MISSOULA — This time of year, with Easter egg hunts, many of us are honing our gathering skills - but Cathryn Raan of Missoula is taking foraging to a different level. Earlier this month, she started a new diet consisting of only wild foods.
“Everything has to either be foraged or hunted in some fashion,” she said.
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Raan is taking part in the Wildbiome Project, a citizen science study investigating the health impacts of wild diets.
It was launched in the United Kingdom by Monica Wilde, who ate nothing but wild food for a full year.
In 2023, Wilde ran a smaller version of the study. The second trial, going on right now, has more than 100 participants across the world.
“We do a bunch of blood work and gut testing, like hair analysis, nail clippings on the front end and the back end to gauge the impact of forage diets on our health,” Raan said.
Participants choose between a one and three month diet. Raan, one of only two joining from the United States, picked three months. From April until June, she is eating everything from stinging nettle to wild caught octopus.
But, like her, many of the foods she is eating have Montana roots.
“I grew up in Troy, Montana and liked to pick huckleberries, like any Montana kid,” she said.
What started with huckleberries turned into learning about mushrooms, then weeds, then medicinal properties and a lifelong passion. She went from farming to teaching about foraging and herbal medicine with her Missoula business, Wild Wanders.
“I was eating the weeds all the time and I just couldn't understand why we were spending so much time and energy ripping these plants out of the ground,” said Raan, one of the chief executive wanderers at Wild Wanders.
The wild diet has changed how Raan thinks about food. She told MTN that she feels more connected to her body and the landscape.
“I’m thinking less impulsively about food and more strategically, like what kind of food does my body want right now and how am I going to get that fuel in my body?” Raan said. “Rather than eating for pleasure, I'm eating for fuel and that's not my usual.”
The project is also changing her daily routine. Foraging takes a lot of time, but that is just the start. Wild foods often require a lot of processing and cooking. Raan is getting creative with her meals, especially as spring has not yet fully bloomed.
“I made myself a big pot of soup, and I sauteed some stinging nettles and some fried chicken mushrooms and chanterelles,” she said. “Right now, I'm more eating out of my freezer. I'm eating berries from last summer, mushrooms from last fall, meat from hunting season and fresh greens as they come up.”
That is one of the things Raan says makes this way of eating special.
“This is about the freshest food you can get,” she said. “It's not trucked in from 1,000 or more miles away. It's, you know, being picked and sometimes going right in my mouth.”
She hopes other people get into foraging too. But, she recommends lots of research to stay safe and start out with plants that are easy to identify.
“Get to know the plants that will kill you,” she said.
Raan — who's excitedly awaiting the results of the Wildbiome Project — believes it will back up the benefits she feels from foraging and inspire others.
Those looking to follow along with her diet can check out the Wild Wanders social media accounts.
“It's such an empowering and fun thing to widen your lens to the landscape that's around us, and feel more sovereignty over your food and your lifestyle and your health,” she said.
