i enjoy high fructose corn syrup too

This is dumb. Most plants resist cultivation. Bragging about being able to afford them does not make you Superior.

Also yields are important

Resist cultivation or have some other undesirable properties. Often low yield, short harvest, low yield, difficult picking or transporting.
A favorite example of mine: oak’s acorns are sometimes edible. Roughly one in ten oaks produce edible acorns. They are indistinguishable from inedible ones unless you try them out - but inedible ones are fairly poisonous. The gene for edible acorns is recessive and it takes at least a decade before you know if a newly planted oak produces edible acorns or not, with a 10% probability of the former. It is just practically impossible to select for this criterion. Thus, we don’t eat acorns.
- You just remove the tannins by soaking them, it's not really a major problem. I tried it before, they were fine but fairly bland.
- Isn't acorn flour edible after you rinse out the toxins? Some north american tribes did essentially "farm" acorns (They managed groves of oak) and iirc that's how they dealt with the toxicity.
- I thought we eat acorns after processing them? There are cuisines which involve acorns as main ingredient.
- Not sure that acorns are inedible. They just need to be processed.
- Also acorns ain't particularly nutritious.
- Often low yield, short harvest, low yield, difficult picking or transporting.
  And let's not forget, low yield.
I mean, I think that goes back to the whole “industrial farming” point. If it can’t be farmed, it won’t be commercially available. But there are plenty of plants that you could scavenge, if you knew what to look for.
One of my personal favorite niche plants is osha root. It’s one of the best cures for a sore throat. It tastes a little bit like dirty root beer, and it’ll numb your entire throat when you chew on it. Native Americans kept some around for medicine. You can even grind it up and smear it on shallow scrapes to numb the area. You can find it in teas like Throat Coat, which is a sort of secret weapon for performers and public speakers whenever they have a sore throat.
But it can’t be commercially farmed, because it exclusively grows in the Rocky Mountains where a specific type of fungus helps it thrive. It isn’t commercially viable to market to the masses like throat lozenges, (even though it is just as effective in reducing sore throats) because it has to be scavenged.
- there are plenty of plants that you could scavenge
  But what happens when “you” becomes a million people? A hundred million people? A billion people? Where I live, we can’t even have a nice field of flowers because a hundred Instagram models will trample and ruin it before spring is over. Scavenging and foraging literally cannot feed the 7 billion human mouths on this planet.
- If it can't be farmed there cannot be enough for everyone, but it will be exclusive to a select few. How they are selected is irrelevant.
Isn't that what they meant by industrial agriculture preventing widespread use?
Lamb's lettuce superiority! They don't need cultivation, grow everywhere even if you don't want them to grow, and they are quite edible, also delicious.
Our current style of industrialized agriculture isn't viable long-term (meaning: millenia); too much damage to the ecosystem.
- It's the kind of farming you need in order to provide for the high density ~~rabbit hutches~~cities that are supposed to save the planet

I harvest stinging nettle to use as a spinach replacement

I'm going to try to make maple syrup from big leaf maples this year too!

I mostly eat spinach now for potassium, but I just looked it up and stinging needle has only 25% lower potassium content than spinach, so at least for my use case it seems like a fairly good substitute seeing as how well stinging needle grow.
How do they taste? Do they not, uh, sting with the little spikes?
I got then popping up all around.
- If you cook them they stop stinging.
  My mother makes pasta with them too, puts them in the dough.
- I blanch them and then freeze them. So no stinging!
- How to harvest, dry, and make tea with nettles:
  https://slrpnk.net/comment/16978019
  If you have arthritis or hayfever they've been shown to help with that. Science has confirmed the old wives tales traditional herbal remedy works for this one. Not as effectively as modern medicine of course but if it's all you can afford, or whatever, then something is better than nothing.
- if you crush them, or flatten them, they don't sting.
- You can make them into patties and fry them up, surprisingly good.

Eat your weeds... This is Common Purslane:

It grows mostly everywhere and is a huge source of Omega 3 fatty acids. It's much better cooked in my opinion. Also it's best to find them in a field and not by the roadside where it may be leeching up god knows what hydrocarbon adjacent type of poisons.

