While hiking Mt. Battie in Maine, we came upon one of nature’s wonderful gifts ~ ripe blueberries along the trail. Nothing is better than discovering fresh fruit, especially blueberries, while hiking. Of course, we proceeded to “eat our way up the mountain.” Mathew was so excited about our great fortune that he just had to share and alerted other hikers to our discovery. One woman responded, “Oh, I thought we shouldn’t eat them.” Our response was, “Why?” She said, “They’re poisonous.” Fair enough; if you do not know what blueberries look like in the wild, it makes perfect sense not to eat just any berry that happens to be blue. Pokeweed and Belladonna have blue berries, and they are not something I would want to snack on.

Picking and of course eating blueberries along the trail!

Nevertheless, I suspect her suspicion of foraging wild foods goes deeper. She did claim to purchase wild Maine blueberries in her New Jersey grocery store. Wyman’s of Maine has been selling fresh frozen wild blueberries since 1900. I think the fact that these delicious orbs did not come in a neat package from the grocery store might be the tipping point of whether a person decides to eat them or not. This really confused Mathew since he thinks of a grocery store as the “place where you buy processed food.” And he views unprocessed food to be generally healthier. I personally love the fact that we are eating something the minute it is picked, capturing as much flavor and nutrition as nature has to offer. Moreover, the blueberries had not been handled by anyone except me. Not all fruit and vegetables are washed/sanitized before they are put into containers for sale. As consumers, we must trust that the pickers/processers are using the highest degree of food handling safety standards. Unfortunately, things are not always perfect and contamination happens, whether a worker does not wash their hands after using the bathroom or the work areas are not clean. For me, picking my own fruit/vegetables is best ~ hey, I am a forager at heart.

YUM!

There are wild blueberries all over the North America but Maine is the place to go. They have over 44,000 acres of wild blueberries. Wild blueberries have been harvested commercially since the 1840s. Interesting, there is more nutritional benefits to wild blueberries than cultivated ones due to their size. Wild blueberries are much smaller than the big, juicy cultivated varieties, maybe less than half the size. Therefore, a cup of cultivated blueberries will hold perhaps 80 or 90, that same size cup will hold more than 150 wild blueberries ~ and that is why the benefits of wild blueberries are technically greater. See, most of the nutrients of blueberries are packed into the skin. A cup of wild blueberries has a lot more skin than a cup of cultivated blueberries, thus packed with quite a bit more powerful disease-fighting antioxidants.

Foraging can be challenging for the inexperienced. Nevertheless, I highly recommend it. The thrill is indescribable and delicious to boot. Go with a knowledgeable guide and take a copy of the Peterson Field Guide: Edible Wild Plants. I promise you will not regret it.

All information is shared for educational purposes only and has not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration.  This information is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.