wild herbs

[lofthouse31]

I was wondering if anyone has a good online resource for these.
In another thread here there was talk of how our ancestors got a full range of there dietary needs, and also an age old thread regarding the ability of a vegitarian to survive such a lifestyle which though not a vegitarian myself i am still looking into.

We have a wealth of edible and medicinal herbs in these islands, i am looking for info on there nutritional content ie vitamins, minerals anti oxidents etc, and what calories(i know its slim but all helps) they contain.

Many thanks for any info or links.
Cheers, Steve.

 

[blodyntatws]

Try this one http://www.botanical.com/botanical/mgmh/mgmh.html
sorry not sure how to make it an active link.

 

[john scrivy]

Loft house this is very interesting a hunter gatherer vegeterian life style _ Ive never researched this you probly know more than me and am interested in learning more buddy My thoughts if it was say an ice age what was growing for the vegan ?? Im only saying this because I was out for a forage this frozen weekend in a wooded area I know theres a few early plants showing just now and the few that allways seem to be there below the hedge rows but not visable in the woods if you get my drift

 

[lofthouse31]

John there was a thread on this very forum a fair while ago called either "vegitarian nomad", or "nomadic vegitarian", and we pretty much came to the conclusion that there has to be pretty good circumstances for it to work, atleast in this country.
Places like the tropics have a variety we can only dream of, and we worked out that a great deal of the very nutritious plants, nuts and roots we have in this country are quite recent imports, ie the romans brought lots of nice things with them which have since left the gardens and are now only found in the wild, ie we have them now but the hunter gatherers of the past did not.

On the coast with little competition and the ability to cover 5 mile radius inland offers the best chance that ive found, sure in an ice age the vegitarian will have to change attitude or die.

Im not a veggie myself, ive just used this as a project to build my learnings around, i find meat to be easy, kill it, cook it and eat it type of thing.
With plants its more complicated i think, atleast to my brain, this project has gave me a framework for trying to get to know that sort of thing (raised in a city)

Its important in a way because if i can calculate and discover enough sources and types of plant to make it possible then im home dry, cos ive still got the meat on top of it.

We worked out that around 300 (types ie blackberries/areas ie herbs),,, of food, ie plants, nuts, roots, seeds, grasses etc are needed.
Im filling in that three hundred now, but ive got to get the nutritional values to quantities sorted.
Thats vital in order to work out what sort of energy loss would be incurred in gathering and finding these crops.

Lets face it meat is full of goodness and loaded with energy and the whole animal has a host of vitamins, nutrients etc,
To find a deers worth of edible plants has got to be more energy sapping, but by how much i yet do not know.

I reckon for my money that the chance is better today than in the past but i have no real idea how many plant types our ancestors had to used which may be lost to us now.

Im happy to pass on what ive found but it will require patience as i type slow and its a jumble of papers at the moment.

 

[john scrivy]

Good luck with your research Lofthouse - a very big interesting subject

 

[EatWeeds]

Lofthouse, finding the nutritional composition of wild edible plants is something that as far as I can find out has not been done very comprehensively.

Last year I asked Marcus Harrison of the Wild Food School if he knew of any in-depth research and got the same answer, "No-ones yet done a comprehensive analysis".

Apparently a nutritional analysis costs about £100 per plant and at minimum there are around 300 wild edibles in the UK, so you're looking at a £30K bill!

There's some research done in Germany, but it really isn't that comprehensive. You might want to checkout Nutritional Herbology by Mark Pedersen, but it only covers the nutritional composition of medical herbs, which obviously a certain amount of wild edibles are both food and medicine.

If you find out anything, keep us posted... and good luck.

Robin