Woman attempts to live off foraged food in Leeds for three months
Video report by Frazer Maude
A woman from Leeds is attempting to live off nothing but foraged food for three months as part of a project looking at the impact of eating only natural produce.
Lisa Cutcliffe, 42, regularly picks her own vegetables and herbs, including wild garlic and mushrooms in woodland near her home in the Armley area.
She has been foraging for 20 years.
Ms Cutcliffe is now taking part in the Wildbiome Project, funded by foraging teacher Mo Wilde, who lived off wild food in Scotland for a year.
She said: "It's about seeing what happens when modern humans, eating a modern UK diet, change to more of a hunter-gatherer, pre-farming diet and what happens to your gut, what happens to your hormones, what happens to your nutrition in your body."
Among the food Ms Cutcliffe picks are "jelly ears" – mushrooms which grow on dead wood – and wild garlic, which she said grows for several months of the year.
She said: "There's so much you can do with it because you can eat everything above the ground – the leaves, the buds, the open flowers, the seed pods. I make pesto, which I really enjoy, you can dry it and make flakes, you can lacto-ferment it like sauerkraut.
"It's just a wonderful resource."
Is it possible to survive off foraged food?
The recommended intake for an average person is at least 2,000 calories a day, including 50g of protein, making it difficult to live entirely on edible plants found in the wild, especially for people living in built up areas.
But foragers say wild food can supplement a normal diet. Gourmet mushrooms including chanterelles and porcinis – which can be used to make stroganoff – can be found in green spaces in the UK.
Common hawthorn leaves, chickweed, wood sorrel and wild rocket can be picked for salads.
Other greens make nutritious soups. On the coast, seaweeds are versatile produce.
And common fruit trees, including apple, cherry and plum trees are also widely planted in Britain, with produce often left unpicked. The fruit is ideal for pickles or jams.
But Ms Cutcliffe said the first thing to know is what plants are inedible, including the highly poisonous and common hemlock water dropwort.
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