Wild Plants: How do you if its edible...

[Sully]

How do you know if some wild plants are edible if in the beginning raw meat wasn't edible?
Wouldn't their be many wild plants that would take an acquired taste for just like raw meat and other flavors of animals we may not be used to?

Just something I thought might be a good discussion.
Or can we trust our taste buds, at least to a certain extent?........
Its very interesting to me...


What I'm saying is that there's probably many things we can eat, but we just don't know we can, or wouldn't think the taste is pleasant after being raised on diets we had in the past. IDK

[DeadRamones]

 There are a ton of berries if you walk around. Not all of them are edible. I would suggest getting a boy scout  or surviving in the woods type of book. They'll help you distinguish which water,plants,fruits,animals & fish are edible for survival. If you feel like going out & doing a trial & error, good luck. You'll most likely get sick. Maybe just an upset stomach, but still.

[goodsamaritan]

I would rely on local knowledge of other people.

There are jungle survival training seminars and herbal seminars that teach people to identify plants in the wild.

[DeadRamones]

Goodsamaritan is right. By me, there are a bunch of outdoor sporting stores. Thier community board is full of hiking groups that go picking for wild mushrooms & berries. If you're still interested, maybe check your local papers or outdoor sporting stores for those types of groups.

[William]

I like the boy scout idea - if he does not get sick the plant might be OK.

[alphagruis]

Or can we trust our taste buds, at least to a certain extent?........

I think that we can trust our taste buds to a certain extent, provided that we taste the unprocessed, raw plant. Clearcut bitterness for instance seems to be an indication of the presence of toxic molecules.
 Cooked toxic plants, in  contrast, in particular some lethal mushrooms (or merely bread  ) may taste quite good.

Yet, as pointed out by Goodsamaritan, the best guide is certainly experience from those local people (if they still exist) who live in close contact with nature. Otherwise we are just left with trial and error    

[phatdave]

I have been experimenting wit wild fruits recently, crad apple, rowan berries and rosehips.

Rowan berries failed miserably their first test, raw they taste like death. I processed them into a jelly involving cooking, and this changed nothing. I still get a bad reaction thinking about them. They taste very mildly sweet at first, followed by horrible overpowering bitterness and horribleness that says 'no'.

Crab apples passed with flying colours, and I can't wait to dry some / eat some. They tasted amazing after the rowans, sweet, delicious, edible.

Rosehips are ackward but they contain a matt of hairs that irritate and choke, so need processing to eat. The raw flesh once obtained is quite palatable - but as said requires effort.

The difference between the Rowans and the other 2 were extreme. I think my senses were quite capable when given a chance.

[jessica]

definitely go out with someone who knows how to id plants, go to your library and find books that are specific to your region on plants that are edible/medicinal(definitely dont try an id mushrooms yourself, they are super hard and especially toxic even in small quantities, i have almost died from a super minute amount, and i did not even have rad hallucinations!)
mostly i just get the books, i spend and have spent so much time outside and with plants that with the addition of some references and knowledgeable friends i am definitely getting better at identification

i am not sure, in our history as a species, how we aquired the knowledge in the first place though.  i think probably a lot of trial and error, i know a lot of posionous plants are only deadly after eating quite a bit

[Sully]

Whao whao whao.....wait a second, everyone here assumes for some reason I want to go out eating a bunch of plants to see if their edible. I just wanted to discuss some stuff. The main subject I was trying to bring up is the tastes of foods your used to, and can you trust it to determine what is edible. Bitterness seems ward off consuming toxic plants of course. I did read that whale tongue is very bitter though, and some animal organs seem to be too. Especially raw squirrel liver I once had. I think the squirrel liver was extremely bitter because the squirrel eats many seeds that are highly toxic and inedible to us. So its liver's taste has something to do with what the squirrel was eating.

But about the wild plants or edible insects and etc. I would probably look up what natives ate that lived in the area for thousands of years, because what we know is edible is mostly knowledge that was taught. Humans just pass on info from generation to generation and sometimes the knowledge is lost. Even other animals are like that in a way.

[Sully]

I would like to change the subject to,

WILD FOODS: How do you know if its edible...

[William]

In Canada, it was the female aboriginals who knew plants and what they were good for. Makes sense after reading a psychologist's report that females have better colour vision than males.

So knowing wild plants is women's work, and I'll leave it to them.