Role of Wild Food Environments for Cultural Identity, Food Security, and Dietary Quality in a Rural American State

Abstract

Wild foods are primary components of traditional and Indigenous food systems that are valued for food security while being vulnerable to global change. This case study examines practices, experiences, and perceptions associated with wild food environments through a household survey in the rural American state of Montana. Findings highlight that wild food environments contribute to cultural identity, sense of place, food security, and dietary quality of surveyed households while being vulnerable to loss of traditional ecological knowledge as well as climate and land-use change. Of the 182 informants, 80% hunt, 83% fish, and 68% forage wild botanicals. More than half of the informants agreed that wild food procurement is part of their cultural identity (66%). Collectively, informants procure more than 172 wild food species with the most prevalent being deer, waterfowl, elk, trout, bass, a range of berries, mushrooms, and botanicals used medicinally. Participants have a multidimensional value system where wild food procurement is valued for diets, recreation, family time, spirituality, and connection to the environment. The majority of participants agreed that the consumption of wild foods contributes to the nutritional quality (87%) and diversity (82%) of their diets while lowering food costs (59%). At least half of the informants reported observing changes in climate patterns over the past decade including increased temperature (50%) and more extreme and variable weather patterns (38%) that they perceive are impacting wild food environments including shifts in wild game, fish, and edible plant populations. Based on findings, we support that wild food environments and associated bio-cultural resources are a critical place to understand, conserve, and promote for nutrition. We thus advance the concept of “conservation for nutrition”. Community engagement, education, and policy plans are called for to promote wild food environments toward supporting sustainable diets and planetary health.

Avengers, assemble the literature! A multi‐study review of consumption, environmental values, and planetary health research

“…First, the top authors are Selena Ahmed and Rosemary Green with four articles each. Their recent works have contributed insights on food security (Ahmed et al, 2022), food waste (Ahmed et al, 2021), and sustainable dietary practices (Patterson et al, 2021) such as the EAT–Lancet dietary recommendations for health and sustainability (Ali et al, 2022), among others. Second, the top affiliations are Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health with 12 articles, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine with eight articles, and John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health with five articles.…”

“…Ahmed and Rosemary Green with four articles each. Their recent works have contributed insights on food security (Ahmed et al, 2022), food waste (Ahmed et al, 2021), and sustainable dietary practices (Patterson et al, 2021) such as the EAT-Lancet dietary recommendations for health and sustainability (Ali et al, 2022)…”

Centering context when characterizing food environments: the potential of participatory mapping to inform food environment research

“…Access to different food environment types has been found to be associated with differences in food security ( 8 ), dietary intakes ( 1 ), and nutrition outcomes ( 9 ). In most LMIC contexts, foods are procured by interacting with natural food environments through means of hunting, fishing, and foraging in wild settings, and growing foods in cultivated settings ( 5 , 10 ). This can also be true in HIC, particularly within indigenous communities ( 11 , 12 ).…”

“…There is a growing recognition of the need to better measure food environments in order to inform the design and implementation of interventions to promote healthy and sustainable diets that are more closely tailored to their context. In this perspective article, we argue for the need to include the natural environment, as well as any other food access points [e.g., kin and community ( 7 )] in food environment assessments conducted in LMICs in particular, but even in HIC contexts where food environments may be diverse [e.g., indigenous communities ( 10 )]. Often, the heterogeneity of food access points might not always be immediately apparent.…”

Wild leafy vegetables: A potential source for a traditional Mediterranean food from Lebanon

“…In the Mediterranean region, WLVs represent today a revival in the modern Mediterranean diet for their potential use as functional foods (Pinela et al, 2017;Ceccanti et al, 2018) and to meet the daily micronutrient needs of rural communities and vulnerable groups (Tardío et al, 2006;Garcia-Herrera et al, 2014;Beal et al, 2017). Such wild species, along with the wealth of associated traditional knowledge, offer a largely untapped resource to support diversified nutritious diets and sustainable food systems (Khoury et al, 2014;Ulian et al, 2020;Ahmad et al, 2022).…”