Reflecting on 30 Days of Wild Eating

Here's an extract from my diary at the end of a month of eating only wild food...

The Day After - Thur 1 May

Awake today at 06.00. My sleep over the past month has transformed so that feels really good. What do I want to hang onto from the past month, what have I learned to carry forward?

• Eat venison, it’s delicious and abundant and culling a pest. Embrace other wild meats & stop relying on chicken. 

• Carry good snacks - dried meat, nuts, fruit leathers, small low honey biscuits and seed crackers. They’re great, filling and stop me being tempted to buy sugary rubbish.

• Keep sugar & carb intake low, and pay attention to the sugar spike by eating them with /after protein & fat, with vinegar etc.

• Follow an 80/20 rule ie be stricter in the week and more relaxed at weekends.

• Eat organic.

• Eat less!

• Hazelnuts are amazing, use often!

• Sharing food prep and meals is great, make an effort to do that more often.

• Don't waste anything, think about how to use & reuse every bit of the food! Make stocks from fish bones & heads, meat bones, leftover veg, fry up crisps from fish skins, dehydrate blackberry pulp to use as a flavouring sprinkle etc

• Layer flavour by making more herb vinegars, ferment fruit in honey, lacto ferment greens etc

• Use vinegar for everything!

So many people have asked me if I’m hungry this month, but I’m so not hungry! Right now I’m so full, I can feel the venison from last night so definitely don’t need breakfast!

How am I feeling now Wildbiome is over for me? Proud that I leaned in and participated, proud that I didn’t cheat & resisted all the temptation in the house, really happy that I completed it, delighted with all I’ve learned. Grateful to the community for their support.

Now that I can eat anything I want, will I eat anything I want? Hmm I’m not sure, well right now not hungry at all so it’s time for a cup of herb tea. 

And I’m looking forward to foraging for fun again rather than foraging because I have to to eat!

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What is the Wildbiome project (version 2)?

Wildbiome is a citizen science research project being conducted in partnership with the University of Bradford and Rzeszów University, Poland, to track changes in the human gut microbiome and general health when eating only wild food. 

In spring 2026, a group of 100 foragers will be eating only wild food for a period of 3 months or 1 month and testing their health and gut, in order to determine the differences between that and a modern shop-based diet. 

This will be a fascinating piece of science and contribute hugely to the debate around gut health. The results will be published in late 2026, and will be covered by BBC's Dan Saladino (The Food Programme, BBC Radio 4).