Ray Mears on Wild Food

Ray Mears is an increasingly popular wilderness survival trainer from England. He would have no problem at all surviving with nothing to start with but the clothes on his back and maybe a sharp knife. In the sense of getting plenty of nutrition and knowing how to be comfortable within or protected from the elements of wilderness and weather, he would even thrive there.

On this note he's put together as one of his many products the DVD "Ray Mears Wild Food". This goes along with his television series of the same name.

Mears is known for exploring ways that hunter-gatherers (notably Aboriginal Australians) would have gathered wild edible plants and hunted down and prepared wild game. Yes, the times before convenience stores, supermarkets, or even Medieval market squares.

So in his DVD about wild food, Ray immerses himself in the British landscape and the wetlands of France such as the Ardeche Gorge, where spear fishing could have and would have been done, then as now to supplement the harvesting of wild edible plants and other wild food.

In Ray's DVD he also attempts to deduce and demonstrate how the people in the Summer months would have gathered up plenty of wild fruits, roots, and leaves, and would have gone hunting more intensely than at any other time of the year. They would then have smoked the meat in order to preserve it for the cold months ahead.

Ray shows you how Autumn foraging in the woodlands would have gone, when he travels to the island of Colonsay in Scotland to find out how our ancestors, gathered, and roasted hazelnuts on an open fire.

If you would like to appreciate your food more, desire a different culinary experience, or don't want to die should 'the end of the world as we know it' happen, the Ray Mears Wild Food DVD is quite simply an extraordinary visual tour and learning experience for anyone interested in wild food in the UK.

Robin Harford is the publisher of the Free Wild Food Collection and webmaster of EatWeeds: The Forager's Wild Food Guide to Edible Plants of Great Britain.

Samantha Friday
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