Everything You Need To Know About Eating Live Insects Wild Edibles Of The World

Everything You Need To Know About Eating Live Insects With a growing world population and diminishing resources, we explore the sustainable option of edible insects. Eating insects can be a part of the solution to our planet’s growing food and climate crises. Throughout our history, humans around the world have consumed these protein and nutrient-rich creatures. This hasn't been widely adopted as part of modern Western diets, however things may be changing. A growing number of consumers in the West are now embracing entomophagy, or insect-eating.Show more

I Hate to Break it to You, but You Already Eat Bugs I grabbed a box of cereal out of my cabinet. The flakes smelled stale, but I was hungry enough. I poured a cup or two into a bowl, followed by a splash of milk.

I grabbed a box of cereal out of my cabinet. The flakes smelled stale, but I was hungry enough. I poured a cup or two into a bowl, followed by a splash of milk. Well into my third bite, I knew that stale cereal wasn’t all I was eating. I saw what were likely grain beetles–small food pests capable of chewing through cardboard to get at your conflakes–swimming in the bottom of the bowl, extending their legs in hopes of finding a flake–like a desperate swimmer in a flood. I immediately discarded the cereal, repulsed by the other bugs I had surely already eaten. But while I didn’t always see them, I had been eating bugs my whole life. So have you.

The UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization recently released a report [PDF] touting the nutritional and environment benefits of eating our many-legged friends (or pests), which scuttled into all corners of the media. (You can read a very thorough write-up bug eating at io9 and here at Scientific American.) The gist is that insects may end up solving a real food crisis by giving up their lives for human consumption. To most of the world, this was old news–insects are considered staples and even delicacies in many cultures. But Western media still let out an audible cringe at the thought of crunching down on chitin.

Ignorance is bliss…
Out of Sight, Still In Your Mouth

You’re deluding yourself if you think farming is as clean as making a microchip. We are always on insect territory. Try as we might with insecticides and other engineered poisons, bugs crawl all over our food to feed (and procreate) on it. When we harvest and package our crops, a lot of bugs come along for the ride. Be aware, all the hitchhikers aren’t removed. At least there are limits on how many bugs the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) lets you unknowingly eat.

The FDA’s Defect Levels Handbook lays it all out. Staples like broccoli, canned tomatoes, and hops readily contain “insect fragments”–heads, thoraxes, and legs–and even whole insects. (I won’t tell you about the rat hair limits…) Fig paste can harbor up to 13 insect heads in 100 grams; canned fruit juices can contain a maggot for every 250 milliliters; 10 grams of hops can be the home for 2,500 aphids (pictured above).

All of these are merely aesthetic limits. It’s seemingly for your mental well-being. Like a child moving a mountain of peas around on a plate until it looks like she’s eaten more, the insect legs, bodies, and heads are less noticeable to us at the FDA’s proposed concentrations. Your shredded wheat won’t look like shredded thrips anytime soon. Anything over these limits would be aesthetically unpleasing, but it’s doing you no harm. You obviously aren’t keeling over from eating too much carapace.

The “action levels” sets by the FDA are for maximum insect contamination, so you ultimately ingest less than these limits. Nevertheless, bugs are making it into your gut whether you see them or not. Layla Eplett over at the Scientific American Guest Blog estimates that “an individual probably ingests about one to two pounds of flies, maggots and other bugs each year without even knowing it.”

So, I hate to break it to you, but you already eat bugs. Not nearly enough for you to recognize it or to potentially harm you, but down the hatch they go. You don’t really notice now, so just how much bug would have to be in your food for you to notice? If Westerners aren’t ready to dive into katydid kabobs, we can at least calculate the equivalent amount of bug burgers in your food.

Bug Burger

Bugs like thrips and aphids have to be tiny indeed to pepper our food with their parts without us noticing. By my estimation, 5,000 aphids weigh about the same as a paperclip (each aphid being 1/5 of a milligram). If you are feelings adventurous, that means you could mash and mold 567,000 of the little plant suckers into a leggy equivalent of a Mac Donald’s quarter pounder.

You should be happy the bugs that call our food home aren’t bigger. The largest insect with reliable data on its mass is New Zealand’s Giant Weta, weighing about the same as a jumbo supermarket chicken egg. Just four of these bugs would be the same weight as a Big Mac. But you’ll thankfully never find one of these insects in your food (you’d notice the crunch).

Following FDA guidelines, you don’t have to order a bug burger to eat the same amount as one. If you are a fan of spinach, the action limit is 50 or more aphids, thrips and/or mites per 100 grams. That’s spinach that is 0.01% bug by weight. By the time you eat 1,000 kilograms of spinach you have eaten a quarter pounder’s worth of aphid. (Popeye has eaten a lot of bug burgers.)

Bug beer is even better. Many of the bugs and bug parts will be filtered out during brewing, but the FDA’s limit on the hops that go into the tank is 2,500 aphids per 10 grams of hops. That’s right, 5% of the total weight of the hops making your summer ale can be bug. A quarter pounder’s worth of aphid butt goes into the brewer for every 2.5 kilograms of hops.

Dessert is the same. If we consider the “insect parts” that the FDA limits to be about the same weight as a tiny aphid–a conservative estimate–then once you eat around 100 kilograms of your favorite chocolate you’ve eaten a full kilogram of bug. That’s a serious amount of cocoa, but nonetheless, bug you eat.

And if you fancy making bread from scratch, about one and a half kilograms of insect is sprinkled into every 100 kilograms you use.

Total up all the food you eat over the course of a lifetime, and I’d be surprised if we couldn’t trace a cringe-worthy percentage back to bugs.

Despite all the potential knee-jerk revulsion, it’s important to remember that like all the animals we eat, insects share the planet with us. They outnumber us by a wide margin. If anything, we share the Earth with them. To have insects spice up our food is unavoidable, but harmless. The op-ed pieces screaming about what “gross stuff” the FDA lets us eat are over-blown and under-informed. Think of how many pounds of food you have eaten in your lifetime. How many plates were infested, and how many times were you hospitalized with chitin-related injuries? The fact of the matter is that insects were here first. We do our best to minimize our contact with them, but the circle of life offers the little creepy crawlies up as a viable, nutritious food source, and we should embrace that. After all, humans have eaten insects for millennia, and one day they will return the favor.

12 Edible Bugs That Could Help You Survive
In many parts of the world, entomophagy, or eating bugs is commonplace. Insects are actually the most abundant protein source on the planet, and many of them boast dense concentrations of nutrients like omega 3s. If two billion people can invite insects to the dinner table, it shouldn't be too much of a stretch for you to include edible bugs in your emergency-survival diet.

