Wild food through the year

[rich59]

Wow Tadpole - that is a detailed post of dietary needs.

So, can we re look at the question of what you might eat in the wild in England in January?

I am happy with eating cooked meat of wild animal and with cooked fish.

Where will I find starch and oils?

Will there be any nuts left on hazels, or will I have had to harvest and store them?

Are there any edible roots out there?

What about edible plant stems and leaves?

Would there be any mileage in having saved and stored grass or wild oat seeds for the winter?

 

[torjusg]

Rich69

January, depends on location I would assume. And also whether you care for the law. I assume an inland forest, without thinking about laws.

Protein and fat:
Trapping deer (snares), squirrels (snares and deadfalls), birds (snares) and shooting whatever you come across in addition (bow and arrow).
Digging up hibernating badgers (dangerous, a sharp and stout spear).
Fish are less mobile in winter and january is probably the worst fishingmonth. Nets may prove useful as the fish barely feeds this time of the year.

Eat all edible organs (which is about all of them).

Carbohydrates:
Roots of plants sticking through the snow. Plants dead from the second year of their cycle will not have roots, but you may find first year plants by removing the snow close by.
Robbing mouse and squirrel storage holes can be worthwhile if you can find it.

Storing nuts and seeds in granaries can probably be very advantagous, so you can return to them in winter when you need plantfoods. Just make it rodent safe.

Vitamin C:
Raw meat or fish.
Or pine needle tea.

Torjus Gaaren

 

[Razorstrop]

Isn't science wonderful..........................bouncing theories around and this that and the other. In reality theres a couple of options, get yourself out there and find out or go on a course find all you need to know and then go and find out more for yourself. Preperation is essential as is shared knowledge, but experience counts for far more.

Not expecting to be popular
Mr Strop

 

[8thsinner]

I would just like to make a comment on the paleo diet.
I don't see anything wrong with it, if it is done right.
We have the advantage these days of knowing where and what disease is, combine this with a realistic paleo diet and I don't see a problem.
So what is realistic?
Realistic is any bloody food they could get their hands on, meat, veg, insects, beans, fruit, nuts. It didn't matter, they ate what they had available which in most cases for nomads probably wasn't much, they probably had as much of a mix as possible simply for variety. That mix obviously turned out right cause we are alive today.
The natural foods are out there we just have to know where it is and mix it up. We can eliminate the risks today and live for tomorrow.

Just my two bits worth....

 

[Toddy]

Only one criticism of your two bits worth; we no longer live in a paleo environment with paleo population numbers or the inherant resistances that living that way on a permanent basis ensures.
In Western Europe the environment has been so altered by mankind, from the paleolithic onwards, that it can now be truly said to be a manmade environment. We live in, and are fit to live in, the world we inhabit now. By choice we, and many others like us, prefer to live with an awareness of the 'natural' world around us; to belong within it but it's only part of our lives; the computer I'm typing this on and the technology it is associated with, is just another part. Our population numbers are now so great that we cannot exist on a 'natural' diet, we have to farm....and still children starve in our world of plenty.

http://www.thehungersite.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/CTDSites

Cheers,
Toddy

 

[arctic hobo]

I would just like to make a comment on the paleo diet.
I don't see anything wrong with it, if it is done right.
We have the advantage these days of knowing where and what disease is, combine this with a realistic paleo diet and I don't see a problem.
So what is realistic?
Realistic is any bloody food they could get their hands on, meat, veg, insects, beans, fruit, nuts. It didn't matter, they ate what they had available which in most cases for nomads probably wasn't much, they probably had as much of a mix as possible simply for variety. That mix obviously turned out right cause we are alive today.
The natural foods are out there we just have to know where it is and mix it up. We can eliminate the risks today and live for tomorrow.

Just my two bits worth....

I don't know if this answers your question or what, but I think it might be appropriate to the discussion.
Imagine you're a stone age man. You have perhaps a rough spear with a flint tip, it's not amazingly durable but it'll have to do 'cos it's the best you could do with what you've got. You have perhaps a stone axe, and a few tiny flint knives. You have a supply of stones and perhaps a sling.
You have to kill a load of animals to survive. Now I don't know about you, but that sounds a) very very dangerous and b) very very difficult. You wouldn't catch me throwing rocks at a bull if I wasn't 100% sure I could kill it first time. You wouldn't catch me poking at a buffalo charge with a pointy stick, or throwing stones at rabbits that easily see them coming. You wouldn't catch me creeping up on a bear and trying to slit its throat or smash its skull with my axe.
You very well might find me collecting veg.
This example is unscientific and can't be proved, but you get the idea. I've already said why the "palaeo diet" on that website is total hooey... it's not so much that it's wrong, more that it's formed on an utter lack of any knowledge whatsoever. A child could design a better diet if you took him camping

 

[8thsinner]

Very true on all points.

Sad isn't it.

 

[Topcat02]

Hi Razorstrop,

Sounds like you've just come back from a course!

When do we get the review?

TC

 

[torjusg]

I don't see why people here can't accept that one can have a very healthy diet on mostly raw meat. It is the only option in a quite a few northern environments. In the inland, salt is hard to come by traditionally. Instead of trading for salt and other foods that would be required if they cooked the meat, they rather ate most of it raw of very little cooked.

And at the coast they commonly ate raw meat because of lack of firewood.

And Razorstrop. I eat raw meat. But only wild, ungulate meat. Not bovine or rodents etc... It doesn't taste bad, but quite good when you get used to it. Same with raw fish. I am not accustomed to eat the great quantities required to subsist nearly entirely on it, but a little is no problem. Haven't tried guts for now, but I will.

Not to turn this into a "Peak Oil" debate, but in some years we may have to subsist on our local environment again. Then it is good to know what options are available too you.

Unless some serious climate change hits Europe, I doubt that you will ever have to eat raw meat in Britain. In the british climate I assume that the most energy effective ratio of plant to game-meat would be around 50/50. Up here it will probably be more 80/20 in favour of meat, so given no agriculture I think we would have to eat at least a portion of our meat raw to get the neccesary minerals and vitamins.

Torjus Gaaren