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I recently found out you can eat nettles (the ones that sting you), and they actually taste nice.
lots of iron in them
They make a nice tea.
Good source of potassium as well. Although you’d need to eat 1.25 kilo to reach 100% recommended daily intake.
What’s the definition of “good source” employed here?
I’m basing it on spinach which stinging nettles is only 25% worse than on potassium levels. I think a baked potato might be twice as good though, but I think I’d rather try and eat 1.25 kg of stinging needles in a day than 625 gr of baked potato.
I don’t think most people even consume 1.25kg of food in total per day. It seems implausible that one would have to supplement with a substantial quantity of 0 calorie greens just to get enough of a common and essential mineral. Which makes me think that the K content is average at best and rather less than common food stuffs.
Common… as in grocery store or as in laying around outside for free?
Grocery store.
Assume that all the foodstuffs that people normally eat have the same potassium content as these nettles. Then you’d need to consume 1.25kg of your normal food per day to get enough potassium. Someone who consumes less than 1.25kg of those normal food stuffs would not get enough potassium. If normal food stuffs have a significantly lower potassium content, then you’d expect widespread potassium deficiency.
Maybe, but it doesn’t seem to be a serious public health issue. So common food can’t have significantly lower potassium content than those nettles. What with averages being averages, some foods will have more than others.
is that 1.25kg raw or cooked down? because raw isn’t actually that much, it’d cook down to like 2 micrograms following the law of leafy greens
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.
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.
We do both. The problem is corporations and stupid people. See Monsanto, the non-GMO push and the results of golden rice or similar.
I meant create a food crop that is actually beneficial to humanity … not some empty nutritionless white styrofoam or equally terrible frankenstein corn that simultaneously destroys the land and the people who eat this so called ‘food’.
golden rice
What’s wrong with golden rice?
Nothing really it’s a GMO that was created to fill a vitamin deficiency in some parts of Asia. Can’t remember what vitamin it was though, absolutely brilliant success of a crop though. Funny enough some of the research on it may have used my 2x great grandfathers work as a baseline since he was working with some folks to do something vaguely similar with millet back in the early 1900s. It went nowhere but did lead to some success for his orange groves though.
Golden rice is an example of a GMO that’s actually beneficial to humanity, or would be; anti-GMO sentiment has kept it from being grown in any significant amounts.
It’s tweaked to produce vitamin A, which rice normally does not; deficiency is a common problem in places where the poor get most of their calories from rice
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.
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 reintroduce nitrogen into soil after the soil loses vitality, which makes chickpea a good intermediate crop that can be grown in between others. Its high in nutrients and has good yield. So yeah, stop eating corn and eat legumes/chickpea/hummus.
(I’m not the molecular biologist so if I got stuff wrong, sorry, I will pay more attention when my partner speaks)
I remember reading years ago that a vegetarian diet is far more economical and sustainable than a meat based diet. Which is why I lowered my meat consumption years ago. I still eat meat, just not as much as I once did when I was younger.
Even if humanity didn’t cultivate new vegetables and fruits, the produce we have now is more than enough to feed the planet. I think I remember that it takes just a few acres of grown produce to feed one person per year if they ate a vegetarian diet … whereas it takes ten times more land area to feed a single cow to feed that one person for a year in meat and vegetables.
I try to eat my legumes, especially lentils, since they are high in protein … but by far the greatest benefit that a vegetarian diet provides is the health benefits from the consumption of fiber alone. Full vegetarian or high vegetarian diets all around are far healthier and sustainable for humanity and the environment.
I hate that i cant find anywhere studies that takes the manure used as a fertilizer account in their calculations. Atleast where i live 100% of the manure from the animals is used as a fertilizer on farms and store bought fertilizers are just supplement. Most countries cant produce fertilizer enough for their agricultural need and need to buy it from outside.
I would love some real research wich would be better for the enivorent. Stop meat produsing completelly or scale it down so farms get still some benefits like fertilizer and biogas for the vehicles, but people would not eat food on every meal.
There is one thing that people miss about that whole “10 acres to feed one cow” statement. Yep, it can take that much land. But what doesn’t get said is that one cow can take advantage of land that is unsuitable to grow crops on like tomatoes, peppers, and onions.
In the US, California produces more fresh produce every year than any other state can. But it comes at a high cost of farming land that really isn’t naturally suitable for growing those vegetables. Farmers need to pump millions of gallons of water on those acres to get those crops to grow. This in turn puts pressure on the supply of water to everyone else in the state. And much of this farmland had all it could do to grow grass in some years originally.
Aquifers are going starting to go dry because of this. The vast Ogilala aquifer that supplies water to almost all of the US west is starting to go dry. Because we now are farming land that probably be best left to growing grasses for cattle, sheep, or goats rather than tomatoes or soybeans.
The other research I remember from my reading about this subject years ago was the efficiency of industrial farming. Per acre, industrial farming produces very low or minimal yields … whereas an acre that is tended, micromanaged and monitored by small scale farmers has much high yields. It meant that the only way for industrial farms to be able to produce large amounts of produce is to farm huge acreages in order to make up for the losses or inefficiencies.