In many parts of the world, eating bugs is commonplace. Insects are actually the most abundant protein source on the planet, and many of them boast dense concentrations of en-vogue nutrients like omega 3’s that we buy at fancy grocery stores. If 2 billion people can invite insects to the dinner table, it shouldn’t be too much of a stretch for you to include edible bugs in your emergency survival diet.

So, which bugs can you catch and eat?
Grasshoppers and Crickets
Grasshoppers and crickets are extraordinarily protein-rich, and you can collect them pretty much anywhere. Most types of grasshoppers and crickets are edible. If you want to try it without picking legs out of your teeth, you can try a store-bought food product called cricket powder, or cricket flour. Cricket powder is very high in protein, has similar baking properties to regular flour, and has a slightly nutty flavor. If you do decide to go wild, remember: They can carry nematodes, so remember to cook them before you eat them.

How to Catch Them
When and Where: Grasshoppers are easiest to catch in the early mornings when they move more slowly. Look for crickets in damp, dark places first: under rocks, logs, and other large objects. Also check in tall grasses, shrubs and trees. Try shaking branches above a shirt, sleeping bag or other piece of fabric, and see if any edibles fall onto it.

Things You Need: Hands, a wool blanket or flannel shirt, or a water bottle and some over-ripe fruit

Method:

By hand:

You can catch crickets by using your hands to snatch them up. This is hopefully self-explanatory (chase them down and catch your dinner). If you have to catch them by hand, they’re fast, so err on the side of overkill and grab the entire area of ground surrounding the cricket. Alternatively, hunt them in the early morning chill, when the cold-blooded critters are still sluggish. The best container to put them in is something with a lid.
By wool blanket/flannel shirt:

If you happen to have a wool blanket or a flannel shirt, place it in the middle of a field or location where grasshoppers seem to be plentiful.
Chase the hoppy little bugs onto the flannel/wool. Their feet will get caught in the fibers a little, hopefully giving you enough time to pluck them off (or out of the air).
By bottle:

You can trap them by cutting the top off of a plastic water bottle (an open Nalgene works too), burying it in the ground, and dropping some over-ripe fruit in it. If you don’t have any fruit, a glow stick or light works almost as well (they’re attracted to it). If you drop in a few small pieces of cardboard or leaves, the crickets will hide under them instead of trying to escape.
Leave it overnight, and in the morning, you’ll find breakfast hopping around inside.
How to Eat Them
To prepare crickets and grasshoppers, pull off their heads and the entrails should come with; discard both. The entrails are edible, but removing them reduces the risk of parasite transmission. For this reason, always cook the bugs before eating them.
Remove the wings and legs.
Dry roast them if you have a pan, or skewer them and roast over flame if you don’t. You can char them if you prefer.
Poisonous Grasshoppers
While the majority of grasshoppers are safe to eat, there are a few exceptions. Avoid any brightly-colored specimens, such as the eastern lubber (common in Texas and some other southern states), which can make you sick.

Ants
How to Catch Them
When and Where: Anywhere at any time. They’re sort of ubiquitous.

Things You Need: Hands, a stick if you want to make things easier on yourself

Method:

Just scan the ground, and you’re sure to eventually find a skittering battalion of ants. They march in straight lines, so they’ll lead you straight to their home base.
One good way to collect them is to hit an anthill or other habitat (like a rotting log) with a stick a of couple times, then put the end of the stick in the opening.
As ants rush to bite the stick, dunk it into a container of water—ideally the container you want to cook them in. Repeat until you have a few hundred.
How to Eat them
Capture as many as you can, putting them straight into the water so that they drown while you catch more. Once you’ve caught a sizeable portion, boil them for about six minutes. This will neutralize the acid in their bodies. If you have to eat them raw, just make sure they’re dead first so they don’t bite you.
Termites
Termites are a great source of protein, and since they live most of their lives buried away in wood, they are less likely to carry parasites than other insects. Mature adult termites have wings and can fly. The other stages (larvae, workers, soldiers, nymphs, queens, etc) can’t fly, so they’re easier to snag. In some cultures, termite queens are regarded as a delicacy. Who knew you could eat like royalty while eating insects?

How to Catch Them
When and Where: Termites love wood. It’s their main food source. So crack open a cold log, and collect your dinner.

What You Need: Hands

Method: Break open a punky log and grab them or shake them out fast. As soon as they see light, they’ll crawl deeper into the wood.

How to Eat Them
Roast them in a dry pan. You want these critters cooked up crispy.
Grubs
Is this the one you dreaded reading about? When someone says “grub,” they’re typically referring to the larval stage of a beetle. There are over 344 grub species consumed around the globe, including the witchetty grub in Australia, palm weevil grubs in some Asian countries, giant water bugs in North America, and mopane worms in Africa. Some of them are small and crunchy, like mealworms, and some are fat and juicy, like rhinoceros beetle larva.

When and Where: The best place to collect them is in rotting logs. You can also try stripping bark off of living trees, or searching under rocks and leaf litter.

What You Need: A stick or a rock

Method

Find a rotting log.
Strip the bark off of the log or smash the log. Or strip the bark, harvest the grub (pun intended), and then smash the log to see if there’s any more inside. Grab them with your fingers—they’re not exactly fast.
How to Eat Them
Skewer them lengthwise with a long stick and cook over an open flame until the skin is crispy.

Woodlice
Also called “sow bugs,” “potato bugs,” “roly polies,” or “pill bugs,” woodlice are actually not a bug at all. They’re the only terrestrial crustacean in North America and have a flavor that’s similar to shrimp. In fact, they’re even called “land shrimp” sometimes.

How to Catch Them
When and Where: They are extremely easy to collect. Overturn rocks and logs or sift through dead leaves, and you’re sure to find some.

What You Need: Hands, something to collect them in

Method:

Push things over.
Collect bugs.
How to Eat Them
Drop them in boiling water, and leave them there for a while. They can carry nematodes (better known as parasitic roundworms—things you don’t want freeloading in your intestines), so be sure they’re thoroughly cooked.
When they’re done, strain the water out and eat.
Earthworms
Are worms technically bugs? No. Not even close. But they are edible. You’ve probably played with these more than you’ve eaten them. However, things are about to change since, well, you’re here. If push comes to shove, you can go scrounging for these wriggly morsels. Maybe thinking of them as free-range, very fresh spaghetti will help them slide down your gullet easier. Remember to squish out the poop before you eat them. Bon appetit!

How to Catch Them
When and Where: If it just rained, spotting these wigglers should be pretty easy. They’ll be everywhere. If it hasn’t just rained, ferret about for them in damp soil, in decomposing flora (such as leaves and wood), or under rocks.

