Food for a year

what would a permaculture diet look like ?

what would you replace from this diet ? how many lbs ??

http://www.wildlandfire.com/docs/2005/food05.htm

replace grains with  ??  lbs ?

jmy wrote:
what would a permaculture diet look like ?

what would you replace from this diet ? how many lbs ??

http://www.wildlandfire.com/docs/2005/food05.htm

replace grains with  ??  lbs ?

Actually, that looks kinda short sited. While on the surface the list looks very complete.... and for the person who wrote it, it may be.... I think there is something missing. I think the missing ingredient is practice. Now the person who wrote this may be practicing using these things all the time and so be quite prepared, it doesn't sound like it. That list looks like an armchair exercise. I would say, know where your water supply is. Be able to walk/bike there with with a full bucket. Actively start foraging in your area, both your own land and close public lands (close means walking/biking distance). Use the food from foraging in your daily diet. Get to know the people close by, start trading with them. Not on an accounted basis, but take over home made things to those you trust often. Buy local. Support those who at least try to carry locally grown foods.

I've probably missed some things... but as you seem to have guessed, start growing your own. Get rid of that lawn and plant. Permaculture takes years to get going, but start anyway.... and while you are waiting grow veggies too, and start saving your seed... and trading it with others. Even if you are renting, that few trees you plant may save someone else's life... and what goes around comes around.... someone else may plant trees that save you too.

These are not just "I'm afraid of the future" kinds of things we should do. Even if the world continues on its merry way as is for the next hundred years or more. You will know what is in your food and be able to eat healthier. You will have closer/healthier ties to your family, neighbours, friends and the local population. I personally think you will have a better appreciation for life and its provisions that way.

Personally, I am a long way from "being there". A lot of my food is factory grown and I don't know the people around me that well. I am growing/foraging enough for snacks. Our meat is local.... thats about it.

jmy already grows all his own food.  I think he is asking US what WE are growing or plan to grow for our permaculture diets.  I'm still working mine out, and am far from being capable of actually growing it.  Locally grown meat is not affordable for me - 2 lbs meat = $20.   

this is just an example of what is needed for basic calories for a year published for the mormon community.

to replace the grain and grain products ...  perhaps nuts and dried fruit ..  but how much ... how many trees .. how much land ?

Assume a food forest ...  how many trees and of what variety ?  almonds and figs ?

I have been researching disaster preparedness off and on ever since I saw the TV move The Day After back in 1984(3?).  I once read that you should monitor your diet to learn what you need to store.  But this really doesn’t work.  If you eat seasonally you will need to monitor your diet for an entire year to take the changing seasons into account.  Even if you east seasonally, if you do not eat locally you may not be able to get everything in your usual diet if a crop failure happens on the other side of the country or transportation is disrupted.

So your best strategy is to learn to eat a nutritious diet and store the foods you need to maintain a nutritious diet.  But the nutritional needs of the person that is going to eat from the list has been ignored by every list I have ever seen.

The recommended daily allowance for any given nutrient is the minimum amount needed by the demographic group that needs the nutrient the most.  For example, pregnant women need the most calcium so the minimum amount for pregnant women is the RDA for the entire population.  So most people will consume more calcium than they need if they consume the RDA.  But at least the RDA is a starting point.

There is no RDA for things like calories or fat.  Although the government says no more than 30% of your calorie intake should come from fat.  But in general young children need more fat than the rest of us.  Teenagers need more calories than the rest of us.  Basing your storage plan on the actual nutritional needs of the people you store food for is your best food storage strategy.  But for the life of me I cannot find anything that will calculate a food storage list based on this strategy.

Back in the 1960s the government said that you needed to store 2,000 calories a day per person when stocking a fallout shelter.  An average American today consumes almost 4,000 calories a day.  A 2,000 calorie a day diet coupled with the stress and physical toil that could come with a post-disaster recovery period could be starvation rations.

It's a great question, but depends totally on your diet. For example, I eat no grains or legumes and relatively little fruit, but I do eat a ton of meat and fat. so for me that basically means a decent sized vegetable garden and lots of integrated small livestock.

For your diet it might be so,ethnic completely different.

Either way, grow as much as you can. Worst case scenario, you give the surplus away to your friends and neighbors.

More nuts!  2 pounds for a person in a year is rather low.

