This is dumb. Most plants resist cultivation. Bragging about being able to afford them does not make you Superior.
i enjoy high fructose corn syrup too
Submitted 19 hours ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to science_memes@mander.xyz
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Comments
Gladaed@feddit.org 18 hours ago
Eq0@literature.cafe 18 hours ago
Resist cultivation or have some other undesirable properties. Often low yield, short harvest, low yield, difficult picking or transporting.
A favorite example of mine: oak’s acorns are sometimes edible. Roughly one in ten oaks produce edible acorns. They are indistinguishable from inedible ones unless you try them out - but inedible ones are fairly poisonous. The gene for edible acorns is recessive and it takes at least a decade before you know if a newly planted oak produces edible acorns or not, with a 10% probability of the former. It is just practically impossible to select for this criterion. Thus, we don’t eat acorns.
Gladaed@feddit.org 41 minutes ago
Also acorns ain’t particularly nutritious.
danekrae@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
Often low yield, short harvest, low yield, difficult picking or transporting.
And let’s not forget, low yield.
Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 14 hours ago
You just remove the tannins by soaking them, it’s not really a major problem. I tried it before, they were fine but fairly bland.
infinitesunrise@slrpnk.net 15 hours ago
Isn’t acorn flour edible after you rinse out the toxins?
shalafi@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
Let the deer and squirrels and wild pigs eat the acorns, then eat the deer and squirrels and wild pigs. Easy!
Bassman1805@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
Acorns are like the easiest thing to forage, though.
They are high in tannins, which your body is pretty good at processing in reasonable quantities (they’re in tea, coffee, and wine), but many acorns DO have unreasonable quantities of them and they can cause organ damage. Luckily, tannins are water soluble, so you just need to crack them open and soak them in water for a few days, then rinse and they’re safe to eat.
someacnt@sh.itjust.works 12 hours ago
I thought we eat acorns after processing them? There are cuisines which involve acorns as main ingredient.
mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com 16 hours ago
I mean, I think that goes back to the whole “industrial farming” point. If it can’t be farmed, it won’t be commercially available. But there are plenty of plants that you could scavenge, if you knew what to look for.
One of my personal favorite niche plants is osha root. It’s one of the best cures for a sore throat. It tastes a little bit like dirty root beer, and it’ll numb your entire throat when you chew on it. Native Americans kept some around for medicine. You can even grind it up and smear it on shallow scrapes to numb the area. You can find it in teas like Throat Coat, which is a sort of secret weapon for performers and public speakers whenever they have a sore throat.
But it can’t be commercially farmed, because it exclusively grows in the Rocky Mountains where a specific type of fungus helps it thrive. It isn’t commercially viable to market to the masses like throat lozenges, (even though it is just as effective in reducing sore throats) because it has to be scavenged.
Gladaed@feddit.org 43 minutes ago
If it can’t be farmed there cannot be enough for everyone, but it will be exclusive to a select few. How they are selected is irrelevant.
ayyy@sh.itjust.works 4 hours ago
there are plenty of plants that you could scavenge
But what happens when “you” becomes a million people? A hundred million people? A billion people? Where I live, we can’t even have a nice field of flowers because a hundred Instagram models will trample and ruin it before spring is over. Scavenging and foraging literally cannot feed the 7 billion human mouths on this planet.
sharkfucker420@lemmy.ml 17 hours ago
Isn’t that what they meant by industrial agriculture preventing widespread use?
Donkter@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
I think the point is it doesn’t prevent wide spread use. If a plant resists cultivation then it’s not worth it to try to farm, either industrially or in your back yard. Especially if you’re trying to farm for sustenance.
muhyb@programming.dev 17 hours ago
Lamb’s lettuce superiority! They don’t need cultivation, grow everywhere even if you don’t want them to grow, and they are quite edible, also delicious.
ArmchairAce1944@discuss.online 9 hours ago
I hate to bring race and racism into this, but one reason why I laugh at many racists, especially European racists, is how they claim they love their own national culture but do jack shit to have ANYTHING to do with its pre-colonial cuisine. Take British cuisine for example. While obviously people in medieval England (even the richest people at the time) had far fewer options than most people in the UK today, but they still used many herbs and plants for seasonings that are only being rediscovered by reenactors in recent years, and they are actually quite good.