What You Need: Hands, something to put them in

Method:

Find something they’re likely to be under or in.
Investigate the location.
Collect.
Enjoy them al dente (but, like, make sure they’re cooked).
How to Eat Them
While worms can be eaten raw in an emergency, you should cook them if at all possible. Like most of the things on this list, they can potentially carry parasites—and the parasite potential should motivate you to cook them first. Not to mention the extremely unpleasant prospect of eating a live worm.
Stinkbugs
Yep, believe it or not, stinkbugs are edible. Generally speaking, you shouldn’t eat noxiously odiferous bugs. Stinkbugs, however, are the exception. They’re just fine to send down that hatch (after you cook them, of course). They are even considered a delicacy in Mexico, where there’s an annual festival in Taxco to celebrate them.

How to Catch Them
When and Where: In the winter, you will probably find them hiding under rocks, logs, or other cover. Otherwise, you’ll see them parading arrogantly across open ground. You’ll recognize them because they look like a traditional medieval shield, straight across on the top and coming to a point on the bottom.

What You’ll Need: Hands, container

Method:

Stalk.
Pounce.
Profit.
How to Eat Them
Some people eat them raw, but maybe try not to be one of those people if you can. To rid stinkbugs of their stinkitude, soak them in warm water for 5 to 10 minutes, and then cook extensively by roasting in a dry pan. They are said to have an “iodine” taste.

Scorpions
Scorpions are a common street food in China and can be found in California, Arizona, New Mexico, and other Southwestern states. They taste a bit like crab. If you decide to dine on scorpion, make sure that you cut the stinger off first. Usually the venom is produced and stored in the top two or so segments of the tail. And make sure you cook them! Cooking generally negates the venom’s poisonous properties, but you can still have an allergic reaction to it. Unlike a bee or wasp, you’re not likely to get stung by a scorpion after it’s dead. If you’ve never eaten scorpion before, however, it might be best to avoid these—but if you’re in a survival situation, you might not have a choice.

How to Catch Them
When and Where: These living, dangerous thumbtacks reside in dens. You’ll have to find a den if you want scorpion for dinner.

What You’ll Need: A jar with a lid, hands (or something you prefer to dig with), a murder weapon (like a stick or a knife—probably don’t use your hands for this one).

Method:

To catch them, first find their dens. They’ll be low to the ground, burrowed under overhanging rocks or logs.
Dig a hole right in front of the burrow, large enough to accommodate an open-mouthed jar, water bottle with the top cut off, or cup.
When the scorpion emerges at night, it will fall into the jar and be unable to climb out.
Kill it with a stick or a knife while it’s still in the jar.
Cut off the stinger.
How to Eat Them
Roast over a fire or coals until it’s well browned.
Earwigs
Have you ever lifted up a pot in the garden and seen a horde of critters flee away into the grass? That could be your lunch escaping. Earwigs are edible and safe to eat. They don’t have stingers. They don’t have venom. They look like a cross between an ant (the head portion) and a scorpion (the pincher bits), and are about the size of one of those flattened pennies you get at a fair. When agitated, they might try to attack with their pinchers, but those pinches usually don’t break the skin or even hurt very much.

How to Catch Them
When and Where: Like most of the other bugs on the list, these guys are pretty easy to find. They live under things. They’re pretty fast but also pretty harmless. Looking under logs and things that look like they’ve been undisturbed for a while is a good place to start. They like dark, wet places.

What You’ll Need: Hands, container

Method:

Find something to wiggle, like a rock or log, and have your container ready.
Disrupt the rock or log and be ready to capture your lunch.
Toss the bugs in a container.
How to Eat Them
Get your fire roarin’ (or purring, it’s up to you).
Sauteé your dinner. You want your ‘wigs nice and crispy.
Once they’re fully cooked, you’re good to enjoy your dinner.
Aphids
Do you remember that children’s book “The Grouchy Ladybug”? The tale’s protagonist is in search of dinner: aphids. Aphids are tiny little insects that love sweet, sweet sap. They’re often green or black, but come in a wide variety of colors. They’re very small—you could probably fit more than 50 on a penny. Now, you get to be the Grouchy Ladybug—but you don’t have to share like the ladybug did.

How to Catch Them
When and Where: Aphids live on plants. There are many different types of aphids, and they have different plant preferences. If there are plants around, you’re sure to find an edible variety. What they feed on can affect what they taste like, ranging from slightly bitter to sweet.

What You’ll Need: Hands, a container that holds water

Method:

Brush them off into some water so they can’t escape.
How to Eat Them
Boil them and enjoy.
Maggots
Grubs and maggots are a bit different—even if they’re both pretty gnarly and maybe not prime snack material. Grubs are fat, juicy, and usually white in color. Maggots are thin, yellow-brownish, and legless. “Grub” usually refers to beetle larvae, while “maggot” usually refers to fly larvae. They are both edible though. So they’ve got that going for them.

How to Catch Them
When and Where: There are many different types of maggots. Some maggots live in rotting flesh and spoiled meat. While rotting meat isn’t safe to eat, the maggots are (but cook them first!). They also tend to live in rotting vegetables and fruit. Some even live in water. Maggots are incredibly high in protein and other beneficial nutrients.

What You’ll Need: Hands, container

Method:

Find a source to harvest them from. If you’ve got time, and some spoiled fruit, you can create your own by leaving it out.
Collect.
How to Eat Them
Boil or saute to kill any potential lingering germs.
Enjoy your Lion King-esque feast.
Dragonflies
Dragonflies are the most common in the spring and summer months. They more or less have two life-cycle stages: nymph and adult. Both of these stages are edible—though one is much easier to catch than the other. While they’re in their nymph stage, they’re often green, about the size of the fist two segments of your pointer finger, and water-borne. Much easier to catch when they can’t zoom away! Their adult stage is what you’re used to seeing: a fully grown dragonfly. These are edible, but can be a pain to catch because of how fast and dexterous that are.

How to Catch Them
When and Where: Dragonflies can’t bite hard enough for a human to feel it, and they don’t have stingers. Both the larval stage and the adult stage are edible. The larval version is probably easier to catch, though. Dragonfly larvae live in water and are more common in the spring and summer months.

What You’ll Need: Hands, optional net

Method:

Larvae: These live in the water and sometimes attach themselves to aqueous plants. You should be able to pretty easily just pluck them out of the water.
Adult: Dragonflies at this stage can fly—and they’re fast. Like, Back to the Future DeLorean fast. Catching them without a net will probably be difficult, unless you’ve mastered some kind of quick-snatch ninja move. Or maybe this is an opportunity to perfect your dragon-fly-snatching technique. Sneak up on them while they’re resting on something, and see if you can’t catch yourself some dinner.
How to Eat Them
You only need to cook these for a few seconds, just enough to kill any germs.
Pulling the wings and legs off is optional but might make them literally easier to swallow. Which bugs are safe to eat and where can I find them?

