For most people who don’t forage or are beginners, their greatest fear is to get poisoned by a poisonous plant/fungus. And that’s valid. But when your senses are trained well enough, that’s not usually a problem at all.
Many would warn about foraging in too contaminated locations, since human caused pollution can be caught by plants and fungi and end in our bodies. Of course that is important, and it is a shame that here in my city I can’t forage in peace because every place has been sprayed with bug spray, car smoke, dog poop, garbage, microplastics, and what not.
But what worries me the most is not that. There are some threats we can’t control. Dangers that come from nature itself. Parasites, pathogens…
What about the case of the woman in Australia who picked up Ophidascaris robertsii consuming Warrigalls greens? Was this preventable? Or the inevitable price of being a bit closer to nature? And in my mind, many other crazy, hypothetical situations start to sprout. What if some rabid animal dropped saliva on a patch of edibles? Or what if… umm, some animal with a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy leaves its prions on the soil? You name it.
Of course, all of them are ridiculous, hypothetical scenarios, but I wonder how viable can they be and how we can prevent all this stuff.
So, I will appreciate any knowledge about how much of a threat are parasites and pathogens when foraging, and how can we prevent them from being a threat. Do we need to disinfect edibles in some way? Can we prevent parasites knowing about their biology? Or should we worry at all? And what are other examples of parasite/pathogen related situations when foraging? And can having a healthy immune system help?
I think, that if people survived thousands of years foraging, then we can too. But remember: You have to eat the right part of the plant in the right way at the right time. For example, cattail rhizomes are edible - but you can’t just slice them into a salad or soup. As for other examples, the lobster mushroom parasitizes on other mushrooms, sometimes on toxic mushrooms such as Amanita - making itself toxic. I just avoid lobster mushrooms. Also, if we have a vegetable garden, we don’t worry about these things. I think that should apply to foraging, too. But sure, washing does no harm.
I personally don’t really forage (if I find Boletus edulis somewhere, that may become an exception, though). But more because I just prefer making observations and not carrying a lot of stuff.
If I see wild blackberries somewhere, I usually eat the fruits on chest-high vines or higher, but none below that level. My biggest concern would be accidentally swallowing eggs of Echinococcus multilocularis, which is probably unlikely, but the parasitology part of animal diversity has made me really not want anything to do with that species… Haha
So far I limit my foraging to weeds in my own garden, essentially Lapsana, Taraxacum and a few more. I don’t expect other contaminations than on regular vegetables. I don’t trust myself about mushrooms - these are the things that I ID on Inat from “unknown” to “Fungi” just to get rid of them ;-)
Prion disease is transmitted through consumption of brain and central nervous system tissues and fluids. No risk of contracting spongiform encephalitis unless the edible is contaminated with these tissues.
I did a quick search on PubMed and couldn’t find any specific data on the incidence of human illness due to pathogens on foraged foods, but that’s not to say there is no risk. There is always a risk of infectious pathogens when foraging from nature (staph, listeria, salmonella and other soil pathogens), gardia in stagnant water, E. Coli and histoplasmosis in bird feces, and the list goes on….), but the same is true for farmed foods we buy in the grocery store and farmers markets. However, as already mentioned, proper washing and preparation of foraged food will reduce the potential risk. Knowing the animals that live in the area where you forage (including any nearby livestock farms where water runoff might be an issue) and the potential diseases they carry and how these diseases are spread can also reduce risk. Also, soft foods like mushrooms and berries are harder to clean than foods with a peel/outer layer or shell that can be removed.
During those thousands of years, people lived with a certain background level of pathogenic microbes, which presumably kept their immune systems primed. Nowadays, we like to keep our immediate surroundings in a sanitary condition. This may affect the robustness of our immune systems when we do have a microbial exposure.
The lobster mushroom, Hypomyces lactifluorum, does not infect Amanita. It grows almost exclusively on Russula brevipes (it might occur on Lactarius). There is Hypomyces hyalinus which infects Amanita but it does not turn orange or make the mushroom palatable.
Most places in the world humans are far and away the greatest danger, forager or no. Humans and their suspicions, their territoriality, their cars, their weapons, their dogs, their machismo. Humans are pretty much always the main threat.
The example you gave of the woman in Australia who picked up a snake parasite from eating ‘warrigal’ greens Tetragonia sp. (This plants is widespread around the world and is also called New Zealand spinach or goosefoot in other countries). The unfortunate incident could have been avoided if she had cooked it first. I guess the advice is to wash and preferably cook any food harvested from the wild.
I don’t know the range for this. And I don’t know if I remember all the details correctly…
It’s a parasite with two different hosts during its lifecycle.
are rodents (or any other mammal) which consume the eggs by eating fruit and stuff close to the ground
are foxes (or any carnivorous mammal) which eat the eggs
When the intermediate hosts (incl. humans) eat the eggs, the larvae hatch and will go through the gut epithelium and enter the liver, where they will form cysts and cause necrosis. That will weaken and eventually kill the intermediate hosts, so that it is easier prey for the final host.
There, the worm sits in the guts, I think, and will produce segments filled with sexual organs (both male and female). The older the segments are, the further to the posterior they are. After the eggs in those segments have been fertilised, the whole segment detaches and is excreted.
The eggs can then be blown away certain distances via wind.
Cattail rhizomes are very fibrous, to the extent that some people use them to make cordage. To eat them, you can process them in a way described in Samuel Thayer’s The Forager’s Harvest. There are many books that say that cattail rhizomes can be cooked and eaten “like potatoes”, but this is a misconception about the buds at the end of the rhizome. It is true that these buds can be eaten when prepared like potatoes, but they are too small and fiddly to be of much use.
Oh! I take it back then, but still you must be careful.
Good question. I just wash them in the same way that I wash food from the grocery store.
