Inspired by various threads running in GQ and GD, I would like to ask: what part of your diet, on a percentage basis say, is accounted for by classic hunting and gathering? And no, stalking the aisles of your local A&P doesn’t count.
For myself the answer is about .001%. With the exception of a little blueberry picking in the fall, I do basically no H&G.
Zero percent.
It used to be a little more, when I lived back home. Berry-picking is a huge part of the community I grew up in, and most everyone had fields with blueberries, cranberries, strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, etc. growing in their own yards. We’d pick them by hand and make delicious baked goods out of them. Most of us had a few apple trees on our property, as well. So, at least in the summertime/autumn, most of our dessert fare was commonly gathered by our own hand.
Now I get my berries from the grocery store. Bleh. It’s just not the same.
Is commercial fishing hunting? It looks like it to me. The fish live in the wild, fending for themselves, until they are taken and eaten. So, considering that I eat fish a handful of times a year, probably about a tenth of 1%. Otherwise, none.
This remark made me unsure of your intentions. Do I have to do the hunting and gathering myself, or does it count if I purchase food that someone else has hunted or gathered?
If fishing counts, I eat a lot of tuna, and I probably have wild Pacific salmon a dozen times a year or more. If we figure 1000 meals each year (slightly low, but easy number to work with), probably 80-100 of those meals involve wild fish for me.
I go blueberry picking about once a year, and we pick enough berries to make four or five pies plus some smoothies and other treats. Add in another half-dozen meals, maybe.
Once in a long while–maybe once a year, probably less–I find enough wild mushrooms to feature them in a meal.
So if we include fish, and we count just the meals in which wild foods feature, I’m probably around 8-10% of my meals. If we don’t count fish, it drops down to maybe half a percent. If we count by calories instead of by the meal, you can probably drop those quantities by half or more.
Daniel
Zero. Someday I may be able to afford wild caught fish, but now, I’m pretty sure everything I eat is farmed.
I don’t really gather, but I do hunt. Of course, I haven’t actually got anything in years (California!) so that brings my percentage down to near zero. I have a venison roast in the freezer that I’ve been meaning to jerk, and half of a salmon.
We’re about halfway through the wild pheasants that I shot in December. I made acorn pancakes two weeks ago with the last of the acorn flour that I made last fall from the oaks in our back yard. Until we moved two years ago, we used to get gallons of blackberries from the wild canes growing across the road. We also had a garden at the old house, but the homeowner’s association won’t let us have one here. So I’d say that the overall average over the last two years has dropped to about 0.5%.
I’d say that fishing doesn’t count unless you do it yourself; likewise ‘gardening’ should be counted separately. Pick-your-own produce places, like for apples/strawberries/pumpkins, are kind of a middle ground since someone else is doing most of the farming work.
I hunt 5 to 8 times a year, and normally come back with something 50% to 60% of the time. So that puts about 50ish kilos of meat on the table a year. Plus we go mushroom hunting in the late summer and early fall, which brings in about 5 kilos of food.
Lets say I eat 750g a day, that would be around 275 kilos a year. I eat 50% of what I hunt or gather, so lets say 30 kilos. That makes it around 10%.
Now if we have hunt, gather and grow, then add another 15 kilos of cucumbers, zuccini, lettuce and peppers, then we are at 45 kilos total, for 16%
And if you add tuna (which I don’t think you should, I feel to be able to say “Hunt and Gather” it should not involve a can opener) then I’m sure I’d be over 20%.
The above done very roughly and does not include dry weights (water content) or any of that other fancy calculation stipulation manipulation.
-Tcat
When I was a kid it was a lot more, about 50% of my diet was hunting and gathering. Dad brought home a lot of deer, elk and moose, we would go fishing and in the summer a lot of our fruits and veggies would be picked (by us) at relative’s farms. (Some used to live in BC and we’d bring back fruit to can, make jelly and eat and the closer ones have HUGE gardens that add to the tables of several families). Grandma would also always drag me out to pick chokecherries on city land since otherwise they’d go to rot.