Most nuts in conventional production yield at least a thousand pounds or so per acre. A pound of nuts has roughly 2300 calories and a decent amount of protein, a person can survive and thrive off a mostly nut diet.  An acre of solid nut trees will feed around 3 people, not including anything grown in the understory (veggies, small fruit, grazing animals, etc).

wouldn't this be highly influenced on where you live, the weather it has, and the resources around you. i don't see how one list can be for everyone or even most people. what i grow and eat here would not be what i grow and eat 700 miles south.

What is the actual daily diet in a current operating food forest ?

seasonal 

Gosh, you're asking a good question and not getting the kind of answers you're looking for. I don't (yet) grow much of my own food, but I hang out with some permaculture people, so I have some "leads" if you will.

Corn. There's a new book, The Resilient Gardener, by Carol Deppe, in which she talks about growing corn as her grain and as one of the five essential resiliency crops. I haven't read the book, so I'm not sure what the reasoning is behind corn, but the book might have a good angle.

Perennial grains. There's a thread on here about Sepp Holzer's perennial grain.

Nuts. Similar to tamo42, I don't eat grains either (not even corn). They make my body hurt. I'm happiest replacing grain-type starches with nuts, or nut flours if I'm really desperate for a baked good.

Sunchokes. Other non-grain starches are potatoes, or in a perennial food system, sunchokes/Jerusalem artichokes, or sweet potatoes in warmer climates or micro-climates. I hear sunchoke stalks are excellent browse for livestock, too. Btw, ever had a quiche with a mashed potato crust? YUM!

Winter squash. One of Deppe's top five resilience foods. If you think about it, these are amazingly starchy, albeit not perennial.

Mushrooms. Hello! So. much. possibility.

Eggs. Deppe prefers ducks to chickens, but I do think even for vegetarian permaculture folks, eggs are the primary protein. I'm with tamo42 again in that I would want lots and lots of meat.

Perennial greens. Corn salad aka mache is a popular perennial green, and I've heard of permaculture folks advocating the leaves of certain trees as excellent greens, though I really don't know much about that. I've also heard some kale is practically perennial.

Wild foods. Pardon my ignorance here, but I once had the most amazing ravioli that was made out of--dang, was it dock or burdock?--gathered from the wild. It was a lovely purple color and so YUMMY! Unfortunately, I can't compare how much more perennial, resilient or efficient it might be to include a wild food like this one in a permaculture food system as opposed to more common grains. I think most permaculture folks eat a lot of "wild" foods: nettles, dandelions, lamb's quarters, burdock, cottonwood tips, etc.

I'm sorry I'm not much help with pounds.

I think it's a mind-bender for lots of folks to consider going without bread, or wheat--which does logically fit better with a food forest system--but for me, it's a happier, healthier lifestyle and I truly don't miss it.

"Corn. There's a new book, The Resilient Gardener, by Carol Deppe, in which she talks about growing corn as her grain and as one of the five essential resiliency crops. I haven't read the book, so I'm not sure what the reasoning is behind corn, but the book might have a good angle."

For Carol, the primary reason is that she is gluten-intolerant. But in researching using corn, she has learned that grain corn compares favorably with wheat/rye/barley in terms of productivity and processing.

If you are interested in survival food, this book is well worth studying. She is very clear about her reasons for concentrating on the crops she recommends, and her mental process is instructive. I can see how people in different situations could use her reasoning to come up with a different, but equally good set of strategic crops.

Jocelyn Campbell wrote:
Corn. There's a new book, The Resilient Gardener, by Carol Deppe, in which she talks about growing corn as her grain and as one of the five essential resiliency crops.

Corn is not a very good crop for humans to rely on.  It does not provide a complete protein- it doesn’t have all of the amino acids that your body cannot make without being treated with lye- which is how we ended up with grits.

Corn is also bad for the soil since it deplete nitrogen.  If it is grown without crop rotation with a nitrogen-fixing crop your soil will become depleted.  And growing corn on depleted soil without fertilizer is a use effort.

Winter squash. One of Deppe's top five resilience foods. If you think about it, these are amazingly starchy, albeit not perennial.

Don’t get so hung up on starches.  Other than some vitamins and minerals something like potatoes provide nothing other than starch, i.e. calories.  Your body needs both fat and protein.

Mushrooms. Hello! So. much. possibility.

The key here is to produce your own replacement spawn so you don’t have to rely on commercial suppliers that could go by the wayside in a crisis situation.  But I’ve never seen anything that tells you how to do it.

I've also heard some kale is practically perennial.

It wouldn’t last 2 days past the middle of April in the heat we get here in Florida.

Wild foods. Pardon my ignorance here, but I once had the most amazing ravioli that was made out of--dang, was it dock or burdock?--gathered from the wild.

