During the months of April, May and June 2025 I will be eating a diet of only wild foods. Yes, that's right. Everything must be of wild origin! No potatoes or chocolate. No olive oil or baked beans. Luckily I do not have to forage every item myself; I am allowed to buy, swap and barter, although the closer I can get to acquiring each ingredient, the better! And why would I do this, you might be asking.. well it is all in the name of science! I am participating in The Wildbiome Project 2.
One of my colleagues and fellow AoF members is expert forager and herbalist Monica (Mo) Wilde. She has been trying to answer the question “If you are what you eat, what happens when you add something wild?”
The project had been running since lockdown when she embarked on a wild food only diet for a whole year. A few years later she invited a small cohort of people to do one and three month experiments. The initial results were really interesting including some participants loosing significant amounts of weight, many had improved blood pressure, iron and vitamin D levels.
She is now hoping that a larger group of volunteers will provide some very interesting results in this citizen science project. Check out her website.
Of course I cannot deny that I am not also incredibly intrigued in seeing how I will manage and how my body might react to this major shift in diet. It also feels like a great learning opportunity to experiment with recipes and use some ingredients that I haven't got round to trying yet. Forcing me to get creative and bringing me closer to every aspect of my nourishment. I will truly know my food.
In an effort to be transparent I am feeling a little anxious about it too. This is mostly due to my own personal circumstances. I have a young family with very limited support where we live. I have another job as well as running my foraging business and we live in a flat with little room for more jars of random wild food!!
I like a challenge though and this feels like a great opportunity to support some interesting work whilst grow as a foraging teacher, even if it is daunting! And on a personal note, since having my daughter I have not put my own own health first and it feels like a chance to rectify this.
I have been busy preparing and will be sharing my recipes and thoughts throughout the experience so keep an eye on my blog and socials. At the time of writing I have a butchered Sika deer, several birds and a wild boar in the freezer. I have collected 313 walnuts, a good amount of chestnuts, hazelnuts and a good selection of berries and apples. I have made a small amount of acorn flour and have bought some chestnut flour. I have salted sloes, pickled, dried ingredients for tea and have many jars of wild spices and herbs.
I have access to fresh seaweeds as well as dry stocks. I have collected some fungi and flowers which I have been dehydrated and stored. I have made swaps (most recently a boars head for some venison tallow) and bothered my friend for some wild booze.
The land is waking up after it's winter slumber so the next few weeks will be important as I continue to add to my hoard. It feels like a privilege to be stripping back the layers of consumerism and capitalism. To live without plastics, sugar and ultra processed yuck.
But there are some things I might miss...
Thank you for taking the time to read this. Now comes the plea. I am raising funds to cover my scientific tests of £680 and other associated costs. The tests help Monica's team to assess the impact on microbiome composition and key health parameters of people eating an exclusively wild food diet. They are committed to publishing peer-reviewed results in an open-source academic journal (2023 under peer review at the moment), so that many more people can benefit from our insights. This all costs money even though all the volunteers are doing this for free. Your donation will help this unique opportunity to track the impact of a foraged diet. This study is important as it will make a huge contribution to what we know about the indigenous western human gut microbiome and how significant the loss of wild foods might be for our diet.
Please help me raise the funds we need by contributing. Even the cost of a cup of coffee would help! Studies like these are pushing against the state of our modern food system and will support massive change across our culture. So if you think that our food system needs a reboot, help me change things!
If you are unable to support the project financially and don't have a field full of dandelions you can donate to me, feel free to keep watching my progress anyway. Vocal support and encouragement are always appreciated too!
Thanks folks
Lucy 🌿
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