July 6, 2020

I Only Ate Food That I Grew Or Foraged For One Year

what does squirrel taste like squirrel tastes like squirrel for one year I only ate foods that I grew and foraged one year without grocery stores or restaurants nothing packaged or processed nothing shipped long distances literally everything that I entire year came from my garden or that I harvested

from nature my name is Rob Greenfield I'm an environmental activist who embarks on extreme adventures to bring attention to important environmental and social issues basically I believe that our current global industrial food system is broken everywhere you look it's causing severe destruction to people to other species and

to the earth as a whole and so I wanted to do something extreme I've always had the question would it be possible to step away from big AG step away from the global industrial food system and could I exist without grocery stores and restaurants and actually grow all

my own food I couldn't find people that had done it so for me the solution was to do it myself and see if it was possible when I started I didn't know how much Sun does a carrot need how much water to put on your collards or your

Swiss chard I was just literally on the internet researching every plant and how to do it food didn't get bland because I ate over 300 species of food I grew over a hundred different foods and I forged over 200 different foods so that's almost a new species for

every day of the entire year I made my own flour by dehydrating cassava and yam then I could make my own tortillas and bread I fermented a lot of foods and may things like sauerkraut and honey wine ginger beer I ate dozens and dozens of different meals throughout

the year that were really varied so it really didn't get boring I chose Florida because as someone who had minimal experience I did want to be somewhere where I could grow food year-round it can be done in colder climates but I wanted to choose an easier place since

I was just a beginner and what I chose to do was not live on a farm not live out in the countryside because I wanted to impact people I wanted people to see me growing my food I wanted to interact with the community when I arrived in Florida

one of the first things that I did is I connected with the local food growing movement I went to the community garden so I just really immersed in the community and got to know people and I asked people in the community if they would like to have free

food growing right in their yard rather than just grass and the people lined up to have me turn their yard into a garden and so I ended up having six front yard Gardens and they were available for anyone to eat from quickly it went from grass to having

really enough food for dozens or even hundreds of people to eat from and they were basically community gardens anybody could walk in and eat the food for the year I lived in a tiny house that I built out of 99% secondhand materials it's 10 feet by 10 feet

so very small you know my arm span is 6 feet so I've span across most of it basically it was a bed a desk with a chair a freezer to store food a couple of shelves to store a lot of food and then under the bed there was

storage as well being in Florida I was able to utilize outside as well so my kitchen was an outdoor kitchen and that was powered by rainwater so my sink was just rain water for washing dishes and hands and I also had an outdoor compost toilet where I would

compost my poop and pee and turn that into fertile soil rather than wasting water and shipping it off to be someone else's problem that fertilizer is used on fruit trees so not on your kale and stuff on the ground but on fruit trees where the fruit is high

above and then lastly I had an outdoor shower as well and the water from that was harvested from rain and then the water would be used to water banana plants to grow bananas I gave myself six months to prepare but that ended up being ten months before I

actually started and I started from scratch I had to get seeds and soil and figure out the absolute basics my basic strategy was to plant way more than I would need so that way I would have enough so that meant more work but it ensured the success I

talked to the local gardeners and farmers and I asked what grows so ridiculously well that even if you barely know what you're doing it's not just going to survive but it's actually going to thrive I asked what has the fewest pests what produces a huge amount of food

and what can handle neglect and that is what I planted and most of these were foods that I had never eaten before you don't see at the grocery store and a lot of them I didn't even know the name of things like Shia or Moringa Orca took there

were dozens of plants that became my staple foods that are staples for people around the world but that were pretty much unknown to me and most of the people I was around a year is a pretty long time I mean imagine taking any sort of diet and doing

it for an entire year through the year I had my ups and downs at times felt my absolute best and then there was times that I was worried about my health one of the most interesting times was just at the very beginning it was just about a week

and a half in and I realized that my digestion was the best that I had felt in my adult life by the middle of the year I found that I had a deficiency I thought in fat and protein that's one of the hardest things to really get for

me this is really funny because I was plant-based fully for two years and I didn't eat any meat I was trying to grow plant-based protein I was growing beans and geez that did really well but I was trying to grow peanuts and sunflowers and I was really excited

to make my own peanut butter literally from soil to the jar of peanut butter I was so excited for it but the problem was the squirrels wanted my peanuts and they wanted my sunflowers and I grew I put a lot of energy into it and I almost I

barely ate just a few because they would eat them long before they were even ready for me to eat them so in permaculture there's a saying and that's turned your problem into your solution the squirrels were my problem they were eating my plant-based form of protein so I

hate the squirrels in doing so I got protein that I needed and I took care of something that was causing me a hard time in my garden I definitely had some controversy over that in the neighborhood but for me it's not about black and white we look at

our food on our plates and because it's a grocery store or because it's a restaurant we just trust it we don't think about where it came from the impact that it had on other people other species and on the land you can look at what I'm doing is

you see it direct you see I ate a squirrel but if you are getting food from a farm even if it's vegan food there's a good chance they're killing squirrels or rats or or mice that are that are eating the food so for me I'm in the direct

fire you see these things that I'm doing but the reality is is that we're all doing this we just don't see it and so it makes it a very different thing when you immerse in your food you start to understand the reality of the dinners that we're eating

and then also I was in Wisconsin at that time on a trip for the summer I went fishing and a caught fish and particularly lake trout which are one of the fattier fishes that are out there and I actually ate literally the entire trout even the head the

eyes the brain because that's where so much of the fat is also deer that were hit by cars so some people would call that roadkill I call them deer that were killed by cars so that was basically between the fish and the deer that was what brought me

back into balance and and gave my body the nourishment that I wasn't getting otherwise by the end of the project I did a body fat composition I had 15% body fat so I was able to work my way back up and at the end of the year I

felt honestly better than I had recalled in my adult life I was healthier and I was happier and I didn't get sick once throughout the entire year and the ironic thing is I have a little bit of a cold right now after this and getting back into the

food system my experience was that this created some of the happiest and healthiest days of my life so far so my goal wasn't just to grow in forage all of my own food my goal was to help other people do so as well so during the year I

started Gardens for single moms and we built gardens for five single-parent families in the neighborhoods and helped them grow their own food and we planted over 200 fruit trees that were publicly accessible for everyone to eat from and then free seed project and we sent out 5,000 garden

starter kits to people to grow their own healthy food across the country a tomato is good on a plate when you get it at the restaurant of the grocery store but just to plant that from seed to watch it grow to see it be this little green ball

that you can eat and then bigger and then this right juicy plump tomato and then to pick that and to have you know picked off the insects to the point where you can actually get to eat it because the insects didn't and you went through all of those

times together with that tomato and then you get to eat that tomato it might not actually taste better but it tastes better there's just that love that went into it and you feel it and you're like this is the best tomato I've ever had most of the food

that we buy at the grocery store today is shipped long distances often from halfway around the world if not halfway across the country it's packaged in plastic that will be around for hundreds of years either in the landfill or in our oceans and our lakes and our forests

its processed and filled with ingredients that aren't really good for us ingredients that we can't name that aren't real food and it uses a ton of pesticide and herbicides and fertilizers that runoff and pollute our water so this food although it appears harmless on our plates has so

many repercussions to people to other species and to the world that we depend on for our existence and that's why I think it's important to know that and if that doesn't match your value system to find food that doesn't cause that destruction to the world that we live

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