I pulled so many of these boogers out of the garden this summer
probably dont eat ones growing on the streets. dandelions are cultivated, its a regular in some asian dishes. just not the street weeds.
Why is there a crummy phone ad in your picture?
- Samsung's pre-installed camera apps do that by default, I believe, unless you spot it and go digging where to turn it off (which seems do differ between some models, if I recall correctly)

I recently found out you can eat nettles (the ones that sting you), and they actually taste nice.

lots of iron in them

Can make tea out of them aswell
- Nettle and potato soup is delicious.
Good source of potassium as well. Although you'd need to eat 1.25 kilo to reach 100% recommended daily intake.
- is that 1.25kg raw or cooked down? because raw isn't actually that much, it'd cook down to like 2 micrograms following the law of leafy greens
They make a nice tea.

Non-vegans when you let them know there's more you can eat outside meat and dairy products

I can't say I know anyone that loves on an entirely meat and dairy diet.
- Even I eat potatoes sometimes.
- I tried it for a couple of months. I felt great on it, but it got really fucking boring

Tbf, many are kinda disgusting to modern palettes. Lamb's quarter sucks compared to stuff like spinach, kale, or collards. Pokeweed needs extensive preparation to make it safe. Wood sorrel, horseherb, and prickly pear grows where I currently live, but I haven't tried them yet. My dog likes horseherb despite the little spines for some reason. My grandmother used to fry dandelions and plaintain which was pretty good.

For another example of a plant that just didn't make it into modern society at scale, there are skirrets. Carrots, parsnips, and skirrets were related umbellifer plants with edible, nutritious roots, cultivated over the centuries as food. Carrots and parsnips were responsive to breeding for root size, and could produce comparatively huge roots, but skirrets never really did. Once the potato was brought over from the new world, the skirret fell out of favor.
- I always find it interesting when comparing cuisine between cultures of stuff that exists in different places but only eaten in one (or a few) of them. Like ok, I get that if you're not used to much seafood in general you maybe will eat some grilled salmon but you're not gonna be eating the guts out of crabs or lobsters or whatever. But then there's something like burdock root, which grows in the US, doesn't have a strong taste, and is just like various other root vegetables we do eat (although not as sweet as something like a carrot). But the US doesn't eat it while east Asia does.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctium#Food_and_drink
How do you get dandelions to not taste like poison?
- She made something like this: https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/214172/fried-dandelions-appalachian-style/

I hate to bring race and racism into this, but one reason why I laugh at many racists, especially European racists, is how they claim they love their own national culture but do jack shit to have ANYTHING to do with its pre-colonial cuisine. Take British cuisine for example. While obviously people in medieval England (even the richest people at the time) had far fewer options than most people in the UK today, but they still used many herbs and plants for seasonings that are only being rediscovered by reenactors in recent years, and they are actually quite good.

More than just culture, the dangers of over-reliance on a handful of crops and cultivars is also dangerous. The Irish potato famine happened in the 1840s due to Irish potato crops just being a few kinds instead of the hundreds of varieties that you would find in South America. The result of this is that a blight that would have had a negligible effect in South America absolutely devastated Ireland. More recently in the 20th century, we have a near complete destruction of the Gros Michel banana in the 1950s. When you go to your typical supermarket, the bananas you see there are more than likely going to be Cavendish Bananas, which were considered inferior to Gros Michel in the past, but due to disease rendering Gros Michel bananas commercially nonviable they were chosen because they were all we got...

and the same shit could happen at any time to the Cavendish banana, too.

