Eat more leaves (even if you are a human)

I don't know what the demographic breakdown is for permies forum readers, but I am guessing at least fifty percent humans?  Maybe even more, hard to say.  I do know, however, that many humans don't view plant leaves as a potential food unless said plant leaf is available in a grocery store like lettuce, cabbage, spinach, kale, chard, etc.  Unfortunately I was one of those humans until relatively recently, and I am still in the process of unlearning that bizarre modern myth.

There are plants with edible leaves all around you, well probably.  If you are one of the alien readers living in space, things might be a bit tougher.  Same if you live in the middle of a very dense city or in the deep ocean, but otherwise you should be good.  Like all posts about foraging, this one comes with the caveat: make sure you identify the plant precisely and verify its edibility.  Once you have done that, eat only a small amount at first, then wait a day and make sure your system doesn't have any issues with it.  With that out of the way, time to get cooking.

Leafy greens have a terrible shelf life unless refrigerated.  During my stay at the Dogstar Cabin on Wheaton Labs, I haven't had the facilities to keep them fresh, so I have to turn to what's available in the forest.  Having spent a lot of time with the animals up here (sheep, goats, horses, and geese), I noticed that they have a definite preference for the leaves of certain plants over others.  They will strip every serviceberry and wild rose plant bare before taking a bite of knapweed, Oregon grape, or ninebark.

I looked up those two plants from the Rosacea family and found that the leaves are edible on both of them (this is the case with a lot of that family).  Neither one has much flavor, which is actually a very good thing.  I started chopping them finely and adding them to fried potatoes, beans, and spaghetti.  After they are cooked for a couple minutes, they become relatively tender and are hardly even noticeable in those dishes.  I think each could make up a quarter of the dish and I wouldn't even know it if I ate it while blindfolded.

The taste of wild-foraged leaves may range from nothing to bad to quite good.  They may not always be candidates for a meal in themselves, but mixed in with other flavorful ingredients they can still provide all the nutritional benefits of eating leafy greens.  Douglas fir grows abundantly around here, and the new needles have a pretty strong flavor on their own.  Chopping the needles finely and mixing them with coffee grounds before brewing though makes a drink that I am really starting to like that also provides vitamin C and is hardly any additional work.  If you come across some leaf (that you are certain is edible) with a taste that's not great, consider first if the flavor is just unfamiliar and then think about ways it could be combined with other flavors to make something good.  Most edible herbs are pretty objectionable when eaten on their own and raw.

With a plant identifier app and the Plants for a Future website you might be surprised at how many things growing around your house have edible leaves, I certainly was.  This feels like a vital part of ancestral knowledge of the land that has been largely lost in modern civilization.

This is part of the MoPID series of permaculture innovations that I am working on during my time at Wheaton Labs.  Check out the thread if you'd like to follow along.

Also, here's a quick list of just some plants that qualify.

Thank you for suggesting the book and sharing the keen idea about adding leaves to highly flavorful dishes. Big win!

I have started doing this, I eat my sunflower leaves, Banana plant leaves,(when young).

David N Black wrote:The taste of wild-foraged leaves may range from nothing to bad to quite good.  They may not always be candidates for a meal in themselves, but mixed in with other flavorful ingredients they can still provide all the nutritional benefits of eating leafy greens.  Douglas fir grows abundantly around here, and the new needles have a pretty strong flavor on their own.  Chopping the needles finely and mixing them with coffee grounds before brewing though makes a drink that I am really starting to like that also provides vitamin C and is hardly any additional work.  If you come across some leaf (that you are certain is edible) with a taste that's not great, consider first if the flavor is just unfamiliar and then think about ways it could be combined with other flavors to make something good.  Most edible herbs are pretty objectionable when eaten on their own and raw.

I will cop to human genetic identity, but my Vogon lawyer has advised me to issue this cease and desist notice. As proprietor of the Pine Soup Project we have found your Fir Tea product to be infringing upon our trademark. Continued advertisement of this item can be cause for further legal action. In fact, it is advised you immediately send a box of organic chocolate bars to the Project to assuage the animosity already generated.

I'm just starting down this path, but one initial concept I've focused on is to keep one's selections dynamic. Things taste different at different times. What tasted a little off putting when eating well might satisfy a craving some other part of the year when lacking some nutrient and the tastebuds try to guide food selection toward it.

I think I personally have a ways to go to adjust to this approach- for some reason, my tastebuds have been telling me I'm lacking the doughnut nutrient lately...

When in doubt, I make leaves into tea.

Black currant leaves have a strong taste of black currant, and they can be oxydized sort of like oolong tea because they are rich in tannins. Really a lovely caffeine-free tea.