More than just culture, the dangers of over-reliance on a handful of crops and cultivars is also dangerous. The Irish potato famine happened in the 1840s due to Irish potato corps just being a few kinds instead of the hundreds of varieties that you would find in South America. The result of this is that a blight that would have had a negligible effect in South America absolutely devastated Ireland. More recently in the 20th century, we have a near complete destruction of the Gros Michel banana in the 1950s. When you go to your typical supermarket, the bananas you see there are more than likely going to be Cavendish Bananas, which were considered inferior to Gros Michel in the past, but due to disease rendering Gros Michel bananas commercially nonviable they were chosen because they were all we got…
and the same shit could happen at any time to the Cavendish banana, too.
ayyy@sh.itjust.works 4 hours ago
I have to correct you on your terrible misunderstanding of the Irish Genocide. Your misinformation is almost certainly not your fault, as I was uncritically taught the same utter bullshit in my primary school curriculum in the USA. The Irish genocide that you refer to as using the colonizer’s term “Irish Potato Famine” had absolutely fuckall to do with potatoes or the Irish. The absent landlords in England extracted mandatory “tax” in the form of literally every food crop that the Irish
slavestenants grew. There was ALWAYS, literally at ALL POINTS IN TIME, enough food to feed the people of Ireland. The food was physically stolen with violence and exported to cover “rent” to English “landlords” that never set foot in the country. Potatoes were grown in an act of extreme desperation as they were not a crop that was consideredthefttax-worthy and therefore the Irish did their best to feed themselves.Think critically about it for like one second. Do you really believe that it was just a bunch of silly dumb Irishmen that only ever thought to grow literally a single crop for all of their food? In such a lush and nutrient rich area that is still famous for like a dozen high quality staples in different food groups? Or did you just get duped by racists that still spread their bullshit successfully?
ArmchairAce1944@discuss.online 8 minutes ago
I am aware that the Irish famine was very multi-faceted and was an act of genocide. But for the sake of this particular argument (diversity in crops) I did point out that much of the Irish potato crop was a mono-culture, and the British absolutely brought over the blight without any concern of what it might do.
delgato@sh.itjust.works 43 minutes ago
I understand where your anger is coming from but it’s misplaced. Lots of people, Americans too, learn the Irish genocide as “the Irish Potato Famine”. Secondly, single crop use is ONE factor that made the situation worse in the context of anti-Irish policies by the occupying British.
okmko@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
I heard recently that Gros Michel can be ordered online for an arm and a leg. I’ve always wanted to try it.
ArmchairAce1944@discuss.online 7 minutes ago
They are still available,but can no longer be grown to the same scale. If you try one, tell me, I am curious as to how they taste.
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 9 hours ago
Every September, I make a year’s supply of beautyberry jelly.
I do something that I don’t recommend people do: I can it. I’m like 5 years in, and I haven’t had a problem yet. There’s a series of pages in my Ball canning recipe book that the beautyberry jelly recipe I use conforms pretty close to, but it isn’t USDA approved or otherwise published by some authority as safe for canning, I’m going to recommend you avoid this.
Beautyberries, if you’re not familiar with them, are a bush/shrub native to the American southeast. The plant looks like a bunch of stems with leaves that grow along them, along with clusters of tiny white flowers in the spring at the base of each pair of leaves, that turn into vivid purple berries in the fall. The leaves can be used as a mosquito repellent if rubbed on clothing, and the berries are edible…although they’re bitter and astringent. Boiling them in water to make an extract and making jelly from that extract results in a bright red jelly that tastes like strawberry and tea.
It’s something of a pain to harvest, so it pretty much isn’t commercially done.
RebekahWSD@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
Everything I’ve seen from Ball/Kerr has been safe canning recipes! Love their stuff, use their website for recipes often.
Oh I’ve misread. You picked a berry close to it and are substituting that in, yeah? I’d try it on myself but probably wouldn’t give it away.
