Take a walk on the wild side and pick healthy food
Herbalist Clare Holohan on the health benefits of foraging
We all know the health benefits of kicking our processed foods habits to the curb, but a new book called Scotland’s Wild Medicine takes healthy and natural eating to a whole new level.
Co-written by nutritionist Lilia Sinclair and qualified medical herbalist Clare Holohan, the book explores how your own garden and local green spaces can be a bountiful medicine cabinet if you know what you are looking for.
For example, did you know the common daisy can be harvested and mixed into a concoction that can help clear chesty coughs, or that pesky stinging nettles have the ability to strengthen your bones, teeth, hair and nails?
Holohan explained why exploring your surroundings for food can be very beneficial for your general health: “You’re literally just ingesting nature. And I think picking your own foods often means it’s fresher and hasn’t been sitting around on supermarket shelves for weeks.
“With wild foods, because wild plants tend to grow in different ways to cultivated plants, they’ve not been bred to have certain characteristics. A lot of them have deep, deep roots and draw up nutrients from the sub-soils we couldn’t access otherwise. So a lot of the wild fruits are actually much more nutrient-dense than the cultivated foods.
“You don’t need a lot of it because it’s so nutrient-dense, so you tend to eat less of it because you feel like your body’s been nourished and you know you don’t need quite as much as you would when eating cultivated or processed foods.”
Holohan said it was not just the nutrients these plants and herbs have that are beneficial for our health, but that also the simple act of spending time in nature can give us a boost too.
“When you start spending lots of time in natural spaces, what a benefit it can have!” she said. “i lead foraging retreats, and by the end everyone is much more chilled out. It’s so lovely to be able to give people that gift of feeling a bit less stressed and more well.”