Edible but less pleasant greens can be dehydrated and powdered into "flour" to be mixed in baked goods such as crackers or bread. Loses the vitamin C and volatine compounds of course, but keeps fiber and minerals, and some of the vitamins.

You listed Oregon Grape as one of the leaves the goats avoid but it is edible too! Like a lot of leaves, you have to eat it when it is new/young. At that point it is a different color than the older leaves, a bright light green. They show up in early spring. The same goes for salal. The person who taught me this also said too many may necessitate a trip to the bathroom so don't make a raw salad solely from them but they are a good snack when taking a walk in the spring.

Someone also mentioned that some leaves vary throughout the year for nutrients as well as not nice compound. One example is nettle. Too many old leaves post-flowering can make you feel pretty sick. But you can eat a salad of them when they are young.

I think if someone is going to experiment with eating new varieties of leaves, younger is generally safer and more palatable. Another way to safely prepare some leaves is to blanch them in boiling water and then replace the water if cooking further.

I love this.
I am very fond of getting more out of whatever we already have.
Eating tree leaves exemplifies that.
There are lots of tough or bitter leaves out there, but we are tool using animals, and we can digest food outside of our bodies!
I have lots of Hackberry trees but just recently found out it has edible leaves.
You have given me more plants to covet!

A note about sunflower leaves.
I had read about eating sunflower leaves, and thought it might apply to sunchokes.
A helpful permie tried it, and found it to be resinous and not food like at all.
I was disappointed,  but I later found an article about growing them without light!
Thus blanched, they are mild and tender.
A bed of sunchokes outside your door could provide roots for growing shoots all winter!



I think teas could be a great source of income, especially since they can come from other wise untapped resources.

Burdock is edible. I was actually surprised when I found that out.  It grows everywhere on my .125 acre urban lot as a weed, and it's leaves are huge. I used to pull it whenever I could, now I keep it for the greens. Mature burdock is a little bit on the tough side, but a few minutes steaming or sautéing usually fixes that. I've been told that the young roots are edible, as are the seeds. I've seen it used as a basket ingredient on 'chopped'.

I also have german mustard growing on my property. It has a spicy garlic-y taste that goes well with Italian food. I've also had it raw in salads.

Purple dead nettle is one of the first plants up in the spring, once the snow melts and the ground thaws. It has a strong, but not disagreeable taste, which I think compliments cheese grits.

Lambs quarters is another common weed in these parts. it tastes a little bit like spinach. There is one next to my front door that I am letting go to seed. I've heard tell that they are quite tasty, especially when toasted.

Whilst waiting to harvest your pumpkins, sweet potatoes and chilli, pick the young shoots/leaves now and again. The first best steamed, dressed with coconut cream to serve, the second two wilt quickly so best added to sauteed onions for a minute or so.

We have miner's lettuce here in the spring, and lots of mallow and wild mustard. With the latter two, I will take any that look good and not too tough and put them in the blender with water to make a slurry. Then that gets put into an ice cube tray and I end up with cubes to pop into stews and stir fries which cook very quickly. I have done the same with more mature kale, beet and broccoli leaves - I look for the deepest colored ones I can find. Hadn't thought to eat squash leaves but those will be tried next.

Burdock leaves are excellent, I was afraid they would be too bitter, but no. Young mulberry, fig, & linden are good. I recommend evening primrose leaves, nice & tender & bland. Fava leaves need cooking. Pea leaves are good, too. I love nibbling on spruce tips. Violet leaves are OK but improved by cooking.
For tea, in addition to currant, I really like fireweed, and it also can be bruised and fermented as tea leaves are. Rubus species leaves, when too stickery to eat, make good tea.

The list can get quite long, depending on where you are. Anyone into eating a diversity of leaves ought to know about the Extreme Salad Man: http://www.edimentals.com/blog/?tag=extreme-salad-man.

Evening primrose is a staple for me. The half grown leaves the first year and the blossoms the second year.   they and hollyhocks are so good I have to grow them in the greenhouse to keep them from the deer.
In the PNW or evergreen huckleberry is great for tea extract.  a branch with berries simmered has wonderful flavor and extracts a mucilage from the stem.

Those is great stuff. You are expanding your selection from what you were eating during the PTJ!

