem to work.

Brad

"But what is not pratical about living off the land and taking advantage of what nature gives you? What is not practical about free food and no grocery bills? "
In this area ... the only year-round residents were farming tribes. The hunter-gatherers all left for the mountains because there's not enough to eat.

"No meat?: this is where we disagree my friend! How much protein do we need? There is tons if amino acids in greens! It's not just the quantity, it's the specific amino acid balance. You are assuming you could get enough of the right balance ... what is the wild equivalent of corn and beans for balanced intake?

Strict vegans end up deficient in Vitamin B12 because it's something that humans get from eating herbivores who have the gut bacteria that can produce it.

(from Wikipedia) "Neither plants nor animals make B12; it is produced by microorganisms, such as bacteria, fungi and algae. Herbivorous animals obtain it from bacteria in their rumens, either by absorbing it or by eating their own cecotrope faeces; rabbits, for example, produce and eat cecal pellets. When those animals are eaten, they become sources of B12. Plants from the ground that are not washed properly may carry B12 from bacteria in the soil, often from feces."

After you cook meat, how much available protein is there, or other nutrients for that matter? For that matter if we were made to eat meat, why do we cook it, why can't we eat raw?
Contrary to vegan propaganda, cooking increases the calorie availability of all kinds of foods, including meat, because it breaks down the cell walls. For example, top-cut alfalfa hay has 20% protein ... but if you eat it most of it is excreted undigested because we can't digest cellulose.

Cooking food is thought to be why we developed larger brains ... because there was a calorie excess that could support brain size.

===========
If you are gung ho on this diet ... go ahead and do it. Start now, in spring with the gathering and prepping and preserving and eating and do it for one full year.

Keep a journal. Come back next year and tell us how it worked.

Lazygardens gave a good answer . . . somewhat.

HerbDoctor

Lazygardens: I appreciate your post, very interesting...

You mentioned the hunter/gathers went forth mountains for food.. Gary Tibbo in Toronto,Canada lives soley of wild edibles and is not in the mountains.. How is he doing if?

About vegans being deficient in b12 - I know vegans who been on a raw food diet for decades or more and they have no such deficiency.. Why? We think we get vitamin b12 from animals who eat all raw food with no meat, how do they get b12? From eating their feces? How much sense does that make? Try getting information from credible sources instead of wikipedia..

About ancestor and cooking food.. Yes I know there are tons of scientific evidence/studies that show what are ancestors diet was comprised of,etc,etc,etc.. But do we really truly know what our ancestors ate without guessing, no we don't.. All I can say is they didn't have lighters or stoves like we do now, it was much harder to light a fire.. If everything they wanted a meal, do you think they would make a fire? What if it rained and they couldn't have fires till it dried out? I doubt they cooked there food like we do now a days.. Maybe occasionally, but everyday all day like we do nowadays? No? I doubt they ate meat all day as well.. Imagine having to chase down the animal with primitive spears,etc - I want you to go out there with a wooden spear and tell me how many animals your coming home with..

About me being gung-ho about living off wild edibles.. I'm not.. I do support eating wild edibles, but living exclusively off them is extreme.. Would I deprive myself from all the fruits and vegetables from the grocery store just because my beliefs of eating wild herbs, of course not.. But I do advise eating a majority of your food from wild edibles.. At least a quarter of my diet comes from foraging, the other comes from my garden..

Appreciate your posts,
Joe

Joe:

You said " But do we really truly know what our ancestors ate without guessing, no we don't." That's a true statement. But then you went on to speculate about . . . " All I can say is they didn't have lighters or stoves like we do now, it was much harder to light a fire.." You can't be dissing one speculation, but continue by speculating on another matter. That creates a weak argument.

Truth is, lazygardens is correct in that cooking meat, whether with a camp fire or a Weber grill, brings out the nutritional (and flavor) values and makes it easier to digest. Who says eating meat is wrong in the first place? It's nitrogenous in the body and can help us create internal heat for us. It's the EXCESS of meat consumption that may get us in trouble. Personally, I eat red meat about once every couple of weeks. Is that excessive?