One of the reasons why the Californian desert is drying up is that industrial farming is so inefficient that in order to sustain itself as a business model is for it grow ever larger and more invasive … it needs more land and more water in order for it to continually grow as a business. It’s not a way of farming that is meant to produce food efficiently for people … it’s a type of farming that is meant to produce profit, money and control for a corporation.
It’s feeding a monolithic corporation … it’s not feeding people.
All our world problems including global warming, food production, water supply are manageable and can be dealt with to help people in very efficient and possible ways … all of it is hindered and complicated by the fact that corporations sit in opposition to all of it because of their ever wanting need to turn a profit, even if it means destroying the environment and everyone who lives in that environment.
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.
Until a disease pops up, that targets your only crop. Example A: bananas.
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.
About shelf life:
There’s this weird little apple tree, Prime Rouge. Every two years, he’s choke full (the other empty) of perfectly formed, perfectly red apples, optical flaws are rare. They are already edible in summer but get really succulent taste and a white flesh about two months later. The best apple breed i know, in texture, taste and look.Buut they only keep about two months max, unlike the other breeds you have in your supermarket.
Yeah, some apples I bought recently weirdly last a long time. The reason I know is that they tasted bad so I didn’t feel like eating them…
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.
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.
Just to be clear, you mean blackcurrants, yes? Blackberry means something quite different, at least over here.
No I meant blackberries. We have both over here commercially available.
Ok, well I assure you, blackberries are, and never were banned in America. Blackcurrants were.
Oh my bad
Yeah, I pick some every year. Also cherry plums grow quite a bit near me, along with some apple trees and loads of sloes.
Transportability is a huge consideration. Pawpaws can’t be transported nationally, for example. The plants we eat have been bred for maximum marketability, which includes getting the produce from where it grows to where people need it.
Exactly. Instead of complaining people can just grow them themselves. It’s not like commercial growers have a monopoly on growing food.
Otherwise this is a typical lemmy complaint. Someone who isn’t me didn’t do a thing I like. That makes someone else besides me bad. If there are things you want to exist in this world then you have to do things. This realization is real adulthood.
I planted my garden this year and then had that realization, so I divorced my husband and lost my garden. I went back and grabbed all the veggies from it 3 months later: some small potatoes, some peppers, small onions, and I grabbed my baby strawberry plants that survived the summer without regular watering. My ex has admitted he let my garden die. Be the change you want to see in the world
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!
I had native persimmons for the first time today! In Virginia.
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.
which is why we need to normalize street markets like most tropical countries have, sure you can’t buy it at the store but you can buy it from a dude who went into the forest with a big basket a few hours ago.
My grandpa had a pawpaw tree in his garden in rural MO and I always wondered how they taste.
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.
My dad has a tree in his garden, and a friend has made pawpaw moonshine!
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.
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!
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.
No beautyberries here! Tons of wild grapes though. Horrible producers those are though. All vine and no grapes!
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.
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
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!
There are fairly similar plants, so make sure to do your research. I get similar plants each year in my garden but I know they’re not purslane.
I pulled so many of these boogers out of the garden this summer
Why is there a crummy phone ad in your picture?
probably dont eat ones growing on the streets. dandelions are cultivated, its a regular in some asian dishes. just not the street weeds.
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.
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!
I like you Stewart, you’re not like the other people. Here in the trailer park.
“ CaPiTaLiSm bReEdS InNoVaTiOn “
If the word “prefer” is in this meme, we might need another pass for tone.
Getting an allotment, so soon I will be able to grow things I don’t normally eat because they are expensive or aren’t sold in shops here.
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.
Sorrel is not clovers. Sorrel are commonly used in cooking here in Europe while clovers, not so much. That being said, both are hardy and easy to cultivate.
Ahhh, OK, that’s my bad. I was thinking of some other name for clover. I’ve cooked with sorrel before, it’s nice. Same for clovers, nice lemony flavor.
Thanks for the correction.
my grandmother picks sorrels on the way home and makes sorrel soup. When I was a kid, i remember we would eat them when we we’re playing outside. We knew where all the crunchy ones had grown and not share with anyone that was unworthy
Sorrel can give you kidney stones. As kids, we were told not to eat too much of it.
So does spinach. And beans.
the difference is potency, wood sorrel is literally the reason Oxalic acid is named such and thus quite good at giving you kidney stones.
Wait what? Clovers are a species of Trifolium in the Fabaceae (legume family), but sorrel refers to the leaves of Rumex species in the Polygonaceae. What are you referring to?
I thought there was some other name for a clover-looking plant that started with an S.
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!
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.
How do they taste? Do they not, uh, sting with the little spikes?
I got then popping up all around.
if you crush them, or flatten them, they don’t sting.
You can make them into patties and fry them up, surprisingly good.
If you cook them they stop stinging.
My mother makes pasta with them too, puts them in the dough.
How to harvest, dry, and make tea with nettles:
https://slrpnk.net/comment/16978019
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.
I blanch them and then freeze them. So no stinging!
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.
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)