Tarantulas
Fun fact: fried spider is a delicacy in Cambodia. Remove as much hair as you can, and don’t eat the fangs. If you cook them, curled legs are an indicator of how done they are and how well cooked the insides are. One of the most common edible spiders is the Thai zebra spider, but it is venomous and aggressive.

Bees and Wasps
Cut off the stingers and legs. Cook well. But be forewarned: These fliers are dangerous to catch. If risking stings is worth it (or you don’t have another choice), you can try plugging the hive, and then smoke the whole thing with some sort of improvised torch to kill everything inside. These are on the “honorable mention” list only because they’re hard to catch and will attack you without remorse. That said, bee larvae can be eaten, and they’re less likely to fight back.

Caterpillars
Some are toxic, like the giant silkworm moth and the puss caterpillar. Bright ones and hairy ones tend to be toxic, but that isn’t a set-in-stone rule. So either do some research about the area you plan to be stranded in or proceed with extreme caution. If you’re stranded and looking to survive, this probably isn’t the best gamble.

Telltale Signs a Bug Might Kill You
While the majority of bugs are safe to eat, there are a few precautions you should take:

Avoid Bright Colors: Don’t eat any insects that are brightly colored; their coloration is a warning to predators that they’re toxic. That even goes for the insects on this list.
Avoid Hairy Things: Avoid hairy bugs; there may be stingers nestled in the fuzz.
Avoid Smelly Things: Also avoid any bugs that have a potent smell (except, paradoxically, stinkbugs).
When in doubt: If you are ever in doubt about an insect’s edibility, cut off a tiny, cooked piece of it, swallow it, and wait a few hours. If you don’t develop any symptoms, eat a larger piece and wait again. If nothing happens, it’s probably fine.

No bug sushi: We can’t stress this enough. Whenever possible, you should cook your insects before you eat them. They may carry parasites or harmful bacteria that cooking will kill, and it improves flavor and makes the nutrients more digestible.

The biggest problem with eating insects isn’t the “ew” factor Can insects become a big part of humanity’s diet? Should they? When I was in college, a girl who lived in my dorm was an evangelist for an unlikely cause: the potential of insects as food. She was really, really passionate about bugs as an ethical, environmentally friendly source of protein, in the way that driven undergrads can be really, really passionate about quixotic causes.

At the time I laughed it off. They’re bugs! No one will want to eat bugs, right? The joke was on me: A few years later, she and her business partner went on Shark Tank and received a $100,000 investment from Mark Cuban, and now her company, Chirps Chips, sells cricket-based chips around the world.

My classmate was ahead of the curve. As humans gradually realize we need to cut back on traditional meat consumption for the sake of the planet, eating bugs — primarily crickets and mealworms — has become a buzzy, green alternative.

Some cultures, encompassing some 2 billion people around the world, already eat bugs. Mopane worms and shea caterpillars are routinely farmed and eaten (the former in South Africa and Zimbabwe, the latter in Burkina Faso and Mali), as is the African edible bush-cricket, which is commonly consumed in Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Madagascar. Wild insect gathering for food for either subsistence or sale is common throughout East Asia and the Pacific, from India to Indonesia to Japan to Australia. In the northwest Amazon region of South America, somewhere between 5 and 7 percent of total protein comes from insects.

But proponents of insect farming are looking to further industrialize the practice to raise more insects as feed for farmed animals as well as for human consumption — mostly in Europe and the US, where the practice is less common. In May, a European Union panel voted to approve the sale of an insect-based food for humans for the first time in the union’s history. The French company Agronutris had put in the application to sell dried yellow mealworm, a maggot-like organism “said to taste a lot like peanuts” when dried; with EU regulatory approval, the company hopes to sell the mealworm as a flour-like powder.

Insect farming may still be a niche industry, but dozens of startups have come on the scene over the last few years. (And two French startups received a combined $537 million in funding in just the last year.) Meanwhile, chefs in the US are embracing cicadas, trillions of which have emerged on the East Coast, as a potential ingredient. Dogs are already enjoying the bounty of Brood X, the current crop of cicadas, but there’s no health or safety reason for why humans couldn’t join in.

This excitement is eminently understandable: Insects are nutritious and environmentally sound to produce, which makes them a compelling alternative to traditional factory-farmed meats. But setting aside people’s personal tastes, I’m still wary of the push to eat bugs, largely because of one unanswered question: Do we really know all we need to know about the lives of insects — and whether they’re worthy of moral consideration?

Why insects could be a good alternative to traditional meat …
The case for eating bugs is straightforward: They’re healthy, and doing so is good for the environment. A study published in May from researchers at Harvard and the University of Wisconsin-Madison summarizes both arguments well.

The authors found that if consumers in Africa and Asia added 5 grams of insect food to their daily diets, 67 million fewer people would be at risk of protein deficiency, with 166 million fewer people at risk of zinc deficiency and 251 million fewer people at risk of vitamin B12 deficiency. Anemia would also fall considerably.

The study notes that 5 grams is not that much in the grand scheme of things. Cricket protein companies often cite a serving size of 10 to 20 grams of cricket protection powder for use in smoothies or porridge and the like. A 5-gram requirement could be met by one of those meals every two to four days.

Particularly in areas of the world where nutritional shortfalls are common, insects could fill a useful role.

Then there’s the environmental side. Factory farms are an environmental disaster. Beef farming specifically produces a huge share of the world’s methane, a much more potent greenhouse gas than ordinary carbon dioxide, and drives deforestation in the Amazon as beef companies seek more open land for grazing. But factory farms of all kinds have environmental costs, not least from manure runoff that can poison streams, hurt local ecosystems, and endanger the health of local residents.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has promoted insect-based food in part because insects, which are cold-blooded, are more efficient than other animals at converting their food into meat. “On average, insects can convert 2 kg of feed into 1 kg of insect mass, whereas cattle require 8 kg of feed to produce 1 kg of body weight gain,” the FAO has noted.

Insects also require less water and land than traditional livestock, and produce 10 to 100 times fewer greenhouse gas emissions per kilogram of food than pigs, per the FAO. Their climate impact looks even better next to cows, which emit more than pigs.

… And why we should be wary about it anyway
The anti-entomophagy case is subtler but (I think) still compelling. We have to ask what farmed insects will be used for — and more importantly, what farming insects means for the insects themselves.

Let’s take cricket farms as an example. At a cricket farm, the animals are typically laid out in plastic bins with cardboard walls they can climb and lay eggs on, according to a report from the research group Rethink Priorities. Because crickets need humid temperatures and can easily drown in a pool of water, damp sponges are often included in the bins to both regulate humidity and provide a drinking source. This video tour of a cricket farm in Finland gives a good sense of the situation, as does this photo of a Canadian farm.

