Food from the wild are those that are found in nature untouched by human hands in their growth process. For instance, wild dandelion greens, nettles, grasses, mushrooms, berries, nuts, and non-domesticated animals such as fish, bison, and other wild game.
Once you know the wild edible foods in your area you begin to realize just how much food is out there. It is truly amazing. Try getting a book of the food from the wild in your area and you may be astounded at how much abundance is just outside your door.
Energetic and Nutritional Potency[private]
Many researchers have shown that food from the wild has more minerals and vitamins than even organically grown food and much more than conventionally grown food (1)(2)(3).
Gabriel Cousens, M.D. states that wild food has much higher bio-photon emissions as well, which has been shown by bio-photon readers (4). Bio-photons are light or ultra weak photons that are emitted out of living things.
These bio-photons speak to us by coordinating and informing our cells to do certain tasks. When contemplated on, they can also awaken a profound understanding that this Earth and our bodies are part of an interconnected field of energy. On this level it is virtually impossible to draw lines of boundary.
Wild History
Before the adoption of agriculture humans were eating a 100% organic, wild food diet. As our ancestors wandered through the forests, their meals were hanging on the trees as nuts, seeds and fruits, on the ground as vegetables and herbs, and as animals that had to be captured.
People have various opinions on whether pre-agricultural humans were more hunters or gathers. Like others, I have my opinion or bias, and even though it is based on real evidence I have come across, I am honest enough to say that I really don’t know and am only making an educated guess. It is my contention that all of us, even the experts, are making educated guesses, simply because we don’t have all the evidence. Perhaps the wide and sweeping judgments on our past that we often hear, when the evidence is not always clear or often contradictory, may be a bit presumptuous and pompous.
With that said, here is my educated guess on humans and their levels of hunting and gathering; pre-agricultural wild humans, through tremendous courage and resourcefulness, were able to populate nearly ever habitable region of this amazing Earth. For those living in Northern or Southern regions, edible plants may have been more scarce than wild game. For these humans, hunting and consuming meat may have been the staple and principle method of nourishment, while gathering and consuming plants may have been a secondary, yet still important part of the diet. For those in tropical and sub tropical regions where wild edible plants grow in abundance, perhaps that may have been the staple and wild game secondary.
Like I said, that is my guess. Were there exceptions to that idea? Most definitely. With so much variance in the amount of wild foods in different regions, and with the variance in any given tribes knowledge of wild plants and game, it seems to me that the amount of hunting and gathering varied drastically. Either way, at some point in time humans have been carnivores, omnivores, herbivores, frugivores, insectivores, and everything in between.
No matter what our wild ancestors were eating, the hunting and gathering of wild foods must have provided them with a deep and meaningful connection to the living Earth. Is it any wonder why the spiritual traditions and teachings of past and current indigenous tribes all revolve around the notion of life on Earth being interwoven in a mystical web?
Awakening an Eco-centric Perspective
Going out and getting your food right from the wild gives an immediate sense of our dependence and interconnection with the life giving force of the Earth. It also creates a tremendous sense of gratitude toward the creative force that manifested the abundant variety of beautiful colors, sizes, textures, and tastes of the food that we get to enjoy.
A wise person once said, “In order to experience something different you need to do something different.” Eating food from the wild is doing something different. For most of us our whole life has been filled with store bought food, fast food, restaurant food and home prepared food.
If you were to ask a random person where their food comes from I can almost guarantee that they would say the grocery store. While this is indeed true on one level, it also shows our mental separation from realizing that our food first comes from the wild Earth. As you eat food from the wild this perception begins to shift and once again aligns with the ultimate truth that food as well as our bodies are of the Earth. This is a powerful means of awakening an eco-centric perspective.
Modern U.S. culture has displaced us out of an eco-centric perspective and instead has led us into an anthropocentric and egocentric perspective. We are seen as the pinnacle of creation and the center of reality. Rather than a vision of life as an interwoven web, like many ancient cultures had, it is as if the ego is the center and everything else in reality is surrounding it in varying levels of decreasing importance.
This way of relating to the Earth and reality in general may be the fundamental underlying reason why humans are experiencing tremendous suffering and creating such devastating environmental destruction. Another way of living is possible.
Heeding the Call
I believe that all of us are being called by the Earth itself to live in accord with the natural world as an equal and to serve its health.
By including superfoods and whole foods in our diet and eating as much food from the wild as possible, we are doing something different than the mainstream paradigm and aligning back with the natural world. Through this act our consciousness is altered out of isolation into interrelation, which awakens the desire to serve the whole. Our interconnected mind/body system as well as the entire Earth system benefit from this way of living.
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References:
1. http://www.living-foods.com/articles/whywildfood.html Retrieved June 19th, 2009
2. Wolfe, David. The Sunfood Diet Success System. pgs. 295-298
3. Cousens, Gabriel. Spiritual Nutrition. pg. 498
4. Ibid pg. 164
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About Tristan Anderson