I have to correct you on your terrible misunderstanding of the Irish Genocide. Your misinformation is almost certainly not your fault, as I was uncritically taught the same utter bullshit in my primary school curriculum in the USA. The Irish genocide that you refer to as using the colonizer’s term “Irish Potato Famine” had absolutely fuckall to do with potatoes or the Irish. The absent landlords in England extracted mandatory “tax” in the form of literally every food crop that the Irish ~~slaves~~tenants grew. There was ALWAYS, literally at ALL POINTS IN TIME, enough food to feed the people of Ireland. The food was physically stolen with violence and exported to cover “rent” to English “landlords” that never set foot in the country. Potatoes were grown in an act of extreme desperation as they were not a crop that was considered ~~theft~~tax-worthy and therefore the Irish did their best to feed themselves.
Think critically about it for like one second. Do you really believe that it was just a bunch of silly dumb Irishmen that only ever thought to grow literally a single crop for all of their food? In such a lush and nutrient rich area that is still famous for like a dozen high quality staples in different food groups? Or did you just get duped by racists that still spread their bullshit successfully?
- I am aware that the Irish famine was very multi-faceted and was an act of genocide. But for the sake of this particular argument (diversity in crops) I did point out that much of the Irish potato crop was a mono-culture, and the British absolutely brought over the blight without any concern of what it might do.
- The Irish genocide that you refer to as using the colonizer’s term “Irish Potato Famine” had absolutely fuckall to do with potatoes or the Irish.
  But it has everything to do with potatoes (a particular blight that affected potato crops) and the Irish (the actual affected people of this genocide).
  The social and political reasons for why the Irish ended up so dependent on a single crop for sustenance is part of the story, of course, but this discussion right here is about the fragility and brittleness of relying on a single crop.
- I understand where your anger is coming from but it’s misplaced. Lots of people, Americans too, learn the Irish genocide as “the Irish Potato Famine”. Secondly, single crop use is ONE factor that made the situation worse in the context of anti-Irish policies by the occupying British.
Extinct!
I heard recently that Gros Michel can be ordered online for an arm and a leg. I've always wanted to try it.
- They are still available,but can no longer be grown to the same scale. If you try one, tell me, I am curious as to how they taste.

There's so much hogweed all over the UK that's just sitting there, uneaten. Not the giant stuff, that's not a fun time. But the regular stuff has good flavour

Also tons of wild garlic when the seasons in

To clarify, when knowone says "that's not a fun time" they don't mean "oh it tastes bad". They mean it's really not a fun time, avoid going anywhere near giant hogweed!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heracleum_mantegazzianum
NSFL (if you're squeemish):
- Thanks for clarifying for me. Yeah I should've maybe given a clear do NOT go picking hogweed to eat, or even that near it, unless you're absolutely sure you can identify one from the other. Despite it's name, giant hogweed is very often just as large as the common hogweed surrounding it. It still needs to grow to that size, after all
Hey, there's some of that in my garden!
It's growing right next to some giant hogweed though.
giant hogweed, water hemlock

Dewberries are so fucking delicious. I used to go pick them and make dewberry pie as a kid. God I miss that, they don't grow where I live rn 😔

there are some other problems too. I would love to scavenge or grow things here, but the town I live in is basically built on a gigantic industrial waste dump, so eating anything out of the ground here is a bad idea.

That's what the government says. But I know the truth - I know it's the queers! They are in it with the aliens to build landing strips for GAY MARTIANS! I swear to god!
- I like you Stewart, you're not like the other people. Here in the trailer park.

For Polish speakers theres this book by prof. Łuczaj: https://lukaszluczaj.pl/dzikie-rosliny-jadalne-polski-pelny-tekst/ - every plant that grows in our region and can be eaten. In some more edgy cases backed by his own experimentation on himself.

Does he also document the fuckable plants? I'm asking for a friend
- Oh boy are you in for a surprise....
  
  There's his "Sex in the great (grand?) forrest". Its about best plants to fuck on (or under). Mostly. As side notes it does point out some local plants in particularly interesting shapes, or some one might rub themself against... This guy is commited. And also an actual true professor on an actual university.

So... cool story

Ann Reardon from How to Cook That, took Coke, and tested it for HFCS, it of course indicated it was in there, then she took a Mexican Coke, and it also indicated, but it claims not to use it.

Apparently, the acid in the Coke breaks down the sucrose in the cane sugar, making the product very close to the HFCS variant. She followed up with a blind taste test (very limited size, just her family) and found they were very close in flavor.

It would appear that we do to some decent extent enjoy HFCS.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajVWRx8vsjE

Have you seen the size of the average American?
Who is ignoring that we don't like HFCS? It's downright an addictive substance.
- I think if you ask 100 Americans, they will overwhelmingly be down on HFCS.
  I don't think I've ever heard anyone that's tried coke with cane sugar and doesn't say that it's better than regular cook.
  Everybody I know that drinks Coke thinks that Mexican Coke is superior, but is hard to get in a lot more expensive.
  There's a pretty significant campaign against it.
She's either from Australia or Aotearoa. I don't expect their coca cola to be the same recipe as in the US.
- could be,
  she was basing it on the ingredients list and she had the mexican coke shipped.