Sounds like a beautiful jelly though!
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 4 hours ago
Yes, I have Ball’s Complete Book Of Home Preserving (which is a terrible title, as the book contains no information about dehydrating, freeze drying, jerking or brewing, only water bath and pressure canning). It has a procedure for “berry” jelly where it lists half a dozen different kinds of berries and how to extract juice from them, to include elderberry, and then you use a quantity of said “berry” juice in a standard jelly recipe. Independent of this, I’ve found a beautyberry jelly recipe that resembles this procedure, so I feel okay canning it, and have done so for years now. I’m going to stop short of recommending it to anyone else. By all means, if you’ve got access to beautyberries, make the jelly, but can it at your own risk.
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 7 hours ago
alot of tropical ones tend to be poisonous too, because so much diversity of insects, trying to eat them develop toxins in thier parts. also some plants have to super poisonous because insects evolve to build resistance them, so plants have to respond by becoming more toxic.
Montagge@lemmy.zip 18 hours ago
I harvest stinging nettle to use as a spinach replacement
I’m going to try to make maple syrup from big leaf maples this year too!
RedSnt@feddit.dk 16 hours ago
I mostly eat spinach now for potassium, but I just looked it up and stinging needle has only 25% lower potassium content than spinach, so at least for my use case it seems like a fairly good substitute seeing as how well stinging needle grow.
Vathsade@lemmy.ca 15 hours ago
How do they taste? Do they not, uh, sting with the little spikes?
I got then popping up all around.
punksnotdead@slrpnk.net 46 minutes ago
How to harvest, dry, and make tea with nettles:
If you have arthritis or hayfever they’ve been shown to help with that. Science has confirmed the old wives tales traditional herbal remedy works for this one. Not as effectively as modern medicine of course but if it’s all you can afford, or whatever, then something is better than nothing.
Bluewing@lemmy.world 54 minutes ago
You would harvest the leaves when they are small and young. And they would be one of the first fresh greens available in the spring. But their season quickly passes as the plants grow pretty fast.
FellowEnt@sh.itjust.works 2 hours ago
You can make them into patties and fry them up, surprisingly good.
Damage@feddit.it 14 hours ago
If you cook them they stop stinging.
My mother makes pasta with them too, puts them in the dough.
Montagge@lemmy.zip 13 hours ago
I blanch them and then freeze them. So no stinging!
MrFinnbean@lemmy.world 18 hours ago
I mean there probably are lots of reasons why we farm only certain plants.
For example dewberries have short harvest window and as far as i know they need to be hand picked.
jol@discuss.tchncs.de 18 hours ago
There are many reasons, but it all comes down to economics: how easy and cheap it is to farm and harvest, yield size, does it require refrigeration during transport, what’s the shelf life, etc. Unfortunately optimizing for economics rarely pairs well with user interests, e.g. How nutricious the food is.
vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works 11 hours ago
Which is why until modern farming some of the most nutritionally balanced people’s were hunter gatherers and pastoralists. The big advantage of farming vs ranching or pastoralism is that you can feed a lot of people for relatively little work, this rule of thumb is still true it’s just that we can now do it on such a massive scale that a lot of the downsides have simply been overwhelmed.
bleistift2@sopuli.xyz 18 hours ago
Even if two species existed that had similar soil, water and sun requirements, had similar properties regarding taste, processability, etc., it would still be easier to farm just one instead of breeding both for milennia and splitting the means of production.
Johandea@feddit.nu 14 hours ago
Until a disease pops up, that targets your only crop. Example A: bananas.
auraithx@lemmy.dbzer0.com 15 hours ago
Blackberries are pretty rampant here in the UK. Always wondered why you guys didn’t have it- Seems they were banned in the US until recently due to some fungus.
RavingGrob@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 hours ago
Just to be clear, you mean blackcurrants, yes? Blackberry means something quite different, at least over here.
Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 14 hours ago
Yeah, I pick some every year. Also cherry plums grow quite a bit near me, along with some apple trees and loads of sloes.
ininewcrow@lemmy.ca 18 hours ago
Or why don’t we use all our technological, scientific and research knowledge to good use and engineer fruits and vegetables that can grow in less hospitable environments and can grow larger yields, have a longer growing season and have plenty of nutritional value.
