Fresh fish caught in a mountain lake or stream, meat from game hunted in the wilds and plants harvested by hand from the forest floor are all becoming more and more common on people’s dinner plates.
Why? Well, mostly because many people simply don’t want to eat food from grocery stores that are full of chemical preservatives and growth hormones.
I am among an ever growing number of people who feel less and less comfortable eating food with labels that make it harder to tell where it comes from, how it was grown/reared and/or what sort of things may have been added in order to keep such foods “fresher on the shelf” for a longer period of time. Marketing is one thing, misleading the buyer is another.
Take a walk through the fish aisle of your local large grocery store and check out the names of some of the fish they are selling. Then go home and Google those names. You will be surprised at what you are eating and where it comes from.
Not only will you find farmed fish, such as salmon and other, less-expensive species such as hake, but also fish such as basa, a type of catfish native to the Mekong River Delta in Vietnam, and something called tilapia. I couldn’t even tell you what a tilapia looks like, never mind where it comes from.
The problem is, as consumers, half the time we don’t even know what we are eating.
In packaging, hake is sometimes labeled as ‘halibut family.’ Hake is, in fact, not a member of the halibut family. Wild Pacific salmon is frozen chum processed in China and caught off the waters of northeast Japan.
At least I know where the fish I catch comes from.
While researching on the Internet for information about wild foods, natural medicines and other edible products derived from nature, I discovered some pretty interesting facts.
Did you know the shoots of a spruce tree are high in Vitamin C, and that Captain Cook had a sugar-based spruce tree beer made onboard during his sea voyages to prevent scurvy among the crew. And that certain wild plants such the Indian turnip, have high concentrations of oxalate compounds, also known as oxalic acid, that produces a sharp burning sensation in your mouth and throat and can damage the kidneys. The same plant can be safely eaten after simply baking, roasting or drying, which destroys the oxalate crystals.
I was surprised to learn the common white mushroom, the kind you get at the grocery store, is actually a fungi.
When your feet get itchy, you may have Athlete’s Foot, which is caused by – you guessed it – a fungus. Fungi and the spores from fungi can be nasty little things and are simply best left alone.
Did you know there are more than 70,000 kinds of mushrooms, and that only a fraction, about 250, are edible. The rest can cause illness or even death. The death cap is considered to be the number-one cause of illness and death when it comes to mushroom-related poisonings in North America. This is why it’s so important to know exactly what you’re looking for when you go foraging or mushroom hunting. Personally, I’ve never really gotten into the whole hunting, foraging and eating of wild plants and fungi thing. Not that I have anything against wild game or plants, it’s just that I don’t know enough about wild foods to feel safe eating them.
The thing is, I enjoy being in the great outdoors. I like to walk in the woods and observe nature, and yes, I like to go fishing. I even enjoy eating some of the fish that I catch every now and then. How safe are any of us eating farmed fish from who-knows-where?
All I know is that there is definitely something to be said for fresh fish caught right here in this provinces lakes and streams and wild game that is free of growth hormones. As for Indian turnips, fungi and spruce beer, well, I hear they’re more of an acquired taste.