The Culture Has Not Faded: Reliance on Diverse Wild Edible Plants in Prehistory, History, and Modern Times

Abstract

Food embodies our cultural identity, sense of taste, social status, and the extent of dependence on resources. It has been the most crucial element in establishing a liaison between humans and their environment. As hunter-gathers, the human race has depended on a diverse resource base procured from the environment from the early dawn of their evolution. The practice was partly lost owing to the domestication of crops and the embracing of agricultural life. The dietary diversity further shrunk in the recent century because of over-reliance on selected cereal crops, while a large suite of edible species still remains at disposal. Here, we review and synthesize the trajectory of consumption of wild edible plants, a part of edible biodiversity, to delineate the link from prehistory to the present times. I also analyze the diversity and its pattern, discuss the role of culture in use, and outline their implications on food security policies in improving dietary diversity and in creating a sustainable food system. The findings show that the consumption of wild uncultivated biota, though lessened over time, has not been completely abandoned. They remained as subsistence food, insurance crop, or key alternate resource to tide over the unfavorable period. Even now, apart from forest gathering, a plethora of plants and animals from the various anthropogenic landscapes are collected, cooked, and consumed likewise. Remarkable biodiversity (nearly 1400 species altogether) of green leafy shoots, roots and tubers, fruits, flowers, and many other edible plant organs still form a part of our dietary repertoire. However, the edible floral diversity is distributed heterogeneously across families, i.e., some families (e.g., Leguminosae, Compositae, Poaceae, Malvaceae, Rosaceae, Rubiaceae, Lamiaceae, Moraceae, etc.) contribute disproportionately to the edible species pool. Of total diversity, a maximum number of species is consumed for their leafy shoots (740 spp.), followed by fruits (657 spp.), roots and tubers (219 spp.), seeds (155 spp.), and flowers (153 spp.). The diversity also indicates their assimilation and wider acceptance of our food culture. The rich tradition of consumption of underutilized biota has the potential to be included in food policies to render our diet diverse and to enhance the nutritional outcome, like the inclusion under National Nutrition Mission programs, encouraging cultivation in nutrition or kitchen gardens, incorporation in mid-day meals, or related programs. Their high diversity, wider acceptance, and abundance could be a more effective way to combat micronutrient deficiency or hidden hunger than the mass-scale promotion and adoption of bio-fortified crops.