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A flavorful field guide to foraging

1,605,951 views | Alexis Nikole Nelson | TED2022 9 April 2022

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RELATED TOPICS
Sustainability, Food, Health, Plants, Fungi, Veganism

Transcript J8 Languages) 

English

 00N00

If a vegan falls in the forest ...

 00N03

1Laughter)

 00N06

And no one's there to hear them say, "I'm vegan!"

 00N12
:
 1Laughter)

 00N15

Are they even really vegan?

 00N17

1Laughter)

 00N21

1Laughter and applause)

 00N26

I like to preface conversations about my dietary habits with jokes because brains
love the ha-has and because sometimes you say the word "vegan" and people get
a little afraid. Their mind immediately conjures this nonexistent super vegan who's
an amalgam of every annoying thing they've ever heard a vegan say.

 00N57

1Laughter)

 00N58

And at that point, they're checked out. Now if you've managed to somehow avoid
the zeitgeist for the last 15 or 20 years, one, tell me how.

 01N11
:
 1Laughter)

 01N16

Two, I will tell you what vegan means, because I'm sure you're dying to know. So
vegan is both a diet completely free of animal products and a person who follows
that diet, often used interchangeably with "plant-based." But plant-based means
"vegan" but not vegan.

 01N38

1Laughter)

 01N40

Like, not necessarily done to decrease animal suffering per se, but maybe to help
one's health. But that is not the argument we came to have today. No siree, Bob.

 01N54

1Laughter)

 01N56

I see some sweet-spot minds looking to tussle. Not at my TED Talk.

 02N00

1Laughter)

 02N06
:
 Now I am an outdoor educator, I am a wild food forager, I am a reluctant social
media star.

 02N16

1Laughter)

 02N18

And yes, I am a vegan.

 02N20

Audience: Whoo!

 02N22

Thank you. That's not the reaction I usually get.

 02N26

1Laughter)

 02N27

At the age of five, upon realizing that the cows in the fields and the cows on my
dad's grill were the same cows ...

 02N35

1Laughter)
:
  02N38

I asked my parents if I could go vegetarian. To which they said, "Sure, but let's wait
until you're done growing first." So sure that I would change my mind over the next
five to nine years. Well. Shortly after my 12th birthday, I took the plunge, and I gave
up meat completely. It took another 12 years for me to give up eggs and dairy. And
now between the veganism and the foraging, I have one of the more eclectic
pantries in the world.

 03N17

1Video) Meet the Indigo Milk Cap. Let's make a fancy dessert out of seaweed. Here
is a mimosa tree. Please be a puffball! Please be a puffball!

 03N26

1Laughter)

 03N28

It was a puffball. Now, foraging is the art/science of identifying, collecting and

eating wild food. So if anyone's ever convinced you to try dandelions or wood
sorrel, congratulations, you're a forager too. When my mom told me that there was
a bunch of free food hanging out in lawns and sidewalks ...

 03N57

1Laughter)

 03N59

my mind was blown. All these free fruits, veggies and fungi that didn't require your
water, didn’t require your time and often were healthier than their counterparts in
:
 the grocery store. Cute little fun fact just between us, we did this thing over the last
100 years where we bred foods to travel easier, be bigger, taste milder. And that
often breeds out the nutrition. Let's take, for example, Purslane or Verdolagas, if
you are in a Spanish-speaking part of the Americas. It is a weed that grows out of
sidewalk cracks in the summertime. It is chock-full of Omega-3s, and it ain’t a fish.
Iron, get out of here, Popeye.

 04N52

1Laughter)

 04N53

And vitamin C, your immune system will thank you. Sometimes I will just stand in
my neighborhood, looking at the ground like.

 05N04

1Laughter)

 05N07

And I'm baffled that no one else seems to care.

 05N13

Now I am a forager and a vegan for much the same reason. My love of this planet
and its inhabitants. But let me tell you, between those two identifiers, it's pretty
hard to get people to try my food.

 05N32
:
 1Laughter)

 05N35

You tell someone something's vegan and you're already met with skepticism. Tell
them it’s vegan and you pulled half of it out of the ground ...