Consider how chemically-laden the world is, are such wild foods safe to eat?

Excellent, Jacque--good to know the book is decent--thank you!

flaja wrote:
Corn is not a very good crop <snip> Don’t get so hung up on starches.  Other than some vitamins and minerals something like potatoes provide nothing other than starch, i.e. calories.  Your body needs both fat and protein.

Good point. Personally, I would not grow corn. I don't eat it. I was mentioning starches for the benefit of others--those who would miss bread and might be looking for the best grain option.

flaja wrote:
Consider how chemically-laden the world is, are such wild foods safe to eat?

Generally, that is true, though you can find wilder areas that are not on the roadside and not downstream from a smelter that will be less toxic. I think your point would also apply to home gardens, so the logic is a bit defeatist.

I wish I'd added oca and yacon to perennial tubers/sunchokes above. I saw them on Eric Toensmeier's perennial vegetable list and was reminded I'd heard about oca in my PDC. I think oca, oxalis tuberosa, will be a lovely birthday gift for my mom, if I don't tell her the tubers are edible. She thinks edibles are too much work, but she would love the oxalis look for her garden. 

"Other than some vitamins and minerals something like potatoes provide nothing other than starch, i.e. calories. "

This view of potatoes is a bit limited. They actually have a reasonable protein and mineral content. Of course, it isn't complete, but that's why many people who won't eat meat will eat eggs and dairy.

See http://www.potato2008.org/en/potato/factsheets.html

Or just google "protein content of potatoes."

Jocelyn Campbell wrote:
Generally, that is true, though you can find wilder areas that are not on the roadside and not downstream from a smelter that will be less toxic. I think your point would also apply to home gardens, so the logic is a bit defeatist.

Studies have shown that gardens and farm fields that are located near major roads or highways have an increased amount of chemicals due to auto exhaust. If push comes to shove you eat whatever you can get to stay alive.  But I wouldn’t go out of my way to eat wild food simply because it is wild.  And I certainly wouldn’t eat wild foods thinking I am doing myself or the environment some favor.

flaja wrote:
Studies have shown that gardens and farm fields that are located near major roads or highways have an increased amount of chemicals due to auto exhaust. If push comes to shove you eat whatever you can get to stay alive.  But I wouldn’t go out of my way to eat wild food simply because it is wild.  And I certainly wouldn’t eat wild foods thinking I am doing myself or the environment some favor.

Why not? I would.

Plants that grow strong and healthy without the interfering hand of human kind are better than a nutrient deficient hybrid any day. Weeds like purslain are an incredible source of plant based omega fatty acids. Anything grown without the necessity for clearing land or the use of fertilizers, chemicals, gas powered vehicles is certainly better for the planet and the beings living on it. I love to forage wild food, it's awesome.

craftylittlemonkey wrote:
Plants that grow strong and healthy without the interfering hand of human kind are better than a nutrient deficient hybrid any day.

What makes you think hybrids are always nutrient deficient?

But at any rate this is not my point.  A plant growing wild on the side of a road or near a factory or even near a golf course may (and likely would) contain pollutants that a plant grown elsewhere may (and likely would)  not have.

Weeds like purslain are an incredible source of plant based omega fatty acids. Anything grown without the necessity for clearing land or the use of fertilizers, chemicals, gas powered vehicles is certainly better for the planet and the beings living on it. I love to forage wild food, it's awesome.

Many people would starve if this strategy were followed since nature by itself cannot produce enough food to feed 6 billion people. I would accept this strategy if I could pick and choose what people have to starve to death.

flaja wrote:
This is a very misleading claim.  We don’t eat potatoes as dry weight so the water content must be factored in.  Potatoes are 75% water.  You probablly couldn’t eat enough potato to get enough protein without making yourself sick.

Whole potatoes are only 2% protein.  Whole wheat has 13.3% protein. Oats are 12.5% protein and whole grain cornmeal has 6.67% protein.

You have fallen prey to the same trap you are warning us against. No one eats dry flour or dry wheat groats, they cook the wheat with a larger amount of water, which reduces the % protein. A slice of bread might only be 6% protein.  Potatoes, on the other hand, can be cooked and eaten as they are. If something was really, really loaded with excess water, it could make it hard to get enough nutrients. But if there is merely some extra water (as with potatoes), then the body can handle that easy ... it would adjust to drink less water.

