Support research into the health effects of wild food

Support research into the health effects of wild food

Hi! I'm Kara, a forager, tracker, forester and lover of all things wild!

This April, I’ll be eating a 100% wild food diet - eating only what I have foraged, hunted and fished (supplemented by any wild foods gifted to me by other foragers), as part of a study into the effects of wild food on our health called The WildBiome Project.

The study will provide unique insights into the health benefits of wild foods for us as modern Western Europeans. It will also make a huge contribution to what we know about the indigenous Western human gut microbiome and how significant the loss of wild foods might be for our diet.

We’ll be monitoring changes in gut microbiome, blood sugar, liver, kidneys, hormones, vitamins and minerals. I’ll be testing and sending off samples of blood, hair and poo for analysis! The findings will be featured by Dan Saladino in BBC Radio 4’s The Food Programme later in 2025 as well as in a documentary film.

To fund all of the necessary tests, I need help!

The costs of the tests are:

£309.96 gut microbiome x 2

£160.20 key markers blood test x 2

£81 blood sugar test x 2

£111.76 blood sugar monitor x 2

Total cost: £662.92

Scientific testing all adds up to rather a lot, and any help to support these costs would be greatly appreciated. The project hopefully has some University funding coming soon, but there simply wasn’t time to get everything in place for this Spring so all participants are self funding. However I don't have £670!

Any amount you can offer will be appreciated - just the price of a coffee or a pint will be a help!

Donations of wild foods also very much appreciated! Last autumn was a bad harvest here in Wales for nuts, berries, mushrooms…. All the things! I’ll have a great supply of greens and seaweed and wild meat but would particularly appreciate acorns, chestnuts, fat and berries.

I’ll be documenting my journey on Instagram at @RewildEverything and on my blog on my website: www.RewildEverything.org (where you can also check out my foraging and tracking courses)

You can find out more about the project here: https://monicawilde.com/the-wildbiome-project/

And on Instagram/Facebook:

@wildbiomeproject

#wildbiome

#wildbiomeproject

And by reading the book ‘The Wilderness Cure‘ by Mo Wilde, who started the project after spending a year living on wild food, which the book documents.