Hello and welcome to the Nutrition Diva Podcast. I'm your host, Monica Reinegel. Walking

has so many benefits. Everything from strengthening your bones and muscles, to brightening your

mood. And with a little guidance and practice, walking can even improve your nutrition.

Whether you walk in urban parks, suburban neighborhoods, or forest trails, chances are

that edible plants are growing along your root. Learning to find and identify them can turn a

walk into a fun and nutritious treasure hunt. John Calis is the author of a multi-volume series

on edible wild plants and the owner of wild food adventures, an outdoor school in Portland,

Oregon where he oversees a wide range of research and educational programming.

John also has degrees in biology, zoology, education, and nutrition, not to mention a lifelong

passion for wild plants. And he joins me today to talk about the art and science of foraging.

Hi John. Hi. Welcome to the podcast. So I see in your biography that you have spent times in

your life where you've existed for long periods of time, solely on the foods that you were able

to forage in the wild. People listening to this podcast are probably not going to be in that

situation anytime soon. So I guess my first question is, why might someone who has regular access

to a supermarket or a farmer's market choose to go looking for edible wild plants?

Well, that's a great question, but first let me, I want to get away from the legend of John

and that's that when I did a six month vagabonding trip through Europe in my youth,

basically by the end of that trip I was getting all my vegetable matter from wild foods,

but I was still buying baguettes and you know other things that were local foods and stuff while

I was traveling around. So fair enough and still rather impressive and good to know that that's

possible and for a foraging expert, that's a good thing to have on your resume. But yeah, for those

of us who are not relying on this, what might just be fun and educational about this project?

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