Leaves are pretty amazing because I can look out at one maple tree and see salads for a year.  I eat wild blackberry and raspberry leaves but I make sure to check the leaves since some of the bigger ones will have a small thorn on the bottom but is easy to break off.  I'm going to try my first sugarberry/hackberry leaf today.  I heard they were sweet which I really hope so and then I don't have to worry about the annual stevia.  They are also black walnut (juglone) tolerant and is growing right beside my 5 huge walnuts.  I didn't cut it down because it looked so cool (haha I'm still a child at heart I guess).  If this works out it'll catapult up to one of my favorite plants.  Sassafras leaves have been ate forever and the root was once used but has a carcinogen (doesn't stop people from eating red meat though).  God forbid if you mention this idea to the wrong person.  I don't personally use the root but I think we like to simplify nature where this one thing is a carcinogen but perhaps another thing in the sassafras protects you from it such as antioxidants vs free radicals.  I don't know but I know it has been used for a very long time and maybe the good in it counters the bad or there are so many positives the negatives are worth it (aka drugs/medicines since they all have side effects but if they are more beneficial than negative then that is called a good thing).   I also eat the leaves and other things from 'official' roses and wild roses (if anything grows as fast as these I'd like to see it LOL).  As said before the smaller leaves are generally more palatable but I make teas out of the bigger ones (sunchokes, dock, dandelion, etc).  Some say I eat like a goat and with our rash of various health epidemics being as bad as they are, maybe the goats are the smart ones.
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Benjamin, actually if you look into the studies finding safrole oil to be toxic, what they essentially did was make a concentration hundreds of times stronger than what you could consume naturally from food, and then directly injected it into the blood stream of the rat. I think a lot of things would cause liver cancer if introduced in that way. A lot of dietary studies are similarly simplistic like this and I think are more done to pad an academic career (publish or perish and all that) or as part of a corporate agenda.

Similarly, most studies saying red meat is bad for you are 1) basically just surveys where they contact people with certain types of cancer and ask them to remember how much of X food they’ve had a week for the last several decades potentially, nothing actually showing a causation. and 2) basically just a study on the Standard American Diet being bad for you. Which isn’t anything revolutionary as far as ideas go, of course fast food burgers (and cake, and milkshakes, and chips, etc etc) aren’t good for you. But there’s never been a study actually looking into a causation or even correlation between cancer and say, grassfed organic meat consumption with a diet high in vegetable and fruit fiber.

Here are some studies somewhat along those lines that you may find interesting, however.

https://www.nature.com/articles/1601353

https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/71/3/682/4729121

Unsurprisingly, it’s more about food quality than quantity, and the diet we’ve had for hundreds of thousands of years is indeed one that we’ve evolved to be good for us.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleistocene_human_diet

Benjamin Abby wrote:Sassafras leaves have been ate forever and the root was once used but has a carcinogen (doesn't stop people from eating red meat though).  God forbid if you mention this idea to the wrong person.  I don't personally use the root but I think we like to simplify nature where this one thing is a carcinogen but perhaps another thing in the sassafras protects you from it such as antioxidants vs free radicals.  I don't know but I know it has been used for a very long time and maybe the good in it counters the bad or there are so many positives the negatives are worth it (aka drugs/medicines since they all have side effects but if they are more beneficial than negative then that is called a good thing).

To me, having an item pronounced "a carcinogen" in a blanket statement is a flag to check for someone trying to sell a product or fear-mongering people away from a competitor. Or, as Isiah implies, an opportunity for a random academic to show how high they can piss on the research tree and get attention. Most things with the power to heal will be toxic at large enough doses. Read up on the sassafras/safrole episode, it really is comical.

An individual with acute senses to connect mind and body is the best source to determine what is medicine and what/when it isn't. Millions of years of evolution have stored this in our genome. This state of being is rarely achieved in modernity with a world focused so heavily on addicting us to consumer goods from birth. A really, really good doctor can come close to approximating this ability prescriptively, kind of like how academics studying potato agriculture in the Andes have been able to grow them almost as well as the locals have for generations, after numerous, persistent attempts (also a bit comical as these academics are often arrogant westerners dropping in to show the poor indigent locals how the wonders of "science" can improve their lives).

Of course, all this assumes the ability for us to exist within an environment of plants and animals sharing a direct lineage with those that have developed with us throughout the past. The expansion of artificially manipulated environments and GMOs being released into the common global environment will leave humanity in a state where confusion and fear dominate our daily lives as the process deepens and is given greater support from so called authorities. The greatest threat to any bureaucrat is a population that is connected to nature.

So viewing a drug/medicine in terms of a simple good/bad quantitative assessment is bound to leave any would-be judge quite frustrated (although the corporate entities wishing to sell them something will work out how to profit from it)- living organisms are far too complex to conform to such one dimensional standards...