Instead, we use all our knowledge and ability to build bigger, faster, more deadly weapons of war or AI that can micromonitor everyone’s lives or create slop and porn.
phdepressed@sh.itjust.works 17 hours ago
We do both. The problem is corporations and stupid people. See Monsanto, the non-GMO push and the results of golden rice or similar.
joshcodes@programming.dev 13 hours ago
Hi, I’m engaged to someone who studies chickpea and other legumes. Shitloads of money goes into agriculture every year and from my understanding, what you’re describing is being done by some brilliant people (I’m a bit biased). However there’s so many concerns around GMOs doing damage to the environment that it is tightly regulated. Doubly also, Americans don’t have the same ready access to grocery stores that
otherfirst world countries have.Plus the equivalent of flat earthers exist that believe that GMOs will kill us all and we need to go back to eating only what nature created (somewhat hyperbole, there are valid concerns but people have been irrational).
An example is that chickpea and other legumes reintroduces nitrogen into soil after it the soil loses vitality, which makes chickpea a good intermediate crop that can be grown in between others. Its high in nutrients. So yeah, stop eating corn and eat legumes.
(I’m not the molecular biologist so if I got stuff wrong, sorry, I will pay more attention when my partner speaks)
MrFinnbean@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
Im not geneticist, but i grew up on a farm. I always grind my teeth when people talk about miragle plants with high yields.
The plants need to get their energy and nutritions from somewhere. If you just create gmo plant that can absorb nutrition better from soil it also means you need to fertilize that soil that much more and make the crop rotation that much faster, or risk making the fields arid.
But plants that survive larger temperature shifts, more extreme weathers and pest might be necessary for us in the not so far future. Lets just hope in the future those are used for humanitys betterment and not making rich richer.
xylogx@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
Paw paws grow naturally in the area I live and are a delicious fruit. Due to cultivation and transport issues you will never find them in stores.
nomy@lemmy.zip 11 hours ago
I love seeing the explosion of interest in pawpaws over the last decade. They’re very good, a bit of a cross between mango and a banana. I’ve actually seen them at a local fsrmers market this season, I was pretty surprised.
electric_nan@lemmy.ml 9 hours ago
My dad has a tree in his garden, and a friend has made pawpaw moonshine!
dream_weasel@sh.itjust.works 12 hours ago
Ok I’ll bite (literally), how does a person break into this niche, since it is definitely not a market? My engineering degrees did not heavily cover edible plants in my area? I can go find morel mushrooms and identify sassafras but that about covers it.
If I could buy like a ring of +4 to local botany that would be best I think.
Screamium@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
On android you can use an app called “PlantNet” to take a picture of a plant and find out what it is. I’ve learned about many of the plants growing around me this way and have found new edible things. Garlic mustard is a good example. It’s invasive but edible and pretty good, so eating it is also protecting local ecology.
ayyy@sh.itjust.works 4 hours ago
Please do not consume plants based on a visual ID by a convolutional neural network. It’s a dangerous idea. Many plants can only be properly identified by observing specific parts that don’t turn out from a single angle photo, such as formations on the underside of leaves, or a specific curl direction of a flower stamen etc. etc.
Ephera@lemmy.ml 4 hours ago
For me, it helped expand my cosmos by leaving things out and looking for alternatives.
Like, I found out about a world of legumes by going vegan. And earlier this year, I stopped eating wheat for health reasons, and only then started to appreciate the existence of millet, quinoa, amaranth, buckwheat etc…I am probably still within the range of “usual” foods, all things considered, but at least I’m breaking out of a tiny subset of those…
boonhet@sopuli.xyz 11 hours ago
Chanterelles and at least some species of Leccinum are pretty good too.
Look into local berries. Maybe something is edible.
Best is to find people who live off the land and still remember what their forefathers taught them about edible plants or mushrooms. If you’re in the US and have a reservation nearby, maybe they keep the old wisdom alive? Idk I’m not American, the only thing I got off a native American was weed.