Transportability is a huge consideration. Pawpaws can't be transported nationally, for example. The plants we eat have been bred for maximum marketability, which includes getting the produce from where it grows to where people need it.

alot of tropical ones tend to be poisonous too, because so much diversity of insects, trying to eat them develop toxins in thier parts. also some plants have to super poisonous because insects evolve to build resistance them, so plants have to respond by becoming more toxic. thats why poisonous plants are kinda invasive.

yes english ivy is poisonous(berries) to non-avians.

Although RFKjr has some crazy ideas, not adding food colouring to the balanced diet pyramid is not one of them, and one that any other GOP fascist loyalist, given the job, would gladly do it if given a dollar for it. Energy secretary as an example is full oligarchist energy protectionism.

This is a very timely meme for me. Specifically because today, after many years of trial and error, I have finally managed to successfully cook Phaseolus polystachios beans!

Mine are natirally very bitter and tough, not sure how widely that varies from specimen to specimen. Also presumably chock full of toxins/anti-nutrients... I've been taking the bitterness as an analogue for how much of that remains, for lack of any other other way to tell.

Today, for the first time, I've managed to make them tender and not bitter at all. They taste pretty good!

If you can't kill it or fuck it then eat it. It's that easy.

SEX! AND VIOLENCE!

Define edible

If you eat it and it doesn't kill you or make you sick within 24 hours
- What if it "contains a neurotoxin that causes lathyrism, a neurodegenerative disease, if eaten as a primary protein source for a prolonged period."?
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lathyrus_sativus
- That's Exactly why I ask! Lol, under that definition you just proposed (doesn't quickly make sick) rocks or slow acting poisons are edible. Derive nutrition? Won't kill you? But another train of logic might be "is able to be chewed/digested by body - in which case poisons are edible - once.

You guys don't eat sorrel?

Do people (in general) really only eat 100 different plants? I feel like that number must be too low. Surely if you listed out all the plant foods that people consider "normal", there would easily be more than 100.

Depends if you count spices I guess but most people only consume like a handful of different veggies all year long
- I'm tempted to start a list. Sure, the majority of our food will be a handful of staples, but I feel like the average person from a rich country must eat quite a variety between seasonal variations of the food they eat at home, eating out, eating at a friends place, fast food, slow food, etc.
  If I wrote a list, I think I would find over 100 different plants in the last year. If I have take out dumplings, I'd probably be eating onion, garlic, a couple of kinds of cabbage, soy sauce, sesame oil, pepper, carrot, ginger, maybe more.
  It might be a shorter list without the flavourings but I still think I'd hit 100.
Might be considering all Brassica as one.

Can't have biodiversity when you're packing people to live in these ~~rabbit hutches~~big cities 'to save the planet' as they say.

You need that factory farmed samey shit because without it you wouldn't have the ability to feed the people living in these sad places.

You know who enjoys biodiversity? Rural people who have access to their own garden to grow stuff :3 (capitalists hate this trick)

So unbelievably wrong. And don't get me wrong I fully admire real rural farmers, the ones who make our food.
Fake rural/suburbanites though are horrible for our planet and ecosystem. I'm from the Midwest where we have perfect soil for growing. What do they do? Pave over it, create stripmalls, big box stores, single family homes, every step of the way ruining the soil and area so we can't farm there again for hundreds of years. Meanwhile runoff from pavement and parking lots pollutes that soil, they plant non-natural lawns that take more water and ruin biodiversity. None of that adds to our food or biodiversity, it may make them feel like they are, but it is quite literally doing the opposite.
You want to be mad at city people? The people who are happy to have apartments who build up rather than our, trying to use as little space as possible? We use less electricity because we have less space. We require less heating. Less driving and polluting because we're closer together.
It may look worse, but my current city has the same population as the entire state where I grew up in, except people don't selfishly each need an acre of perfectly farmable land to themselves. What we do in our footprint of a city "rural" people sprawl out for hundreds of square miles. No, I say fake rural people are much, much worse for the environment.
- It's true you don't own a selfish acre of perfectly farmable land instead you only survive because someone else is feeding you factory farmed, pesticide flavored, expensive monoculture food from their own acres moved into the city by the truckload :D so much better for the planet I agree :D :D

A lot of Lebanese shops sell sorrel. Sorrel is just clovers. 50% of people setting this meme are 100 meters or less from sorrel right now.

