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@ Undisciplined
2025-04-11 23:56:35Our yard has a ton of wild onions, so I've been eating lots of fresh green onions with my food and sometimes just chewing on one while I walk around the yard. Other than some mulberries in the fall, our neighborhood doesn't have much other foraging opportunity, but I was reminded of how much I enjoy it.
Other than providing free and fresh snacks, foraging may provide some interesting health benefits, because of xenohormesis.
Xenohormesis is an awesome word that refers to the health benefits of the compounds plants produce when they're subjected to environmental stressors. You may recall my first post in this series about hormesis, which is the health benefits of being subjected to stressors. "Xeno" means "alien" or "foreign", so it's the health benefits derived from other organisms being stressed.
Many compounds like curcumin and resveratrol are the result of xenohormesis, but you don't need to forage to get those benefits. Foraging may provide a distinctly local form of xenohormesis, where our bodies can learn about how to adapt to local environmental stressors from the compounds local plants have produced to deal with those stressors. The idea seems sort of similar to how our immune systems learn from vaccines. Our immune systems observe the adaptive compounds from local plants and learn from them how to deal with those stressors when we encounter them.
I'm sure there was a cool discussion of this on The Darkhorse Podcast, but I couldn't find it.
What are stackers' favorite foods to forage?
originally posted at https://stacker.news/items/941150