Nutritional ethnobotany in Europe: From emergency foods to healthy folk cuisines and contemporary foraging trends

Abstract

In this chapter we analyze the trends of wild food plant consumption in Europe in the last two centuries, focusing on emergency foods in time of crisis, food traditions and neglected wild plants in rural countryside as well as the contemporary emerging foraging trends. In doing that, we draw a few specific case studies from Western and Eastern Europe, from the north to the Mediterranean. We write about wild vegetables, fruits, underground organs, and flowers eaten in Europe. We pay attention to the importance of children snacks. We also discuss why the use of wild vegetables is so much more widespread in Southern Europe than in the central and northern part of the continent. This phenomenon is the most important division splitting Europe into two zones: the herbophilous Mediterranean, where wild greens have been an important part of rural cuisine, mainly in spring and autumn, and the north-of-the-Mediterranean zone, where wild greens used to be eaten in times of food scarcity but their use has nearly vanished and is restricted now to just one or few species in some regions.