Wait what? Clovers are a species of Trifolium in the Fabaceae (legume family), but sorrel refers to the leaves of Rumex species in the Polygonaceae. What are you referring to?
- I thought there was some other name for a clover-looking plant that started with an S.
Sorrel is not clovers. Sorrel are commonly used in cooking here in Europe while clovers, not so much. That being said, both are hardy and easy to cultivate.
- Sorrel can give you kidney stones. As kids, we were told not to eat too much of it.

Can anyone recommend anything to watch out for in BCs lower mainland? (Climate similar to Seattle)

Well, there's blackberries. And if you look over there, you'll see...huh, I guess that's covered by blackberries now too.
- My neighbor got the brillant idea to plant blackberries and raspberries in their garden
  Containment has been a decade long, endless fight. You think you got rid of it all? There's literally not a bramble in sight? Hahahahahahahaha no.

Getting an allotment, so soon I will be able to grow things I don't normally eat because they are expensive or aren't sold in shops here.

I had native persimmons for the first time today! In Virginia.

PSA: serviceberry is a very very very common decorative hedge, the berries are extremely tasty.
It absolutely baffles me how no one is growing them commercially to sell in grocery stores, they're clearly grown commercially to some degree for use in juices and stuff, but i guess selling to individuals is just a step too far? It's not like they're even remotely difficult to grow or harvest..

You only need to plant sorrel in your garden once. It's the ultimate volunteer crop. Quite winter-hardy too, and perennial, plus it tastes like lemon. Halfway between an herb and a green.

Paw paws grow naturally in the area I live and are a delicious fruit. Due to cultivation and transport issues you will never find them in stores.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asimina_triloba

which is why we need to normalize street markets like most tropical countries have, sure you can't buy it at the store but you can buy it from a dude who went into the forest with a big basket a few hours ago.
I love seeing the explosion of interest in pawpaws over the last decade. They're very good, a bit of a cross between mango and a banana. I've actually seen them at a local fsrmers market this season, I was pretty surprised.
- My dad has a tree in his garden, and a friend has made pawpaw moonshine!

“ CaPiTaLiSm bReEdS InNoVaTiOn “

I mean there probably are lots of reasons why we farm only certain plants.

For example dewberries have short harvest window and as far as i know they need to be hand picked.

Or why don't we use all our technological, scientific and research knowledge to good use and engineer fruits and vegetables that can grow in less hospitable environments and can grow larger yields, have a longer growing season and have plenty of nutritional value.
Instead, we use all our knowledge and ability to build bigger, faster, more deadly weapons of war or AI that can micromonitor everyone's lives or create slop and porn.
- We do both. The problem is corporations and stupid people. See Monsanto, the non-GMO push and the results of golden rice or similar.
- Hi, I'm engaged to someone who studies chickpea and other legumes. Shitloads of money goes into agriculture every year and from my understanding, what you're describing is being done by some brilliant people (I'm a bit biased). However there's so many concerns around GMOs doing damage to the environment that it is tightly regulated. Doubly also, Americans don't have the same ready access to grocery stores that ~~other~~ first world countries have.
  Plus the equivalent of flat earthers exist that believe that GMOs will kill us all and we need to go back to eating only what nature created (somewhat hyperbole, there are valid concerns but people have been irrational).
  An example is that chickpea and other legumes reintroduce nitrogen into soil after the soil loses vitality, which makes chickpea a good intermediate crop that can be grown in between others. Its high in nutrients and has good yield. So yeah, stop eating corn and eat legumes/chickpea/hummus.
  (I'm not the molecular biologist so if I got stuff wrong, sorry, I will pay more attention when my partner speaks)

Some local plants might be edible and even delicious, but they are either way to costly to grow or harvest, or they are nigh impossible to preserve. Or they simply are edible, but not sustaining, like sucking nectar from stinging nettle blossoms.

Some are acquired tastes like e.g. turnip tops. You could probably harvest tons of them, but there is no real market for it.

Or take edible flowers, you basically can't preserve them, and all you can do is put them on a dish for decoration.

Pearl Onions are a borderline case, for example. Between harvest and sitting in the pickling juice they only have a few hours (3-6, IIRC), or they are a case for the compost heap.