Potatoes alone don't make a balanced diet, but many cultures have used them as a staple, even the backbone of the diet. In Ireland under British colonialism, the grain and meat were exported, but the milk could not be (it would spoil, was expensive to transport). The Irish diet was primarily potatoes and milk, and that combo is reasonably balanced in terms of amino acids and total protein. Some traditional Andean cultures also made/make extensive use of potatoes in their diet.

"You probablly couldn’t eat enough potato to get enough protein without making yourself sick."

Well, I would certainly would get sick of a potatoes-only diet. But it can be done, without serious damage, for quite a while -

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-11864290

My point is that potatoes provide more than starch calories in a diet, and that potatoes can be a mainstay of a healthy diet. Unlike, say, marshmallows, which really are just a source of starch calories and nothing else.

flaja wrote:
Corn is not a very good crop for humans to rely on.  It does not provide a complete protein- it doesn’t have all of the amino acids that your body cannot make without being treated with lye- which is how we ended up with grits.

Corn is also bad for the soil since it deplete nitrogen.  If it is grown without crop rotation with a nitrogen-fixing crop your soil will become depleted.  And growing corn on depleted soil without fertilizer is a use effort.

Corn is not a complete protein, but it isn't advertised as such. You only run into problems with corn if its a serious staple and you haven't got any legumes or meat or eggs in your diet. The lime is used to get out niacin, a vitamin not an amino acid (amino acids are the components of proteins). The reason that corn is such a nitrogen hog is that we plant it so densely, it produces a huge amount of foliage and needs nitrogen to do that. When you grow it in your garden and then compost it all of that nitrogen is in your compost.

Don’t get so hung up on starches.  Other than some vitamins and minerals something like potatoes provide nothing other than starch, i.e. calories.  Your body needs both fat and protein.

Your body needs all three, but in the short term (months) you can get by on either starch or fat, and everything has a little protein in it. The thing about starches is that they are easy to store on a shelf or in a jar or in a root cellar,so you can have food that will keep you alive for a few months while you figure out what else to eat.

The key here is to produce your own replacement spawn so you don’t have to rely on commercial suppliers that could go by the wayside in a crisis situation.  But I’ve never seen anything that tells you how to do it.

I would guess that you haven't looked. When I decided to grow some mushrooms it took me less than 180 second to find and order a book, which came in less than a week, which told me exactly what to do. I can't remember how I jerryrigged the links in the past so paul would get a kickback (and lately I've been forgetting to enter through his links, sorry Paul!) but follow this link and look for Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms by Paul Stamets and Mushroom Cultivator: A Practical Guide to Growing Mushrooms at Home by Paul Stamets usually the bundle of things bought together has all three.

Though I will mention that mushrooms are not a calorie dense food.

Quote
I've also heard some kale is practically perennial.

It wouldn’t last 2 days past the middle of April in the heat we get here in Florida.

yea probably, chances are it will get pulled the second it starts to bolt.

yet i have kale that is 2+ years old. i get greens and i get a seed crop. which can be planted to give more kale or sprouted and eaten for a very nutritious meal. the chaff can be sterilized and used to grow mushrooms. then come winter again you get kale every day.

not saying its the key to it all, but it helps.

ps: it gets well over 110 here in the summer some days. usually hovering around 100-105.

I'll recommend again the book "One Circle" by David Duhon, which describes nearly complete vegan diets grown on the smallest amount of land.  The book is theoretical, based on research done by Ecology Action.  I don't know if anyone has actually tried to grow the diets and subsist on them.  They are pretty boring.  I consider this research a jumping off point for designing and growing one's own diet.

Jonathan Byron wrote:You have fallen prey to the same trap you are warning us against. No one eats dry flour or dry wheat groats, they cook the wheat with a larger amount of water, which reduces the % protein.

http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/vegetables-and-vegetable-products/2770/2

A 299g baked potato- which presumably is cooked without adding water to it and which has had some of its water removed- has only 7g of protein or 2.3% protein.

http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/breakfast-cereals/1630/2

A 242g serving of grits, which has been cooked with water, has 3g of protein, or 1.23% protein.

But, other whole grain foods are much better than potatoes.

http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/baked-products/4876/2

A 28g serving of grocery store whole wheat bread has 4g of protein or over 14.25% protein. 

http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/cereal-grains-and-pasta/5722/2

A 174g serving of white rice, which has been cooked with water, has 4g of protein or 2.3% protein.  In other words you have to remove water from a potato for it to compare favorably with rice that you have added water to.

http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/cereal-grains-and-pasta/5784/2

140g of whole wheat spaghetti, cooked with water, has 7g of protein or 5% protein.