In countries where there are people dedicated to keeping tradition alive, it’s easier to find someone to ask I think. Here in Estonia a lot of people collect mushrooms and shit, so a lot of passionate people to ask about their hobby.
v4ld1z@lemmy.zip 15 hours ago
Non-vegans when you let them know there’s more you can eat outside meat and dairy products
BeardedGingerWonder@feddit.uk 14 hours ago
I can’t say I know anyone that loves on an entirely meat and dairy diet.
Le_Wokisme@hexbear.net 3 hours ago
vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works 12 hours ago
Even I eat potatoes sometimes.
DeathsEmbrace@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
That sounds like a malnourished human
Rekorse@sh.itjust.works 12 hours ago
I’m a vegan and I barely know about all this stuff. I love all the tips everyone’s sharing here though!
Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works 14 hours ago
Eat your weeds… This is Common Purslane:
It grows mostly everywhere and is a huge source of Omega 3 fatty acids. It’s much better cooked in my opinion. Also it’s best to find them in a field and not by the roadside where it may be leeching up god knows what hydrocarbon adjacent type of poisons.
ayyy@sh.itjust.works 4 hours ago
Why is there a crummy phone ad in your picture?
LaunchesKayaks@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
Omg people can eat these??? My horse goes absolutely crazy for these things
Now I gotta try some and see what all the fuss is about
Rekorse@sh.itjust.works 12 hours ago
I think I have these in my yard. The ones I have grow along the ground like vines almost, strong stems and such. I’ll have to check when I get home but thats really cool, thanks for sharing!
mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 12 hours ago
I pulled so many of these boogers out of the garden this summer
bennieandthez@lemmygrad.ml 10 hours ago
Gotta make sure it’s actually the edible specie tho.
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 6 hours ago
probably dont eat ones growing on the streets.
MxRemy@piefed.social 9 hours ago
This is a very timely meme for me. Specifically because today, after many years of trial and error, I have finally managed to successfully cook Phaseolus polystachios beans!
Mine are natirally very bitter and tough, not sure how widely that varies from specimen to specimen. Also presumably chock full of toxins/anti-nutrients… I’ve been taking the bitterness as an analogue for how much of that remains, for lack of any other other way to tell.
Today, for the first time, I’ve managed to make them tender and not bitter at all. They taste pretty good!
BlushedPotatoPlayers@sopuli.xyz 6 hours ago
You guys don’t eat sorrel?
Whats_your_reasoning@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
It isn’t common in the US, but I was lucky enough to grow up with it as a staple in my dad’s garden. Funny thing, our family referred to it by its Polish name, so I didn’t know the English word for it until I was a teenager.
ieatpwns@lemmy.world 19 hours ago
“ CaPiTaLiSm bReEdS InNoVaTiOn “
irelephant@anarchist.nexus 16 hours ago
I recently found out you can eat nettles (the ones that sting you), and they actually taste nice.
lots of iron in them
Zwiebel@feddit.org 16 hours ago
Can make tea out of them aswell
RedSnt@feddit.dk 14 hours ago
Good source of potassium as well. Although you’d need to eat 1.25 kilo to reach 100% recommended daily intake.
humanspiral@lemmy.ca 13 hours ago
Although RFKjr has some crazy ideas, not adding food colouring to the balanced diet pyramid is not one of them, and one that any other GOP fascist loyalist, given the job, would gladly do it if given a dollar for it. Energy secretary as an example is full oligarchist energy protectionism.
jackr@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 hours ago
there are some other problems too. I would love to scavenge or grow things here, but the town I live in is basically built on a gigantic industrial waste dump, so eating anything out of the ground here is a bad idea.
DaleGribble88@programming.dev 12 hours ago
That’s what the government says. But I know the truth - I know it’s the queers! They are in it with the aliens to build landing strips for GAY MARTIANS! I swear to god!
CrayonDevourer@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
My daughter is kind of becoming a horticulturalist and recently taught me that sumac (there are non-poison varieties) can make something akin to lemonade if you dip the berries into water and then filter the water back. They have a citric-acid-like outer shell that dissolves in water.