The sugarberry leaves weren't sweet but are neutral to me and I've started eating the leaves with each meal.  I wanted a short post but it doesn't seem like I can do that lol.  
I wasn't going to try the roots because I had only found 2 small trees in my yard and I feared killing them but after exploring my little forest I have found many more.  I'm new to this stuff so I have the fear that taking up any root would kill a tree lol.  I know it isn't true but still.
Isaiah and Coydon, great points!  Does anyone know if this is the reason for all the fear pushing over things like oxalic acid and other antinutrients?  Similar to cyanide in apple seeds; an expert said you'd have to eat the seeds of about 200 apples consecutively to have an issue lol.  I planted blue flax this year which says to cook because the seeds have cyanide.  But they don't say how much cyanide and I believe in "dose is the poison or the cure."  It is like when places say don't eat large amounts but don't define it in any way.  Is "large amounts" more than any sane human would eat or something normal like a cup or even two?  Comfrey and so many others that have been used safely for thousands of years.  I think Comfrey had 4 or 5 bad cases they point to and these were extreme which is just like the fear over kale where the woman ate more kale than anybody would ever normally.  And it usually wasn't just the plant but supplements and comfrey oral supplements are banned due to this.  Comfrey is apparently one of the few plants that take up Vit B12 also.  

I may or may not be human, my genetics tend to leave that in question.. lol..

I have eaten leaves and grasses my entire life, hiking for me is more "grazing" than hiking.  When I make a salad/stir fry or fermented veggies I grab a big bowl and go out in my yard and get a bowl full of material to add to the normal veggies and what not I have in the house.  A little white clover, little purple clover, some dock. some burdock leaf, some dandelion leaves and flowers, some lambs quarters etc etc..  

One thing that I would note is that while it doesn't bother me as I am used to it, most people find most leaves to be bitter.  Boil them up with some onions and or carrots, beets etc to sweeten them and then ferment them.  You will find people enjoy them better with sweetness added to them.  The fermentation process also makes them more digestible and makes more nutrients available for uptake.

As for being concerned abut poisoning and dangers, I have found that few leaves are actually poisonous and I have just been testing things out since I was about 5 years old.  I just test a tiny piece of leaf chewing it with my front teeth and allowing it to touch my tongue.  Spit it out and spit out your saliva for a bit.  Pay attention to swelling, numbness, extreme bitterness or any negative physiological affects.  If none are had the next time I am out I will try a slightly bigger piece and repeat the former test.  After a dozen tests like that I will fully chew up a leaf and then spit it out and repeat the test on a larger scale.  After a few years of trying something and no ill effects I then go ahead and chew up a small piece and swallow it.  Repeating the same things as before.  I often have no idea what it is I am actually eating but I have tested it enough and never had a reaction and I have no issues eating them.  I have found very few leaves that I have eaten that I had a negative reaction to.

I have been chewing on yarrow leaves since I was a child, I finally found out it was the yarrow plant about 5 years ago at 50 years old.  I spent 45 years chewing on the leaves without having any idea what the plant actually was, I just knew that I really liked the strong flavor that it had.  I still have no idea what half the leaves I eat actually are, but I have yet to ever be poisoned or have a negative reaction to anything I have eaten.  People have been doing this type of thing for a quarter million years of human existence or more.  I suggest a lot of caution but poisoning is really much less of a worry than most think if you approach it properly.

Isaiah Bohin wrote:Benjamin, actually if you look into the studies finding safrole oil to be toxic, what they essentially did was make a concentration hundreds of times stronger than what you could consume naturally from food, and then directly injected it into the blood stream of the rat. I think a lot of things would cause liver cancer if introduced in that way. A lot of dietary studies are similarly simplistic like this and I think are more done to pad an academic career (publish or perish and all that) or as part of a corporate agenda.

Similarly, most studies saying red meat is bad for you are 1) basically just surveys where they contact people with certain types of cancer and ask them to remember how much of X food they’ve had a week for the last several decades potentially, nothing actually showing a causation. and 2) basically just a study on the Standard American Diet being bad for you. Which isn’t anything revolutionary as far as ideas go, of course fast food burgers (and cake, and milkshakes, and chips, etc etc) aren’t good for you. But there’s never been a study actually looking into a causation or even correlation between cancer and say, grassfed organic meat consumption with a diet high in vegetable and fruit fiber.

Here are some studies somewhat along those lines that you may find interesting, however.

https://www.nature.com/articles/1601353

https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/71/3/682/4729121

Unsurprisingly, it’s more about food quality than quantity, and the diet we’ve had for hundreds of thousands of years is indeed one that we’ve evolved to be good for us.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleistocene_human_diet

You mention liver cancer..   I find that a bit funny as there are over 60,000 cases of liver failure a year caused by Tylenol alone.  Tylenol is legal and prescribed by doctors to us regularly.  Yet this same system is warning of liver damage and the potential of liver cancer in plants..  That fact alone kind of negates anything they would ever say along those lines, as clearly liver damage is not something they feel overly concerned about in their form of medicine.