So, whole grains that have water added to them still have as much, if not more, protein as potatoes from which water has been removed.  You have to eat more volume of potato to get the same amount of protein found in smaller volumes of other staple foods.

Potatoes, on the other hand, can be cooked and eaten as they are.

Like I said, cooking potatoes as they are removes water from them, when cooking other starchy foods means adding water. 

http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/vegetables-and-vegetable-products/2567/2 ; Raw instant mashed potatoes have 8.3% protein.  But as you wouldn’t eat dry wheat you would likewise not eat dry instant mashed potatoes.

http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/vegetables-and-vegetable-products/2568/2 Preparing instant mashed potatoes with just water gives you a food that is only 2% protein.

http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/vegetables-andvegetable-products/3004/2 Because of the water content found in raw potatoes making mashed potatoes with milk and butter gives you only 2% protein.

If something was really, really loaded with excess water, it could make it hard to get enough nutrients.

Raw potatoes are 75% water.  What do you consider to be excessive?

In Ireland under British colonialism, the grain and meat were exported, but the milk could not be (it would spoil, was expensive to transport). The Irish diet was primarily potatoes and milk, and that combo is reasonably balanced in terms of amino acids and total protein.

Only because of the milk.  Furthermore, can’t milk be made into cheese and thus exported as easily as bulk grain could be? And just how did the Irish export meat before the invention of refrigerated transport- which didn’t come about until the late 19th century?

flaja wrote: And just how did the Irish export meat before the invention of refrigerated transport- which didn’t come about until the late 19th century?

As livestock, probably.

flaja wrote:

Many people would starve if this strategy were followed since nature by itself cannot produce enough food to feed 6 billion people. I would accept this strategy if I could pick and choose what people have to starve to death.

Eating wild food does not cause people to starve to death. I don't think anyone here is advocating all 7 billion people become foragers. 

Emerson White wrote:
The lime is used to get out niacin, a vitamin not an amino acid (amino acids are the components of proteins).

My mistake.  I wasn’t sure what I remembered about why corn is treated with lye and I didn’t bother to look it up.

so you can have food that will keep you alive for a few months while you figure out what else to eat.

My concern is that people who know nothing about nutrition will look at the food storage lists and get the idea that they can live off of carbohydrates because all of the lists I have ever seen emphasize carbohydrates and say very little about the nutrition involved.

I would guess that you haven't looked. When I decided to grow some mushrooms it took me less than 180 second to find and order a book, which came in less than a week, which told me exactly what to do.

All of the books I have read give dire warnings about keeping everything sterile so you avoid contamination with wild species that reduce yield.  Nothing I have read makes it sound like a diy project.  But I have a look at the link.

soil wrote:
yea probably, chances are it will get pulled the second it starts to bolt.

If 95 degree heat doesn't kill it first.  And don't some green leaf vegetables get bitter when grown in hot weather?

ps: it gets well over 110 here in the summer some days. usually hovering around 100-105.

We get humitures of 95-110.

flaja wrote:
If 95 degree heat doesn't kill it first.  And don't some green leaf vegetables get bitter when grown in hot weather?

We get humitures of 95-110.

Try collards, they are a staple southern green.  And as high in calcium by weight as milk, if I remember correctly.  Will grow all year and are delicious. 

Ludi Ludi wrote:
As livestock, probably.

But how far?  I have been watching a BBC program about some people that are trying to re-establish an Edwardian Era farm.  They specifically said that sheep meat was not imported into Britain in any reasonable amount until around the turn of the 20th century when refrigerated ships allowed the meat to be transported from Australia and New Zealand.

flaja wrote:
But how far? 

I don't know.  It's an historical fact that potatoes made up a large part of the Irish diet and that a lot of food was exported from Ireland during the Potato Famine.  In any case, this all seems a little off the topic of this thread. 

flaja wrote:
What makes you think hybrids are always nutrient deficient?

But at any rate this is not my point.  A plant growing wild on the side of a road or near a factory or even near a golf course may (and likely would) contain pollutants that a plant grown elsewhere may (and likely would)  not have.

Many people would starve if this strategy were followed since nature by itself cannot produce enough food to feed 6 billion people. I would accept this strategy if I could pick and choose what people have to starve to death.

