A gradient framework for wild foods

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsc.2020.101293Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Illustration of the standard view regarding wild foods (the Nature View).

  • Criticism of the standard view regarding wild foods.

  • Proposal of an ontologically more nuanced conception of wild foods.

  • Introduction of a gradient framework for wild foods.

Abstract

The concept of wild food does not play a significant role in contemporary nutritional science and it is seldom regarded as a salient feature within standard dietary guidelines. The knowledge systems of wild edible taxa are indeed at risk of disappearing. However, recent scholarship in ethnobotany, field biology, and philosophy demonstrated the crucial role of wild foods for food biodiversity and food security. The knowledge of how to use and consume wild foods is not only a means to deliver high-end culinary offerings, but also a way to foster alternative models of consumption. Our aim in this paper is to provide a conceptual framework for wild foods, which can account for diversified wild food ontologies. In the first section of the paper, we survey the main conception of wild foods provided in the literature, what we call the Nature View. We argue that this view falls short of capturing characteristics that are core to a sound account of wilderness in a culinary sense. In the second part of the paper, we provide the foundation for an improved model of wild food, which can countenance multiple dimensions and degrees connoting wilderness in the culinary world. In the third part of the paper we argue that thanks to a more nuanced ontological analysis, the gradient framework can serve ethnobiologists, philosophers, scientists, and policymakers to represent and negotiate theoretical conflicts on the nature of wild food.

Introduction

The concept of wild food does not play a significant role in contemporary nutritional science and it is seldom regarded as a salient feature within standard dietary guidelines. The knowledge systems of wild edible taxa are indeed at risk of disappearing. However, recent scholarship in ethnobotany, field biology, and philosophy demonstrated the crucial role of wild foods for food biodiversity and food security (Bharucha & Pretty, 2010; Borghini, 2019). The knowledge of how to use and consume wild foods is not only a means to deliver high-end culinary offerings, but also a way to foster alternative models of consumption (Łuczaj et al., 2016; Pieroni et al., 2016). Our aim in this paper is to provide a conceptual framework for wild foods, which can account for diversified wild food ontologies. To be clear, we set to study only the category of wild food, while leaving aside the study of either food or wilderness taken in isolation.

In the first section of the paper we survey the main conception of wild foods provided in the literature, what we call the Nature View. This view is often expressed through the contrast with other categories (e.g. cultivation, domestication), in an inclusive or exclusive manner (Sõukand & Kalle, 2016). For instance, focusing on the type and intensity of the human-nature relation, a food can be considered wild when it is not cultivated at all or when its development is indirectly aided by human's participation (e.g. clearing or burning) or when it is the object of incipient agriculture (Turner et al., 2011). Wild foods can also be singled out and characterized by their habitats: wild is everything growing within a forest, outside of a garden, along ditches or in abandoned urban spaces. We argue that these understandings of wild foods fall short of capturing characteristics that are core to a sound account of wilderness in a culinary sense.

In the second part of the paper we provide the foundation for an improved model of wild food, which can countenance multiple dimensions and degrees characterizing wilderness in the culinary world. The model rests on two simple pillars: first, for an item to count as a wild food there must be some social fiat that we refer to as institutional act, which makes it such; second, that act should be correlated to the right dispositions of the item. Such dispositions represent general features of wild foods that interact with each other in specific ways and that can be understood as gradient properties.

In the third part of the paper we argue that, thanks to a more nuanced ontological analysis, the gradient framework can serve ethnobiologists, philosophers, scientists, and policy makers to represent and negotiate theoretical conflicts on the nature of wild food.

Section snippets

The Nature View

Today we witness an increasing wide interest in wild food due to its alleged importance in achieving sustainability goals, its supposed contribution to health and well-being, and its role in coping with undernutrition and malnutrition (e.g., List, 2018; Pollan, 2008), with important consequences for social structures and regional economies (see Bharucha and Pretty (2010, 2015) for an exam of the recent literature on the topic).

Wild food1

A gradient framework for wild foods

The Nature View, as we saw, relies on two assumptions: (i) there is a difference between wild and domesticated foods and (ii) what is wild is defined as a relational property. In the previous section we especially focused on rebutting the first assumption arguing that it does not adequately take into account extant conceptions of wild foods and the way they evolve through time. The evidence used in our three arguments, however, turns out to be sufficient to debunk also the second assumption.

Fostering dialogue between ontologies

With the Gradient Framework we can bring to light the different and mutually inconsistent ontologies of wild food that the Nature View could not accommodate. In particular, the Framework makes room for the following sorts of ontologies.

  • -

    Scientific ontology: this is any ontology founding the models of research in the natural sciences. According to it, what is wild is picked from nature through an objective measurable criterion. Under ideal conditions, the criterion makes it possible, for any food

Conclusions

At the very beginning of the paper, we argued that there are at least three arguments against what we call the Nature View. Can they drastically backfire against the Gradient Framework? We maintain that not only our view is free of those counterexamples and it can easily accommodate them but, on top of that, we contend that those arguments can be fruitfully employed for endorsing our view.

The first argument shows that it is not the case that all cultures hold the category of wild food in their

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Andrea Borghini: Writing - original draft, Conceptualization, Methodology, Formal analysis. Nicola Piras: Writing - original draft, Conceptualization, Methodology, Formal analysis. Beatrice Serini: Writing - original draft, Conceptualization, Methodology, Formal analysis.

Acknowledgments

This research was founded by the Department of Philosophy “Piero Martinetti” of the University of Milan under the Project “Department of Excellence 2018-2022” awarded by the Ministry of Education, University and Research (MIUR). The authors would also like to thank two anonymous referees for their insightful comments on a previous version of the manuscript. This work is dedicated to the memory of Martina Pittalis who knew what wild food is and how to cook it.

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