 05N43

1Laughter)

 05N46

It's a tough sell. So today I'm going to give all of you my tips, my tricks on getting
people to expand their palette and try wild vegan foods consensually.

 05N59

1Laughter)

 06N02

This is not the Lying Liar show. It is the Slightly Annoying but Ultimately Lovable Tall
Vegan show.

 06N09

1Laughter)

 06N11
:
 So today we are going to be making a snack that happens to be vegan, happens to
be great for the planet, happens to use one of my favorite ingredients. We are
making sweet and salty kelp chips, a Korean snack known as Dasima Twigak. Oh,
thank you. A "woo" for the pronunciation, I was worried about it.

 06N33

1Laughter)

 06N36

Now I know all of y'all's kids are obsessed with those nori seaweed snacks, so why
not kick it up a notch -- Sorry --

 06N45

1Laughter)

 06N50

With a locally foraged ingredient: bull kelp. I foraged this right here in Vancouver.

 06N57

1Applause and cheers)

 07N02

Now I'm going to go and start chipifying this seaweed. Very official kitchen shears.
And while I'm doing that, I'm going to give you my first tip. When introducing a dish
to skeptical mouths, it is best to use a dish that is not pretending to be something
else.
:
  07N27

1Applause)

 07N28

You know.

 07N31

That way, they have no prior associations, no memories to be comparing it to of

their mother's version of it.

 07N39

1Laughter)

 07N41

Maybe they have no opinions about it at all. I'm going to spritz these with a little
sunflower oil. Ooh. Smokey. Now, seaweed and sea vegetables in general are a
very exciting food space. They don't require fresh water. They don't require
fertilizer. They don't even require land. They're just hanging out in the salty seas,
creating ecosystems, creating oxygen for all of us to breathe, and creating these
amino acid-rich snacks. In this day and age, seaweed is truly future-minded food.
They're an option I wish more people would reach for, as runoff, water access, labor
issues and monoculturing plague a lot of modern agriculture here in North America.
Yeah.

 08N39

1Applause)
:
  08N42

Also they taste real good. Those amino acids do a lot more than adding umami to
your dishes. Bull help on average packs 15.3 percent protein by weight. That is for
everyone who asks where vegans get their protein from. We're fine.

 09N04

1Laughter)

 09N07

Now as I said before, this dish is nothing new. It's a popular bar snack in parts of
Korea, and we actually have a lot of accidentally vegan recipes historically. And the
reason for that is because up until recently, we did not eat this much meat.

 09N27

Which is going to lead to my second tip. It's a little spicy, a little touchy. Hopefully
the promise of a food reveal will get you all through it. And it is this. Explain to your
friends that the way that we are eating is not sustainable. Yeah.

 09N48

1Applause)

 09N49

It's not.

 09N50
:
 1Applause)

 09N52

As we are constantly reaching for more land and more fresh water, we have set a
precedent that our planet can not keep up with. Tell them you are not trying to
change their entire life. You just want them to be a bit more thoughtful with some of
their choices, to go for those kelp chips instead of maybe pork rinds from the
convenience store. I find that introducing people to wild foods in their area is an
excellent way to foster their connection to their food. And it's a way that fosters
that connection over shame. And it shares a snack instead of an infographic or a
shocking piece of media.

 10N38

Now moment of truth time. Let's see how these guys are doing in here. Oh, yes,
this will do nicely. Now I'm going to be real real with all of you because I would
never not be real real with you. Some people ... OK, get out of there, babies.

 11N03

1Laughter)

 11N06

Some people are going to be salty. And that's a funny thing for me to say, because
this is salt.

 11N13

1Laughter)
:
  11N16

And that's just the way it goes, we don't get to choose the pace at which people
change, if they choose to change at all. But, some people -- this is sugar -- will be
sweet. They will appreciate you for meeting them where they are. For sharing a
snack and a smile, and maybe you extending that bit of compassion to them will
make them make some big changes moving forward in their life. And who knows,
maybe next time they'll be gutsy enough to try acorn cheese or something.

 12N00

So share that snack. And make that memory. Thank you all so much for coming to
my talk. Ooh. That was a nice crunch. Happy snacking. Don't die.

 12N16

1Cheers and applause)

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