I live in farm country, there is nothing between farms and the highway or roadway where up until not that long ago cars that were fueled with lead based gasoline drove by all night and day. Believe me, produce grown here is not more precious than weeds beside a golf course. Bet the golf course weeds are cleaner, actually, since they are not sprayed several times a season. Besides, there is a lot of wild land secluded from factories etc. Our boy scout group has a leader who is an amazing resource for wild edibles, we learned from him that wild grape vines are a terrific source of drinkable water. Amazing what is out there for the picking when you know what's what.

Hybrid plants, any plant that requires lots of care and attention, are not as capable of pulling nutrients out of the earth. They are weak and what they give to those who eat them is weak in comparison to plants in their natural state. Take modern wheat as compared to kamut for example.

Foraging is definately a viable option for supplementing the diet. The more people do it, the better off they and the planet will be.

Ludi, I'll check out that book thank you. It would certainly be easier for me to get my hands on 1000 sq ft than an entire forest garden!

craftylittlemonkey wrote:
Believe me, produce grown here is not more precious than weeds beside a golf course.

I haven’t said one word about taste because I am talking about safety, not taste.  If you eat something from the wild you have no clue what it has been exposed to.  At least if you eat something that you produced yourself or someone else produced within the confines of the law, you have some control over what you are eating.

flaja wrote: At least if you eat something that you produced yourself or someone else produced within the confines of the law, you have some control over what you are eating.

Not really.  Produce is not closely checked for contaminants.  People are regularly made ill by produce bought from the store, within the confines of the law.  I submit there is not one example of someone made ill from non-poisonous plants harvested from the wild.

Ludi Ludi wrote:
jmy already grows all his own food.  I think he is asking US what WE are growing or plan to grow for our permaculture diets.  I'm still working mine out, and am far from being capable of actually growing it.  Locally grown meat is not affordable for me - 2 lbs meat = $20.     

Organic ground beef is $3/lb here.

craftylittlemonkey wrote:

Hybrid plants, any plant that requires lots of care and attention, are not as capable of pulling nutrients out of the earth. They are weak and what they give to those who eat them is weak in comparison to plants in their natural state.

Not sure about that. There is a concept called 'hybrid vigor' where a cross between two strains is often better than either strain.  A mutt dog is a hybrid, and I would take them over a purebred (ie, 'inbred') dog for many reasons -  tougher/smarter/more disease resistant. Hybrids tend to have more genetic diversity than purebreds, and bad genes do not accumulate so rapidly as with purebred/inbreds.

I have not seen any good data that shows that hybrid plants are inherently less nutritious. The big problem with F1 hybrid plants as I see it is that they do not breed true, and to grow them year after year requires someone who specializes in seed production. 

Pakanohida wrote:
Organic ground beef is $3/lb here.

Lucky you! 

Ludi Ludi wrote:
Not really.  Produce is not closely checked for contaminants.  People are regularly made ill by produce bought from the store, within the confines of the law.  I submit there is not one example of someone made ill from non-poisonous plants harvested from the wild.

How many people have gotten sick after eating bad produce that was grown, harvested, packaged, shipped and sold when the law was fully obeyed?  When you rely on illegals, who don’t care about hygiene, picking your food, you are bound to have problems eventually.  Likewise when you eat wild foods that may have been contaminated with pesticides and herbicides applied to nearby farms and/or lawns.

Pakanohida wrote:
Organic ground beef is $3/lb here.

Where on earth are you located?  Does your butcher deliver?  Here in Florida I am doing good to find non-organic hamburger (20% or more fat) for less than $2 a pound.  Ground chuck is easily $3 a pound.

flaja wrote:
I haven’t said one word about taste because I am talking about safety, not taste.  If you eat something from the wild you have no clue what it has been exposed to.  At least if you eat something that you produced yourself or someone else produced within the confines of the law, you have some control over what you are eating.

I didn't say anything about taste either...

If you are buying organic you have some control over what's been put on your produce but even the label organic doesn't mean it is not GMO. You can know for sure that stuff from a regular farm was sprayed over and over and over again and grown in soil that has been chemically treated for ages as well. Food grown in the wild is about as safe as that grown in your own garden I'd think. Not from beside the road but who eats from beside the road? Ok, well people do pick asparagus from the ditches here in spring but I won't eat that.

flaja wrote:
How many people have gotten sick after eating bad produce that was grown, harvested, packaged, shipped and sold when the law was fully obeyed?  When you rely on illegals, who don’t care about hygiene, picking your food, you are bound to have problems eventually.  Likewise when you eat wild foods that may have been contaminated with pesticides and herbicides applied to nearby farms and/or lawns.

Hey now, that is not down to the "illegals", that is the responsibility of the farm owner/manager. That's not cool.