As I get older it gets less and less though. Right now it’s pretty much 0. I haven’t been fishing in years, I don’t have the space for a garden beyond a couple of tomato plants (I plant pansies though) and my Dad and brother keep forgetting to bring me some deer like I ask.
Okay, some definitions. I don’t think it counts if you go to one of those pick-your-own places. That’s agriculture, plus subcontracting. Growing your own food also doesn’t count. If you have blackberry bushes, nut trees, etc. that grow in your yard, that would count – so long as you don’t mulch. Commercially caught fish, even if wild, doesn’t count where it’s a product of an industrial fishing operation. I guess for simplicity’s sake we should also rule out foods you pay for but which are hunted and gathered by someone else.
I’m sure there are other gray areas – semi-feral pigs, maybe?
And brossa, I thought acorns were toxic to people. Or do they fall into that toxic-but-yummy category, like fugu?
Born in NYC, Grew up and live in suburban NJ, never fired a gun or hunted. So the answer is 0%.
Just to clarify my post, our berry-picking community picked their own berries from their yard, or, as we often did, wandered into the woods and picked berries and some nuts there. There were pick-your-own places available that you could go to if you wanted, and we even had a blueberry processing plant behind our house (where I worked for a summer as a teenager, culling berries) - a common summer job was blueberry raking. That doesn’t really qualify, though, since you didn’t eat those berries, those berries were your pay!
The only difference with the pick-your-own places is that they had these humungous steroid Shwartzenegger Van Damme T-Rexasaurus berries. Bah. They were okay. One berry was a freaking meal. Fine if you were into berries the size of a watermelon. Personally, I liked the wienerberries I picked in the wild. 
Acorns are quite edible if you leech the tannins & such out. Some California Indian tribes subsisted manily on acorns. A few acorns don’t need the treatment, but most do.
Now? My “H&G” food is a very low %, below 1%. But when I was going to college, I hunted (only birds fit for the table), fished (my Dad went deep-sea fishing once or twice a month during the season, and would pay for my trip, and I’d come home with sacks of fish, not to mention some fresh water fish) and gathered wild food. If you count gleaning (which I would*), I’d guess my % was close to 50% in some years.
I’m not sure I could put an actual percentage on it, but I grow all of the following:
Lemons
Oranges
Grapefruit
Green beans
Peas
Carrots
Spinach
3 kinds of lettuce: Bibb, Marvel of Four Seasons & Lollo Bionda
Tomatoes
Broccoli
Onions
Garlic
Brussel sprouts
Mint
Marjoram
Rosemary
Thyme
Oregano
Garlic chives
Parsely
Basil
Dill
I’m also planning on adding some espalier apple trees to my yard, but those aren’t in yet, so they don’t quite count. And we have a plum tree, but last year it didn’t bear much fruit (or the birds got to it all before we did). I absolutely love growing my own food! It is so much fun to go out into the garden and pick a fresh salad for dinner. The difference in flavor is amazing and it’s just plain fun and rewarding.
What a wonderful list, Shayna. I am impressed.
For me it’s varied over the years. As a kid, 0%.
In college, I usually took a deer or two each year, plus a lot of dove, quail and rabbit. I’d guess somewhere between 4 and 5%.
As an Anchorage resident I had salmon and halibut in the fridge all season. 5%.
Nowadays, a deer or antelope each year, several ducks and a fair number of dove. Plus quite a few pecans. 3 to 4%.
Neat idea for a thread.
What’s “gleaning,” in this context? And did you do much of it?
“Gleaning” is going into an orchard etc- AFTER it’s “fully harvested” and picking what remains. And, yes. You could come out with bushels.
So far this year, I’m at about .01%, assuming you count the “chives” my wife gathered from our yard. I think they’re just some kind of grass that has a chivey smell, but they’re apparently not poisonous, so I’m sure I’ll have more.
We may plant some berry bushes at the back of our lot, not a formal garden, so I guess our percentage can go up.
Cheesesteak, I think I can guess what portion of your username is accounted for by hunting and gathering: 0%. Am I not right?