What are we actually consuming?

After spending a lot of time with different plants - in connection with reading and writing - that we consume daily, in some way you get closer to what it is we are actually consuming. A bit like you do if you hunt your own meat, I guess. It is another living organism that lives its life with its own goals, before someone comes and eats it. We humans identify and test the plant, over time it becomes so common that we almost forget where what we consume actually comes from. It can be important to understand what you eat, in order to gain an understanding of how it affects you as a result. For example, how the tea bush contains both caffeine (also called theine) and theanine, where the latter contributes to the calming feeling which in my opinion gives a very balanced focus in interaction with the caffeine. A pure caffeine rush can sometimes be overwhelming at the wrong time, especially if you are sitting with sedentary and more mentally demanding tasks. Hence mainly tea during sedentary work, and coffee before more physical activities, for me.

When you try to see what you consume more from nature's perspective, it becomes easier to see connections between plants - which can open doors to a whole range of new dietary alternatives and, in connection with that, lead to a questioning of the food market that we have today.

Alternatives to tea and coffee containing caffeine include several plants in the Ilex genus, other species in the Camellia genus and Guarana. If you open your eyes to the stimulating effect without caffeine content, there is also suddenly a completely different range. On this front, I believe that new drinks made from different types of mushrooms with different stimulating and health-giving properties have a strong path forward.

Although tea and coffee are not the most obvious alternatives to find, there is a whole ecosystem of other plants to replace our most common legumes, leafy vegetables, fruits and berries, for example. We strive to highlight alternative plants and their useful properties precisely to encourage a varied diet, choice and a certain degree of self-sufficiency - especially if certain food chains weaken in the future and prices rise, which we have already experienced to some extent in recent years.

The dominance of a few plants that we humans have brought to global recognition makes me curious about the question:

What other plants are there with similar useful properties that we could actually use in our everyday lives?

I think it's important that we don't lose our connection to nature and all its diversity as we develop increasingly comfortable lifestyles. I certainly don't think there's anything wrong with comfort, but knowledge should remain at hand.

The question above gives life to a whole new world of flavors and experiences, while bringing us closer to what we put in our bodies, which eventually becomes ourselves (that's actually how it works) and further, the question also provides an entrance to a healthier production chain where an entire ecosystem can find space on a breakfast table, rather than just 1 or 2 plants grown in a kind of unnatural monopoly: in this way, I believe that this question is one of the most exciting and important questions we can ask ourselves in our time.

I believe that a diversified cultivation of plants is good for the climate, just as we believe that a varied diet is good for health. That the healthiest way to achieve this is for more people to start trying to grow both for themselves and for their environment, even if it is on a small scale, is a given. By "healthiest" we mean: the healthy habits that arise when you are outdoors among vegetation, the natural consequence of which is a greater understanding of diet and health, and the health of the climate, which benefits from the richer ecosystem that arises when more species are grown in several places rather than a single species in a very large area.

"Not everyone can be self-sufficient in everything, but most people can be self-sufficient in something." Sounds like a familiar saying.

So what alternative plants are there that you could have grown for consumption & use?

It was with this question in mind that Trädgårdsdags was founded, and with the same question continues to expand to new plants, to new geographical areas and to new knowledge about nature's wealth of properties.

It will be filled with more posts here regarding the cultivation and use of different plants, interesting facts and history about plants, and thoughts on desired social development. See you in a later post 👋

/ Johannes Billsten