{"id":358166,"date":"2025-12-19T14:22:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-19T14:22:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/358166\/"},"modified":"2025-12-19T14:22:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T14:22:09","slug":"forage-for-food-without-killing-your-guests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/358166\/","title":{"rendered":"Forage for food\u2014without killing your guests"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n EDITOR\u2019S NOTE:\u00a0 In the quiet hills of Gippsland, Victoria, a family lunch turned fatal when a homemade Beef Wellington left three people dead and one clinging to life. Dive deeper into the case by streaming the three-part CNN Original Series<\/a> \u201cDeath Cap: The Mushroom Murders\u201d on the CNN app.\n<\/p>\n

\n There is a saying among people who forage in the wild for food: \u201cThere are old mushroom hunters, there are bold mushroom hunters, but there are no old, bold mushroom hunters.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Edible mushrooms can look\u2014and taste\u2014a lot like lethal ones, a fact exploited by murderers from ancient times to 2023\u2019s notorious triple killing by death cap mushroom<\/a> in Australia. But plenty of people simply seeking to gather a delicious meal from nature have suffered the painful or deadly consequences of confusing a toxic variety of fungus or plant for one that is tasty and nutritious.\n <\/p>\n

\n Foraging has grown in popularity since the pandemic as a way to connect more with nature, said Dr. Matthew Nelsen, senior research scientist at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. That means more and more people need to learn about how to manage the risks of harvesting food from the wild.\n <\/p>\n

\n Wild carrots and poison hemlock, for example, are often considered lookalikes. So are wild garlic and death camas, a plant that can cause vomiting, convulsions, coma and death.\n <\/p>\n

\n Mushrooms can be particularly hard to tell apart, which is why they are the cause of so much concern (and so many hospital visits). Dr. Greg Mueller, chief scientist at the Chicago Botanic Garden, said that a white mushroom growing in your yard could be the wild version of ones you would buy in the store, or a variety that can cause stomach problems, or the infamous death cap.\n <\/p>\n

\n Yet Mueller and other proponents of foraging say that if you\u2019re armed with the right knowledge and preparation, you can stay out of trouble while expanding your diet to take advantage of nature\u2019s offerings.\n <\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

\n Why bother foraging? Especially for mushrooms?\n <\/p>\n

\n Well, Dr. Shan Yin, medical director of the drug and poison information center at Cincinnati Children\u2019s Hospital Medical Center, wouldn\u2019t. With the risk of improperly identifying and suffering health consequences, he is only eating mushrooms he\u2019s bought at a store.\n <\/p>\n

\n But foragers say they find real benefits.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cOne of the beauties of foraging is it\u2019s really an amazing way for people to experience nature and have \u2026 a really tactile relationship with nature,\u201d said Mueller.\n <\/p>\n

\n A fresh mushroom also can have incredible flavor, Mueller added. It is like the difference between a tomato wrapped in cellophane from the grocery store in January and those picked straight from a garden in July, he said.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cThey may be round and red, but there\u2019s not much other things that are similar to them,\u201d he said.\n <\/p>\n

\n Robin Greenfield, a sustainable living activist in Wisconsin, is currently undergoing a year of foraging all his food \u2013\u2013 no shopping, not even gardening, just gathering what he can find in the natural environment. \u201cFood and medicine really is growing freely and abundantly all around us,\u201d he said.\n <\/p>\n

\n Greenfield recalled eating handfuls of berries in Olympic National Forest.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cI felt this deep level of interconnectedness, that I was just a part of this land, not separate from this land, and that I belong there,\u201d he said.\n <\/p>\n

\n Making that kind of connection begins with having the proper information. \u201cThe number one rule of foraging is you only eat any plant if you\u2019re if you\u2019re 100% sure that you\u2019ve identified it correctly, and you know how to eat it,\u201d Greenfield said. \u201cIf you do that, you\u2019re not going to die.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Your foraging adventure can start in your own backyard \u2014 or that of a loved one who gives you permission, Greenfield said.\n <\/p>\n

\n You can begin with easy to identify edible plants that don\u2019t have a scary lookalike, like dandelion, beebalms and fruits, he added.\n <\/p>\n

\n While there are books and online resources to help you identify more complex plants, there is room for error, Mueller said.\n <\/p>\n

\n Instead, consider going out with an experienced forager who can teach you what to look for and how to properly harvest the plant, Greenfield said. He has a database of more than 500 foragers in the United States.\n <\/p>\n

\n Most foraging illness and deaths come from a lack of knowledge, so take your time learning how to do it, Greenfield added.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cIf you just learn one plant every month for a year, at the end of the year, that\u2019s 12 plants,\u201d he said. \u201cIf you can walk outside your door and harvest 12 different plants, that\u2019s a lot.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\"Sulpher<\/p>\n

\n Even once you have learned how to properly identify what is edible around you, there are still some concerns to keep in mind. Where to look for food, for example.\n <\/p>\n

\n The problem isn\u2019t availability. Greenfield has found food in Central Park in New York and Griffith Park in Los Angeles. One of his favorite plants, the serviceberry, is commonly used in North American landscaping.\n <\/p>\n

\n There are also the legal issues you need to be thinking about, Nelsen said. \u201cWho are the landowners or managers for that land you\u2019re foraging on?\u201d he said.\n <\/p>\n

\n City parks, county nature preserves and national parks may all have their own restrictions when it comes to the right to forage or how much is acceptable, Nelsen said.\n <\/p>\n

\n Where you forage can also be a safety consideration, he added. Gathering food near a busy roadway or a place with a history of pollution could impact the plant you are eating, he said.\n <\/p>\n

\n Lastly, it is important to learn how to forage without having a negative impact on the ecosystem. Overharvesting or uprooting the whole plant when you don\u2019t need to can cause problems, Nelsen said.\n <\/p>\n

\n Looking for plants that are considered invasive can be a way to forage with a positive impact, Greenfield said. From a roadside in Connecticut, Greenfield harvested gallons of autumn olives, which he calls some of the most nutritious and delicious berries on earth\u2014an Asian species that now spreads aggressively in the United States.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cYou\u2019re doing an ecosystem service with every bite,\u201d he said.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EDITOR\u2019S NOTE:\u00a0 In the quiet hills of Gippsland, Victoria, a family lunch turned fatal when a homemade Beef…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":358167,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[61],"tags":[97,269],"class_list":{"0":"post-358166","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nutrition","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-nutrition"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=358166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358166\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/358167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=358166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=358166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=358166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}