Lewis Bollard, who runs the farm animal welfare program at Open Philanthropy — the effective, altruist-inspired grantmaking group funded by billionaires Cari Tuna and Dustin Moskovitz — recently published an excellent rundown of the perils of insect meat, specifically when it comes to industrializing insect meat production.

First and foremost for animal welfare supporters, the market for human-edible insects is completely overshadowed by the market for insects as feed for farm animals. Most insects are raised to be fed to farmed fish and chickens (or ground up into pet food). “Insect farming isn’t an alternative to factory farming — it’s a supplier,” Bollard writes.

This usage further indicts the environmental case for insect farming, he argues: “Feeding corn to insects, then feeding them to chickens, is inherently less efficient than just feeding the corn to chickens.” (To be fair, this is more an argument against the current insect-farming industry, as opposed to what some proponents want it to become: a system to feed humans more efficiently.)

Then there are the insects themselves. As Bollard notes, we really have no idea if insects are “sentient” in the way that, say, a pig or cow appears to be (or if they’re sentient at all). Pigs are really smart; they can play video games. Flies, by contrast, aren’t going to trounce you at Skyrim. Some smart people are trying to think through what we do know about insect sentience, but we still don’t know a lot.

Rethink Priorities has tried to pull together what we know about the welfare experience of insects on farms, but similarly, it’s not a lot. Insect farms mostly freeze and/or shred their animals, but we don’t know much about whether those methods cause the insects significant pain.

If you’ve read this far and aren’t a vegan or vegetarian, or even someone who thinks about animal welfare much at all, all of this may seem absurd. Insects are not creatures whose welfare we’re used to considering, an indifference that even makes its way into our vernacular. “She wouldn’t hurt a fly” doesn’t mean “she’s not a sociopath” in the same way that “she wouldn’t kick a dog” does — it means “she wouldn’t do a mean thing so trivial no one should care about it.”

But humans are constantly expanding our circle of moral concern. And though most humans have yet to expand their moral circle to fully include farm animals, attitudes on animal welfare have certainly evolved. The number of pets in the US has more than doubled since the 1970s, while the number euthanized every year has fallen dramatically, from 20 million to 3 million. Humans have become less comfortable killing animals just for being a nuisance: A half-century ago, it wasn’t so uncommon for dog owners to euthanize their pet because it was cheaper than putting them in a kennel during their vacation. That’s unimaginable today.

It’s not a far step from “cats and dogs deserve to be treated well” to “pigs and cows deserve to be treated well.” And while “caterpillars and crickets” is a leap further from there, it’s hardly an unthinkable one. They’re animals too. Bees understand the number zero, a concept that human children often cannot grasp. Fruit flies sometimes act in ways that suggest they experience a form of chronic pain. Is it so inconceivable that the insect world might deserve humane treatment?

For me, the most sobering finding of Rethink Priorities’s research is that around 1 trillion insects are already raised and killed on farms every year — a staggering number, since we’re still at the start of the insect-food boom. Because insects live very short lives, that annual total encompasses many generations; only between 79 billion and 94 billion farmed insects are alive at any given time.

I don’t know for sure whether those insects feel pain — but if there’s even a small chance they do, the scale of the suffering that would imply is massive. I’m not categorically against insect farming, but I do hope we can learn more about what insects’ lives are like before we start farming them at an even greater scale.

50 Edible Wild Plants You Can Forage for a Free Meal Edible wild plants are all around us, growing anywhere from the cracks of a city sidewalk to the hillsides of a mountain forest. There’s a garden of free food out there waiting to be harvested if you know what to look for.

Having knowledge of which plants are edible in your area lets you forage for extra food, which is nice when you are on a tight budget. You also get the benefit of trying new flavors, some of which are difficult – if not impossible – to find at the grocery store. It’s not only about stocking your fridge, though. If you’re in a survival situation, knowing what you can and can’t eat can save your life.

https://morningchores.com/edible-wild-plants/

A major disaster occurs and you’ve got to flee with your family to the wilderness. You’ve thought ahead and packed a Bug Out Bag (more on what to pack in your BOB here). But soon your survival food will run out. What do you plan on eating?

Most survivalists and preppers love to share all sorts of wilderness fishing and hunting hacks, but the reality is that hunting your own food is difficult.

Even if you do manage to hunt down a deer, what are you going to do with all that meat? You would need to hang it to dry, which means attracting animals to your camp… assuming that you are even going to stay at the same camp while waiting out the disaster.

Save your energy and don’t bother hunting. The best wilderness survival food is insects.

Bug Eating is Completely Normal Think that eating bugs is gross? Then you are actually going against our nature. Evidence shows that bugs made a big portion of the diet of ancient humans.

Even after humans learned agriculture and hunting, they still loved to eat bugs. The ancient Romans would eat beetle larvae reared on flour and wine. Aristotle wrote about the Greek practice of harvesting cicadas for food. Even the Bible encourages people to eat certain bugs!

Today, eating insects is still completely normal in many cultures, particularly in Asia and Africa. Yet, in the United States and most other Westernized countries, eating bugs is taboo.

How did we go from chowing down on bugs to thinking that they were gross? One theory is that, as people began to invest more in agriculture, bugs began to be seen as pests since they destroyed crops.

The bottom line is that, in a survival situation, you better get over the yuck factor of eating bugs. There is nothing gross about eating bugs. Let me put this in perspective for you. If you eat eggs, you are eating something which came from a chicken’s butt! But you don’t find that gross, do you?

Which Bugs Are Edible?
There are over 1,400 types of edible bugs in North America alone! I doubt you are going to spend your time memorizing all of these edible bugs and then learning to identify them. So, follow these rules to determine if a bug is edible:

Pretty much all bugs are edible!
Avoid bugs which sting
Avoid bugs which are hairy
Avoid bugs with bright colors
Avoid disease carriers (ticks, mosquitoes, flies…)
There are a lot of exceptions to these rules though. For example, bees sting but are edible and considered quite tasty. Tarantulas are hairy and are sold roasted as a delicacy in many cultures. Even if a bug has some harmful poison, it can usually be destroyed just by cooking it.

Top Edible Bugs in North America
These are just some of the many edible bugs found in North America. Remember, pretty much ALL bugs are edible, so feel free to lift up a log and eat whatever you find in a survival situation.