And we’ve eaten so many mushrooms and stuff - thanks to communities on the internet who have categorized lookalikes, where to steer clear of certain types (white mushrooms, don’t even bother. Half of them will kill you)
Jhogenbaum@leminal.space 12 hours ago
Define edible
knowone@slrpnk.net 18 hours ago
There’s so much hogweed all over the UK that’s just sitting there, uneaten. Not the giant stuff, that’s not a fun time. But the regular stuff has good flavour
punksnotdead@slrpnk.net 37 minutes ago
To clarify, when knowone says “that’s not a fun time” they don’t mean “oh it tastes bad”. They mean it’s really not a fun time, avoid going anywhere near giant hogweed!
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heracleum_mantegazzianum
NSFL (if you’re squeemish):
sharkfucker420@lemmy.ml 17 hours ago
Dewberries are so fucking delicious. I used to go pick them and make dewberry pie as a kid. God I miss that, ghey don’t grow where I live rn 😔
fireweed@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
You only need to plant sorrel in your garden once. It’s the ultimate volunteer crop. Quite winter-hardy too, and perennial, plus it tastes like lemon. Halfway between an herb and a green.
Barabas@hexbear.net 13 hours ago
It isn’t all industrial agriculture. There is also the enclosure of the commons meaning that foraging is illegal in a lot of places.
electric_nan@lemmy.ml 9 hours ago
I had native persimmons for the first time today! In Virginia.
LeeeroooyJeeenkiiins@hexbear.net 12 hours ago
i tried to use corn syrup as a vegan honey substitute for a glaze of spiced nuts for roasted carrots and let me tell you that corn taste is a bit off and I really should have just like idk made a simple syrup with sugar or something
i wish vegans would just eat honey it’s just bees I didn’t vote to consider bugs animals (but even though I disagree i’m not gonna feed people honey like the cooks I work with who sometimes “forget” it isn’t vegan)
hansolo@lemmy.today 17 hours ago
A lot of Lebanese shops sell sorrel. Sorrel is just clovers. 50% of people setting this meme are 100 meters or less from sorrel right now.
b_tr3e@feddit.org 18 hours ago
If you can’t kill it or fuck it then eat it. It’s that easy.
shalafi@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
The staple foods we’ve chosen to cultivate are all energy dense. Overheard a client talking to another guy he hadn’t seen in years, “Yeah, got diabetes. Can’t eat any white foods. :(”
That really got me thinking. Rice, potatoes, wheat and corn. The core desirability is energy.
Dave@lemmy.nz 13 hours ago
Do people (in general) really only eat 100 different plants? I feel like that number must be too low. Surely if you listed out all the plant foods that people consider “normal”, there would easily be more than 100.
jaggedrobotpubes@lemmy.world 19 hours ago
If the word “prefer” is in this meme, we might need another pass for tone.
sobchak@programming.dev 3 hours ago
Tbf, many are kinda disgusting to modern palettes. Lamb’s quarter sucks compared to stuff like spinach, kale, or collards. Pokeweed needs extensive preparation to make it safe. Wood sorrel, horseherb, and prickly pear grows where I currently live, but I haven’t tried them yet. My dog likes horseherb despite the little spines for some reason. My grandmother used to fry dandelions and plaintain which was pretty good.
phoenixpinkmyn@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
Wood sorrel is an interesting case. In the US, we don’t commonly eat our native wood sorrel, i.e. the thing that looks like clover. But we do eat starfruit. Starfruit is also a type of wood sorrel, just one that has a much larger, sweeter fruit, that’s been selectively bred for agriculture. But if you look at the fruits of our native plant, they do look like tiny starfruit! link
They’re still tasty. They’re very tart, but with no sweetness. They could be good to top a salad. But you’d have to pick hundreds of them to get as much food as you get from one starfruit, and it wouldn’t be as tasty as a fruit. Like eating a lemon instead of an orange.
That said, I still love them! The leaves and stems also have a good taste. They’re everywhere and have a lovely burst of flavor. Just be careful if you have kidney stones or kidney disease, any kind of wood sorrel - including starfruit - has oxalic acid which can be tough on kidneys.