"I’ve always wanted to know if I could survive the apocalypse."
Sam Webster shares her experience of living on wild food for three months.
With knowledge from Monica Wilde, who spent 12 months living on wild food, and 26 people who participated in Wildbiome 1, living on a wild food diet for 1 or 3 months, I felt equipped to join Wildbiome 2 in 2025. I started collecting and storing nuts, seeds and mushrooms in the autumn of 2024. At the beginning of March I started to cut down sugar, chocolate and biscuits ready for April 1st.
Day one arrived and I sat down to eat my first meal which was wild crackers with acorn, sweet chestnut flours and deer tallow. They weren’t great. Kinda soggy but also dry as hell. The first week was so hard getting used to blander flavours, no umami like soy or miso, no chilli or curry spices.It all tasted rather one dimensional. I had been so worried about running out of food I didn’t practice many meals beforehand. I’d only practised mushroom flour pancakes, and on day two I got the recipe wrong, making weird dry couscous like stuff that was vile. I had no time to cook anything else so I had to eat it.
By day 4 I was ready to quit. Tallow was making me retch and I was miserable. My sugar loving gut microbes were dying and making me feel rubbish. I longed for sugar, but I had an amazing group of foragers supporting me; it really helped that we all felt the same, and we all gave each other encouragement and resisted sugar. That’s what made the biome project amazing; the epic community. By day 9 we were sending about 70 messages a day sharing some lovely feelings and deep thoughts in the group WhatsApp.
It takes so much time, effort and planning to make a fully wild meal.One morning I spent 2 hours making paté and crackers before I could eat. Meanwhile my son walked into the kitchen, made toast and was full within 10 mins.It broke me.
In the initial days of eating only wild food my muscles didn’t seem to have the strength they had before. Walking up hills was harder work and my muscles ached. But I felt like I had loads of energy in myself; I wasn’t getting afternoon slumps.
Exposure to normal food was a challenge. In week 2 I took my kids to Anglesey for fishing; fun for them, food for me. I sat in the car with the kids eating my cold dry pheasant and some sea beet I’d found, while they tucked into hot fish and chips. The smell of their food was divine and it was agonising to resist stealing a chip.. I didn’t want to let Monica down which is what has kept me strong through the whole process.
As time passed it got easier, until we neared the end of the first month when those on the one month trial “got out of jail”. At least that’s what it felt like and I was still in my wildfood prison. These feelings were short lived especially when I did the body measurements on day 30. Wow I’d lost a fair bit of weight, and was physically starting to feel great. Muscle fatigue had dissipated, and I’d started to create some really yummy food like bbq venison ribs and wild onion bhajis.
At the half way point, day 45, I was lucky enough to be invited out with a hunter. I came home with a pigeon which I used to make salt and pepper Chinese style wings and legs, turning the rest into a curry using my only 3 curry scented milk caps, which I’d found 2 years prior. I cried. It had so much flavour, and the wings and feet were also so crispy. One thing I really missed was crispy food. There’s very little crunch with springtime wild food, fried fish skins and fried nettle leaves are as close as it gets.
Over the three months of wild food I missed various different foods, surprisingly not the sweet stuff. Though there was one day I really wanted a hot chocolate with whipped cream and biscuits, I needed a hug in a mug. Mostly I’ve missed crisp apples and pastry like samosas and spanakopitas . Trying to decide what to do post biome was tough. I don’t really need bread in my life, same with dairy.Yes some cheese or yogurt would be lovely but I can do without. I’m happy living on wild meat, eggs and greens, and I’m loving all the wild fruit that’s about too! I will be adding spices, soy sauce and miso to the food I’ll be getting from the wild as I’ve missed these punchy flavours. I’ve been happily sated on what the wild has given me. I’m as light as I was in my 20s, my body looks and feels great, I never want to go back to the way I was in March.
Participating in the Wildbiome project was life changing for me. I’m thankful for the support from Monica and the rest of the group that gave me the experience.