Crickets
Grasshoppers
Caterpillars
Ants
Beetles
Centipedes (but NOT millipedes! Do NOT eat millipedes!)
Termites
Insect larvae
Honeybees
How to Catch Bugs for Food
Bugs are all over the place, which is why they make sure a good survival food. You can just lift up an old log and you will find a tasty snack of some beetles. Or dig in the dirt and you are sure to find some bugs to eat. But if you want to have a proper meal, you will need to catch more bugs at once. Here are some methods:

Pitfall Trap
This is used for catching crawling bugs like beetles. It is really simple to make. You just need some sort of cup to put in the ground and a lid to go over it. A tin can will work well, or cut a plastic bottle.

Dig a hole the size of your cup
Put your cup into the hole; the edges of the cup should be level with the ground
Put some rocks around the outside of the cup. These will hold up your lid.
Put the lid on top of the rocks. Ideally, the gap should be about ½ to 1 inch.
Check your pitfall trap every 24 hours and remove any bugs you find.
Tips:

Put some bait into the trap. A piece of fruit works great for catching crickets and grasshoppers!
Put a funnel into your cup and the bugs won’t be able to get out! The top of a plastic bottle works great.
Harvesting Bugs for Food
Once you have a few bugs, you can breed them pretty easily and have a steady supply of food. I’d suggest breeding grasshoppers since they reproduce quickly, are really nutritious, and are strict herbivores (crickets will go carnivorous if you don’t feed them their favorite foods!!!).

You’ll just need some sort of large container to keep them in. For grasshoppers to breed, you will need to put a bit of sand in the cage. Keep the sand slightly moist or the eggs won’t hatch.

Always Cook Insects Before Eating Them! Why do we think eating insects is so gross? Maybe it is because of stupid realty TV shows which show the hosts or contestants eating live or uncooked insects.

Would you eat raw hamburger? No.

So why would you eat raw insects?

Just like how raw beef can contain bacteria and parasites, so can insects. Cooking them will destroy these so the insects are safe to eat. Oh, and the insects will actually taste better when cooked.

Here is an example of How to Roast Grasshoppers.

Here are some examples of how to cook insects so they are safe to eat and taste better:

Ants: Roast them
Slugs: Chop off their heads and squeeze out their entrails (this will get the poop out of their bodies too). Then boil them or roast them.
Snails: Pull them out of their shells, slit them and squeeze out the entrails. Then boil or roast them.
Crickets and grasshoppers: Roast them; you can also make flour of out them. Roast the in the oven until they are completely dry and then use a mortar to crush their bodies. Now you have flour!
Caterpillars: Boil them for 1 minute or roast them
Termites: Slightly roast them
Mealworms: Boil for 1 minute or sauté in oil/butter
And Don’t Forget to Take the Wings and Legs Off!
If you’ve ever eaten an entire bug, it probably felt really terrible going down your throat. That is because the wings and legs get caught in your throat. You could even choke this way.

Just grab the wings/legs and give them a twist to take them off. This will greatly improve your insect-eating experience! Can you imagine yourself eating bugs in a survival situation? Have you tried bugs? Let us know!

Why aren’t we all eating insects? For years, edible insects have been billed as the next sustainable food revolution. Let's explores why we still haven’t developed a taste for grub. “Mealworms are very versatile. They have a nutty taste,” says Tiziana Di Costanzo, co-founder of Horizon, a small-scale edible insect farm in London. Di Costanzo and her family started farming mealworms in their 30-square metre shed around two and a half years ago. The business now sells live mealworms and dried crickets to customers in the UK.

“For us, everything we do is with the view of preserving the natural environment,” she says. “Our utopian view was that other people would do the same as us and we would have lots of little urban insect farms like Horizon. But that hasn’t really been catching on very well.”

The farming of insects for food has been billed as the next sustainable food revolution in western countries many times over in the past few years. One reason for this is, compared with traditional livestock such as beef and lamb, insects require far fewer resources and produce fewer greenhouse gas emissions.

“Insects can be raised on a fraction of the water, feed and space required by traditional livestock,” says MacKenzie Wade, a PhD student studying perceptions of edible insects at the University of California, Santa Barabara.

Currently, the rearing of livestock accounts for around 14.5 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO).

The production of red meat is particularly polluting. The main reason for this is because cows and sheep are “ruminants” – meaning they belch out large amounts of the greenhouse gas methane when digesting food. In addition, livestock production requires large amounts of forested land to be cleared to create space for grazing cattle or to grow animal feed, which causes further greenhouse gas emissions to be released.

By comparison, insects can be reared almost anywhere, including urban back gardens. Mealworms and crickets can be eaten whole, meaning no part of the animal is wasted. On small-scale farms such as Horizon, wastage can be reduced even further, Di Costanzo says.

“We are a circular business,” she explains. “We take surplus vegetables from a couple of our local food shops and we use that feed for the insects. We also take the ‘frass’, which is the excrement, and sell that as well.”

A poll carried out in 2019 found that nearly one-third of people in the UK believed that edible insects would eventually become part of their diets.

But edible insects are still far from being a staple part of mainstream diets in western countries, says Wade. In a recent analysis published in Environmental Research Letters, Wade and a colleague explore some of the reasons why.

“What we consider ‘good’ to eat is culturally learned,” she says. “We are taught from a young age what food is acceptable, tasty and nutritious and these foods become familiar to us.

“The cultural knowledge we often receive about insects from a young age is that bugs are pests and carriers of disease.”

When insects do appear as food in western pop culture, it is usually only in dystopian movies, she says, or on game shows, the most famous example in the UK being I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!

Despite a western aversion to eating insects, they have traditionally been a staple part of the diet in many parts of the world, she adds. “There is a long history of insect eating in the tropics because insects are often more available, larger and nutritious than in colder or more temperate zones, making them a better food source.”

Most visitors to Horizon come looking for a new experience, says Di Costanzo. “You have to be a bit curious and adventurous with your tastebuds to try insects. But people generally are pleasantly surprised after they’ve eaten them.”

Research shows that a global switch to eating less meat and more fruit and vegetables will be key to tackling emissions from agriculture.

For those that have switched to eating less meat for environmental reasons, insects could offer an additional way to get key nutrients, says Wade. “Insects provide much of the nutrients required to maintain a vegetarian diet like iron, protein and vitamin B12,” she says.

If insect eating is to become more widespread in western countries, it will need to move beyond being seen as a fad, Wade says.

“If insects are going to truly be a sustainable food, they need to replace our meat products,” she says. “They also need to be reasonably priced to ensure everyone can access sustainable and nutritious food, which would most likely require subsidies as the industry grows.”

However, it is worth noting that, without careful planning, the future development of insect farming in western countries could come with some of the same environment concerns as large-scale animal agriculture, she adds.

“The main concern is that edible insect production will simply fall into the same pitfalls as other forms of industrial agriculture and rely heavily on, for example, fossil-fuel dependent supply chains, unsustainable feed sources, and highly processed product additives,” says Wade.