One other point, we are in the habit of eating muscle meat. Organ meats are more nutritious than muscle meat. That's why I love a good bowl of red menudo. Mmmmmmm.

I'm just sayin'.

HerbDoctor

Herbdoctor:

About me "dissing speculation, then continuing another.. It leads to a weak argument" I dont think that is the case at all... I am simply stating fact.. Fact about guessing about our ancestors.. Fact about our ancestors primitive tools and not having lighters... I don't think I am saying two different things.. They are both factual..

About eating meat:

If you want to eat a piece of a dead-decaying animal, feel free.. I personally don't see where all the nutrition is at.. Now a days animals are fed grains and pumped with chemicals, of course that's not healthy.. Now i suppose you guys are talking about grass fed free range properly bred animals.. Still, how are they so nutritious? What do they eat? Grass, wild edibles, right? So why do we need to eat the animal for nutrition? Makes no sense.. If you want to pay 10-20 bucks for a pound of grass fed decaying flesh, feel free, that's your choice..

Now about cooking meat:

Let me start off by saying I understand we are intelligent creatures, we are not "animals" if you will.. But let me ask you this - what other animal cooks it's food besides humans? That has to be a big hint.. If the rest of life is not cooking their food why are we so fascinated with it? If it brings out so much nutrition how come wild animals look so good! Why aren't the deer starving to death on calorie restricted wild edibles? How about the primates eating a fruit diet.. How come they don't have diebeties? I personally believe we only ate animals soley for survival.. Remember they didn't have salt and pepper and some butter... They had to skin the animal by hand and cook it.. If we had a choice to eat wild lettuce or skin a bloody animal by hand? Which one would you take? I don't think we ate meat for a superfood.. I think we didn't have a choice and they had to to merely survive...

About cooking food for nutrition.. There was a big hype about cooking tomatoes to bring out lycopyne etc.. But then your making the tomatoes acidic, that's why you need sugar to balence out the acidity... That's why people get heart burn from red sauce! When there popping a heart burn anti acid the last thing they are thinking about is the lycopene.. Cooking creates free radicals, and the metal from frying pans leach in the food.. If you want to cook your food, go for it.. I'm going to lesson to the rest of life and observe what they are doing, not cooking!

Very interesting inputs thanks,
Joe

If God didn't intend for us to eat animals, he wouldn't have made them out of meat.

Seriously, I NEVER, EVER eat decaying meat. No more than you eat decaying vegetables.

Are we just talking about the physical aspects of meat or do you perhaps have a moral issue with killing an animal and eating it? If it's a moral issue, I could understand that.

HerbDoctor

"If God didn't intend for us to eat animals, he wouldn't have made them out of meat."

That's one hell of a statement herbdoctor.. Meat is a term coined for animal flesh consumed as food.. What else do you think animals would be made out of, air? That's like saying if god didn't intend for tigers to eat us, we shouldn't be made of tissue..

You never eat decaying meat? What do you do, slaughter the animal yourself? What butchers consider "high quality meat" is dead tissue that is hung up for weeks so enzymes could break down the meat and make it tender.. Also known as decomposition.. Sure produce sits in the store for some time, but they don't rot the fruits or vegetables on purpose..

Were talking about all the aspects of eating meat - physical, moral, emotional whatever! It's one thing if we need meat to survive and we our killing these millions of animals out of necessity but we don't need then..
Maybe if we were dogs or cats, yes. But we are not. Even if you belief we do need meat every month or so.. We still have no need to kills hundreds of millions of animals like we do... If we truly need meat, why didn't our body adapt to eat it raw?

Joe

Joe:

You know that I . . . was . . . joking about the "If God didn't intend . . .", don't you? Don't take things so seriously.

