Foraging Wild Edibles & Eating from the Florida Permaculture Garden

Urban Ag! Seminole Pumpkin Breakfast

Eating from the garden and wild foraging for the past week has been a challenge I must say.  In search of answers about Urban Agriculture and the practicality of feeding a city, I wanted to see if I could eat for two weeks either from wild forage or our Urban Permaculture Garden.

So far some surprising results!

First of all I've learned about the power of salt addiction.  Salt can be poisonous.  Salt has been used as a herbicide for millennia.  And salt has been responsible for countless human health issues, yet the mineral excites our taste buds in such unique ways it is hard to do without.

Processed foods are loaded with salt!

Going without salt for the first few days was hard.  Salt gave me a pseudo adrenaline-type rush once on my taste buds.  Salt enlivened otherwise seemingly dull tasting foods.

Now, after six days without salt-laden processed foods I've found that my desire for the mineral is rapidly declining.

And my systolic blood pressure has quickly dropped overt twenty points.  Before my foraging/garden diet my systolic blood pressure was running in the low 130's.  Now my systolic hovers at 100-105, an amazing benefit - especially with my dissected aorta condition.  I've had no other change to my diet or medications other than eliminate processed foods.

This morning I'd even been wearing my lightweight wrist weights for a couple hours prior to checking my blood pressure.  Long term a 25% decrease in blood pressure may result in many more years of life for someone in my condition.

In addition to the blood pressure drop there are other surprising discoveries with the yarden diet and I'll discuss those in the next post!

An Urban Agriculture diet that replaces processed foods may potentially create super healthy cities!