Benjamin Abby wrote:The sugarberry leaves weren't sweet but are neutral to me and I've started eating the leaves with each meal.  I wanted a short post but it doesn't seem like I can do that lol.  
I wasn't going to try the roots because I had only found 2 small trees in my yard and I feared killing them but after exploring my little forest I have found many more.  I'm new to this stuff so I have the fear that taking up any root would kill a tree lol.  I know it isn't true but still.
Isaiah and Coydon, great points!  Does anyone know if this is the reason for all the fear pushing over things like oxalic acid and other antinutrients?  Similar to cyanide in apple seeds; an expert said you'd have to eat the seeds of about 200 apples consecutively to have an issue lol.  I planted blue flax this year which says to cook because the seeds have cyanide.  But they don't say how much cyanide and I believe in "dose is the poison or the cure."  It is like when places say don't eat large amounts but don't define it in any way.  Is "large amounts" more than any sane human would eat or something normal like a cup or even two?  Comfrey and so many others that have been used safely for thousands of years.  I think Comfrey had 4 or 5 bad cases they point to and these were extreme which is just like the fear over kale where the woman ate more kale than anybody would ever normally.  And it usually wasn't just the plant but supplements and comfrey oral supplements are banned due to this.  Comfrey is apparently one of the few plants that take up Vit B12 also.  

Specifically regarding oxalic acid, the biggest problem with it is that it interferes with the digestion of iron and calcium.  For most Americans and their horrible nutrient deficient diets that could be a problem.  For those of foraging and eating healthy diets we actually have the concern of too much iron and calcium intake which becomes dangerous.  My cousin Jon is unable to get rid of iron and he has to give blood several times a month to keep his iron levels where they belong.  Too much iron is slowly causing him to become  schizophrenic due to iron buildup in his brain.  Too much calcium leads to more calcium in the kidneys which then reacts with cystine kinase, potassium etc which then crystalizes into stones inside the kidneys.  Oxalic acid helps to protect us from these issues.  In a very natural diet oxalic acid is a life saver.  Why do you think so many of our leafy veggies bred by our ancestors are high in oxalic acid?

Roy Edward Long wrote:Specifically regarding oxalic acid, the biggest problem with it is that it interferes with the digestion of iron and calcium.  For most Americans and their horrible nutrient deficient diets that could be a problem.  For those of foraging and eating healthy diets we actually have the concern of too much iron and calcium intake which becomes dangerous.  My cousin Jon is unable to get rid of iron and he has to give blood several times a month to keep his iron levels where they belong.  Too much iron is slowly causing him to become  schizophrenic due to iron buildup in his brain.  Too much calcium leads to more calcium in the kidneys which then reacts with cystine kinase, potassium etc which then crystalizes into stones inside the kidneys.  Oxalic acid helps to protect us from these issues.  In a very natural diet oxalic acid is a life saver.  Why do you think so many of our leafy veggies bred by our ancestors are high in oxalic acid?

Missed the original question about oxalic acid. The problem with OA, as I've heard it presented by a 'fringe' medical expert being interviewed by a dedicated forager, results from industrial processing. I don't see anything in what Roy has written that sounds off, but it is premised on people eating exclusively seasonal diets. The items we eat that are high in OA are directly available in a tasty form for less than half the year in temperate climates. Between harvesting techniques, transportation networks, and refrigeration, these have become items available year round in high quantities at low prices. The body will store excess amounts of OA and this accumulation leads to various health problems that mainstream medicine has yet to recognize in this causational form, resulting in disastrous misdiagnoses.

My takeaway has been that it is good to limit intake levels but an actual quantity is subjective and therefore what Roy has said would be a major factor. More important is to have seasonal 'voids' in the diet, to allow the body to occasionally work through the 'inventory' of accumulated OA so that it can calibrate itself before the seasonal cycle repeats. If you legitimately eat seasonally this should not be an issue, but the more reliant one is on the industrial system for food supply, the more attention this requires. One caveat from the interviews is that, if you have gone years accumulating excess OA, the first time you purge your body of the excess you could experience something similar to withdrawal from a highly physically addictive drug.

In the examples previously given, OAs differ from cyanide in seeds in that it is common to simply not eat seeds from apples. One can eat apples year round and not experience increased levels of cyanide intake. In contrast, numerous foods high in OA have been touted as "superfoods" and many looking to improve their diet consume them in quantity on a daily basis year round, OAs and all.