Maybe we should discuss "controlled rot" as opposed to plain putrefaction (rot). There are many things we consume that is from a "controlled rot", if you will. Do you like wine? It's decomposition in a controlled manner. When the sugars are broken down to alcohol and gas by bacteria, isn't that a controlled rot?
How about cheese? Isn't that process a controlled rot? So much so that heat is generated in the process.
I love aged beef. Sometimes I leave my ribeye sit in the refrigerator for a few extra days (wrapped) as it browns a bit. No problem, because the cold refrigeration slows down the rotting process. If it wasn't safe, I'd get sick when I eat it. (Another reason for cooking it.)

I respect your views. But you seem to believe that all of mankind is doomed because we eat meat. Relevancy, my friend. Not absolutes.

HerbDoctor

Rot is Rot, whether controlled or not..

I don't drink wine.. However, I do drink fresh squeezed grape juice..

Cheese? We are not cows or goats, we shouldnt be drinking their milk.. Didn't we get off mothers milk at the age of 1/2? Why does everyone think it's so great to drink other animals milk..

If you love eating decaying animals tissue, that's your choice.. Just now that it is not necessary, even if you did eat it, maybe once a month is more than enough to get whatever nutrition you claim is in it. Just understand what they do to that animal and what chemicals,etc they treat the meat with.. Think about that when your chewing on a nice juicy piece of delicious tissue..

"All mankind is doomed for eating meat". All animals are doomed that's forsure! We are ticking along, but not very healthy.. Look at how often the average person eats meat, look at the portions of meat they eat, pounds, 3 times a day! Look at the hospitals,etc.. Even the allopathic medical community knows that meat is not that healthy! Come on..

Joe

careful of diet dogma friends : ) its a very personal issue that can upset some folks big time and real fast too.

my experience is that we are unique individuals, no one diet works for everyone....and that mental rigidity about diet or anything for that matter, can be unhealthy.

You mentioned the hunter/gathers went forth mountains for food.. Gary Tibbo in Toronto,Canada lives soley of wild edibles and is not in the mountains.. How is he doing if?

He's not trying to do it in Arizona's deserts.

About vegans being deficient in b12 - I know vegans who been on a raw food diet for decades or more and they have no such deficiency.. Why? Usually they are eating various fermented foods, where the fermenting process is done by bacteria or fungi that produce B12. If you are eating only local wild plants, you aren't going to be getting much B12.

We think we get vitamin b12 from animals who eat all raw food with no meat, how do they get b12? I explained it: Herbivorous animals obtain it from bacteria in their rumens, either by absorbing it or by eating their own cecotrope faeces.

To simplify it: Cows have bacteria in their guts that produce B12 for the cows to absorb. People don't have that kind of digestive system so they need to eat food with B12 in it. Plant's don't have B12, but cows do - so we eat cows.

All I can say is they didn't have lighters or stoves like we do now, it was much harder to light a fire.. If everything they wanted a meal, do you think they would make a fire? What if it rained and they couldn't have fires till it dried out?

You must be a city guy.

Starting fire, no matches
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IuRsZghPFYQ

Starting a Fire with Wet Materials
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I55fZEhRcmI

lazygardens:

Thank you. I always wondered where fire came from. And apparently, it was invented in Australia. :-)

HerbDoctor

Interesting idea that we are all so unique that our diets must be tailored to individual needs

However, this notion is at odds with the human species having survived so long eating whatever was available, without the benefit of practitioners preparing special diets for each member of the community. :)

Eric:

I agree with your assertions. In my line of work, strict diets rarely, if ever, have a beneficial affect on a chronic illness. Diets just don't work. (However, the use of herbs IS a drastic and specific application of a "diet.") And . . . there's no way to qualify nor quantify daily diet's affect on PREVENTING any chronic disease. Just sayin' . . .

And I agree that the body is more resilient than people want to give it credit.

Did I get that right, Eric?

HerbDoctor