Forage for Superfoods

By Cate Stillman

Me out harvesting in the ‘hood before the snow hit.

If you’re a typical American…

eating a Standard American Diet (yes… the SAD diet), you eat around 30 different species of plant life in an annual cycle . Meaning the total number of species you ingest per year.

To give you context, Native Americans species count was well over 1,000. Just for foods. Once you get into medicinals and plants used for everything else in their native lives, the count goes up an additional 2000. Yes, that is 2000 more plants than you interact with and know how to use on a yearly basis.

Forage for Superfoods

You’r probably way ahead of the curve, like me. I added two species today:

Eat wild foods to increase your species count. I added elder berries today. I’m astounded at my prior ignorance of such a gem.

elder berries
irish moss

My species count went on the rise a year ago when I began eating mostly raw. The living foods turned into wild foods when spring hit. My guess is that my species count doubled this past year. My guesstimate is that it will double again this year. (We’re looking at land in a permaculture community in Mexico. That should help :))

In any case, what is your species count?

Make a list in excel. Update it weekly. Comment here – what are you up to? How many local? How many wild? How many superfoods? How many GMO’s? Get curious.

Why should you count the species in your diet?

Hopefully, this is obvious, dear mammal who can read. The more species the more nutrients. The more nutrients… the more micronutrients. The more nutrated you are (yes, I just made up a word… I checked)… the more nourished you are. The evolutioanry edge of nourishment has everything to do with micronutrients. Wild foods have more micronutrients & intact cosmic prana (… which is called marut in sanskrit). Prana & nutrients = building blocks for the fabric of consciousness. The fabric on consciousness is the tissue (dhatus) of your body. You start eating your ‘hood… you’ll take better care of it.

How to diversify your diet

Grab your free Thanksgiving Guide and download my chat with Wild Edibles prodigy Sergei Boutenko. It’s on the webpage part of the Guide. The Guide is receiving rave reviews. You should check it out.