“Because the industry is so new in Europe and North America, measures must be taken to ensure growth of the industry follows sustainability goals.”

https://www.magazine.cals.vt.edu/pests-to-protein

https://www.outdoorlife.com/photos/gallery/survival/2012/07/wild-food-guide-how-identify-best-wild-edible-foods/

Wild Food Guide: How to Identify the Best Wild Edible Foods OL’s survival expert highlights the best wild foods and ranks them by availability and caloric value. Check out this gallery.

It’s just assumed that every outdoorsman knows how to live off the land. And while you may be able to hunt, fish, and trap circles around everybody you know, are you equally proficient with wild edible plants? Do you know which nuts and berries you can add to an outdoor meal, or even be used to replace a meal? It may be true that “vegetarian” is the old Indian word for “bad hunter”, but I’ll still bet that our ancestors didn’t pass up easy and tasty plant foods when they ran into them. Follow along in our guide to wild edible plants, and you’ll have no excuse for going hungry again. I ranked these foods based on widespread availability, vitamins and mineral content and, most importantly, caloric value (they’re listed in descending order). WARNING: If you’re not 100-percent certain that a plant is edible, DO NOT eat it! If you’re using medication, consult with your doctor or pharmacist before foraging. Some plant compounds can interfere with certain medications.
wild edibles
Hickory Nuts
These little guys are the most calorie dense wild food in our guide. One ounce of shelled-out hickory nut meat packs a whopping 193 calories, with most of that coming from fat. How do they taste? Well, you probably already know the answer to that. Most hickory nuts taste like their most famous relative, the pecan. These sweet and fatty nut meats can be used as a raw food, picked right out of the shell. The nut meats also can be used in all kinds of dishes. From porridge, to cookies, to a pecan-flavored crust for your favorite game bird, hickory is an underused hero in wild foods. To make sure you have a hickory, look for a “double” nut shell, with a husk that peels off revealing a nut shell underneath. And make sure you don’t get a buckeye, which also have a double-layered nut shell, but are poisonous. Good hickory nuts have a multi-chambered inner nutshell (like a walnut), while the bad buckeyes have a solid nut meat (like an almond).
Wild edibles
Black Walnut
These nuts are probably the easiest to identify. Black walnuts look like green tennis balls. The rough round husks turn from green to a very dark brown as they lay on the ground in autumn. The nut meats are rich tasting and contain 173 calories an ounce. They are high in fat, with a fair bit of protein, magnesium, phosphorus, copper, and manganese. The wild animals might even let you get some, primarily because they don’t like to chew through those thick, bitter husks. This means that there can be black walnuts on the ground well into winter.
wild edibles
Pine Nuts
The nuts of any large pine tree are a classic western survival food. Measuring around 1,400 calories per cup, these nuts are more than half fat by weight, with some protein and carbs added in for good measure. Pine nuts are also a good source of thiamin and manganese, with a decent array of other B Vitamins and minerals.
wild edibles
Hazelnut
There are several species of hazelnut tree in Europe, Asia and North America. The most common tree in the US is the American hazelnut, which grows east of the Mississippi from Georgia to Maine. Just one ounce of the flavorful hazelnuts contains 170 calories and 4 grams of protein. The Hazelnut also carries a good portion of Vitamin E, thiamin, copper, and manganese.
beechnuts
Beech Nut
Not the tobacco product, or the baby food, but the actual nut of a beech tree, can be a valuable and delicious wild food source. But you’ll have to be quick to beat the squirrels to them. Squirrels seem to favor these tree nuts above all others, and the animals have always had two-legged competition for them. Indian tribes, such as the Potawatomi, pounded the roasted seeds into flour, and many other cultures have used the oily sweet nuts for food. Look for the smooth-bark trees in eastern woodlands, and look for the small three-sided seed falling out of a prickly husk around early October. The nuts have 10 grams of carbohydrates, 2 grams of protein and 164 calories per ounce.
Wild Edibles
Oak Acorns
Though many folks are confused by the nuts of oak trees, acorns are one of the most abundant foods in this guide. Perhaps it was the fear of buckeye nuts, or the bitter flavor that acorns have, but I remember my father always telling me that acorns were poison. Well, not quite, pops. The bitterness of the acorn is from the irritating tannic acid, the worst offenses of which are upset stomachs and angry bowels. One ounce of acorn nut meat from any species of oak (Quercus genus) contains a little more than 100 calories, which many of our northern hemisphere ancestors ate as a staple food prior to agriculture. These are high-carb nuts, with some fat and a little protein, giving them a nutritional profile similar to bread. The bitter acid in them is easily removed by cracking them into pieces and soaking the acorn nut meat chunks in repeating baths of warm water, one hour at a time, until the bitterness is gone. Don’t boil them, though. While many books instruct this technique, it locks in some of the bitterness.
wild edibles
Wild Rice
This northern marsh grass plant has long been a valuable commodity in North America. Paddling an open canoe through the rice beds at harvest time allows you to bend the seed heads into the boat, tap them to release the rice, and then paddle out of there with a literal “boat load” of rice after a few hours. The raw, uncooked rice is exactly 100 calories per ounce, and it contains some traces of B Vitamins, 4 grams of protein and numerous minerals.
wild edibles
Amaranth Seed
These small, shiny black seeds are one of the most overlooked staple foods from the wild. Some amaranth species and varieties are grown for size or flavor, but the wild plants are plenty good enough to use. One cup contains 716 calories, 26 grams of protein, 30 percent of your daily calcium and almost a full day’s requirement of iron. These seeds can be boiled into a cooked grain or ground into flour. The leaves are also edible raw or cooked, but one cup of those only contains 6 calories.
wild edibles
**Rose Hips **
The tangy, sweet, red-colored fruits of wild rose bushes come in at 162 calories per cup. They’re a good source of Vitamin E (alpha-tocopherol), Vitamin K, calcium, and magnesium, and a very good source of dietary fiber, Vitamin A and manganese. They are also a Vitamin C powerhouse containing 7 times your daily dose. To avoid getting the wrong fruit or berry, look for compound leaves and thorns on the rose bushes. The red rose hips should also be branching upward, not dangling fruits.
wild edibles
**Persimmon **
The scientific name of this fruit is diospyros, which means “food of the gods.” If you are concerned that they are overselling the fruit, you are wrong. The completely ripe, native persimmon fruits are a sticky, gooey sweet treasure trove. The fruits of this eastern tree have 127 calories and a full day’s Vitamin C per cup of pulp. Look for very wrinkled fruits in late October. Unripe persimmons are very bitter and will give you a strong case of cotton mouth. Generally, the rougher they look, the sweeter they are.
wild edibles
Jerusalem Artichoke
This plant is neither from Jerusalem nor is it an artichoke, but this native sunflower relative does have a slightly sweet tuber, which carries 109 calories per cup. It contains lots of iron and potassium and contains 5 to 20 percent of your daily allowance in most of the B vitamins. Look for the small sunflower-looking bloom in the fall at the top of the tall plants, and dig up the tubers, which resemble ginger roots in shape (but not odor).
wild edibles
Elderberries
Numerous species of the small shrub known as the elderberry can be found throughout the world. The American Elder grows throughout eastern North America. These bushes produce small purple-black berries in large clusters during midsummer. The berries are high in Vitamin B6, Vitamin C, calcium, iron, and potassium, and boast 106 calories per cup. Just don’t munch on the leaves, or try to make a flute out of the hollow stem, as every part is hazardous except the ripe berries.
wild edibles
Wild Grapes
More than 20 species of wild grape are found east of the Mississippi, ripening at different times from August through October. Depending on the species and sugar content, they are roughly 100 calories per cup. Most wild grapes carry decent amounts of Vitamin C, Vitamin K, copper and potassium (one-tenth to one quarter of your daily requirement). Make sure it’s a grape though! The Canada Moonseed looks like a grape, but it is poisonous. Grapes should have one to four teardrop-shaped seeds, while the dangerous moonseed has only one seed, which is curved and flat. Also, grape vines have tendrils (curlicues), while the moonseed has no curly tendrils.
wild edibles
Blueberries
There are a lot of species of blueberry bush in America, ranging from one foot in height (huckleberry) up to eight feet tall (high bush blueberry). With a sweet flavor and small seeds, a one cup serving of blueberries provides 84 calories. They contain one quarter of your daily Vitamin C and one third of your Vitamin K. Blueberries can be a summertime lifesaver if you can find a large patch of them. Just watch out for bears, as they like to hang out around this significant food source.
wild edibles
Burdock Root
If you’re not too busy picking the burrs off your clothes and your dogs, the root of burdock can be dug up and boiled in a few changes of hot water to yield a fine vegetable. Just dig it, wash it, chop it, boil the root pieces for 5 minutes, dump the water away, boil again for 5 minutes, taste test for flavor, boil again if needed, and serve. These boilings are to remove the bitterness. One cup of raw burdock root has 84 calories and 14 percent of your daily allowance of Vitamin B6. It also gives you some potassium, magnesium and manganese.
wild edibles
Paw Paw Fruit
If you are looking for a rich, belly-filling fruit, paw paw is it. These flood plain and forest fruits carry 80 calories to the cup, 18 percent of your daily Vitamin C and about 10 percent of your daily potassium. The strange sweet flavor is a little like a banana with hints of mango. Look for the stubby banana-like fruits in August, on trees near rivers in Texas, Oklahoma, Nebraska and most states to the east. Pick them when they are fragrant and almost mushy, but before they rot and turn dark.
wild edibles
Black Cherry
The black cherry tree grows throughout the eastern half of the U.S., and it bears small, reddish-black fruits that ripen in July each year. One cup of pitted black cherries has 77 calories, 40 percent of your Vitamin A, 26 percent of your Vitamin C, as well as some potassium, copper, and manganese. Just make sure you spit out the pits, and don’t mess around with wilting green cherry leaves, as these are both poisonous.
wild edibles
Raspberries
Raspberries are a close relative to the blackberry, and can be red, purple, gold, or black when fully ripe. Raspberries contain 64 calories per cup, and have 54 percent of your daily Vitamin C and 12 percent of your daily Vitamin K. The main difference between the two berries is that raspberries come off the bush with a hollow center, and blackberries keep their spongy center inside the berry.
wild edibles
Blackberries
Maybe these berries’ sweet flavor keeps you stuck in the blackberry patch, either that or the thorns. Blackberries contain 62 calories per cup, and also have 50 percent of your daily Vitamin C and 36 percent of your daily Vitamin K. And if that wasn’t enough, blackberry leaves can be dried and steeped into a tea that has a mild taste and helps treat diarrhea.
Wild edibles
Mulberry
The native red mulberry and several Asian species of mulberry can be found through much of the U.S. These blackberry-like fruits dangle from a tree, as opposed to growing on a thorny bush. Mulberries provide 60 calories per cup, with 85 percent of your daily requirement of Vitamin C and 14 percent of your daily iron. Make sure they are ripe and sweet, because under-ripe mulberries can lead to serious reactions.
wild edibles
Cattail Roots
Often labeled as the “supermarket of the swamp”, cattail is a very versatile wild edible. The roots contain a white starch that is 150 calories per cup, and the shoots are also edible, bringing in 50 calories per cup and a little bit of Vitamin K. The pollen is edible, too, as are the sprouts that grow on the roots. The leaves can be made into baskets and ropes. There are even medicinal parts of cattail. Supermarket indeed. Just watch out for Iris, which is poisonous and can also grow in swampy conditions. Iris is generally half the height of cattail and it bears a large flower at the top. Cattail will be topped with a seed head that looks very much like a corndog in size and shape.
wild edibles
Cranberry
Cranberry bushes are a group of evergreen dwarf shrubs or trailing vines with red berries that float when ripe. They can be found growing in many places, particularly in acidic bogs throughout Canada and the American Northeast and Northwest. One cup of whole, raw berries contains 46 calories and one fifth of your daily requirement of Vitamin C. Eating the berries or products made from them is also a widely used remedy to treat and prevent urinary tract infections. Outdoor Life
wild edibles
Wild Strawberry
The strawberry growing wild in North America is the basis for all of the strawberries we have bred today. Though the wild berries are not high in calories (45 per cup), a cup of berries will give you more than a full day’s supply of Vitamin C. Don’t be confused by the Indian Strawberry, which is still edible, but completely flavorless. You’ll know it when you get a real wild strawberry, which is very flavorful and sweet and has tan seeds on the surface of the berry. The bland one has red-colored seeds on the surface.
Wild edibles
Dandelion Greens
The leaves of the common dandelion are where we start our wild edible plant guide. These common lawn weeds are found throughout the U.S., although they are native to Europe. The greens have just 25 calories per cup, but their vitamin and mineral contents are through the roof. One cup of the greens contains a full day’s supply of Vitamin A and five times the daily allowance of Vitamin K. Respectable amounts of Vitamin C, Calcium, Iron and Manganese are also present. Catch the weed in bloom for positive identification, and throw a few of the yellow flower heads in your greens to brighten up your meal.

OL’s survival expert highlights the best wild foods and ranks them by availability and caloric value. Check out this gallery and never go hungry again.

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