What are we actually consuming?

Understanding What One Consumes

As much time is spent together with various plants – in connection with reading and writing – that we consume daily, one somehow comes closer to what it really is that we consume. A bit like when one hunts for their own food, I suppose. It is another living organism that lives its life with its own aims 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 one eats, in order to as a result gain an understanding of how it affects one. For example, the tea bush which 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 kick can sometimes be overwhelming at the wrong time, especially if you are sitting still with more mentally demanding tasks. Hence mainly tea during sedentary work, and coffee before more physical activities, for my part.

When one tries to see what one consumes more from nature’s perspective, it becomes easier to see connections between plants – which can open doors to a whole range of new dietary options and in connection with that lead to questioning the food market we have today.

Alternatives to tea and coffee containing caffeine include several plants in the Ilex genus, other species in the Camellia genus, as well as Guarana. If one opens their eyes to stimulating effects without caffeine content, there is suddenly a whole other range. On this front, I believe new drinks made from different types of mushrooms with various stimulating and health-giving properties have a strong way forward.

Even though tea and coffee are not the most obvious to find alternatives to, there is a whole ecosystem of other plants to replace our most common legumes, leafy greens, 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 some food chains falter 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 with similar useful properties could we actually use in our everyday lives?

I think it is important that we do not lose the connection to nature and all its diversity as we develop ever more comfortable lifestyles. I absolutely do not think there is anything wrong with comfort, but the 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 into our bodies, which eventually becomes ourselves (that is actually how it works) and furthermore the question also opens the door to a healthier production chain where a whole ecosystem can have a place on a breakfast table, rather than just one or two plants grown in a kind of unnatural monopoly: in this way I consider that question to be one of the most exciting and important questions we can ask ourselves in our time.

Techniques: Classical and Modern

It is probably important to point out that I have nothing against classical farming; rather, I have respect for all who still work in trades with a clear connection to nature. The model of farming we have today has suited very well to supply a globally rapidly growing population over the past centuries, where the focus of the population could lie elsewhere than farming. This has allowed us to develop an incredible number of new technical solutions that, although not all, make our lives better today. However, I believe it is now time to start using these technical solutions to our advantage, to develop farming into a model better suited for the time we live in: a time with a declining expanding population and a climate that suffers more and more damage the more land we use in an unnatural way. Examples of how we can use our modern technology include developing farming machines adapted to harvest crops in fields with crops in different layers: for example, a combination of trees, bushes, and ground crops. Our classical farming machines are well suited to handling crops in monoculture fields. They are not developed to move among a mix of different crops and identify which type of crop they have in front of them. This is where modern technology can come into use in its ability to learn to identify a field like a human can, and at the same time harvest with an efficiency suitable for cultivation larger than for self-sufficiency purposes. There is already research in this area and techniques that have begun to be implemented in the form of, among other things, flying drones that can read when fruits are ready to be harvested, etc. In this way, one can have a cultivation that supplies a larger part of people and at the same time is beneficial for the ecosystem. A beautiful combination of human creativity and nature’s valuable symbiosis.

An important goal with the development of this technology is to make it as accessible to the public as possible, so that it can be used by other growers than the most large-scale. With this said, I do not imply that we should phase out current farming – but that slowly but surely alongside it we begin to implement these new* types of cultivation. (*Actually, humans have cultivated different combinations of plants in symbiosis since ancient times, but not with the help of our current technology.)

Conclusion

I believe that a diversified cultivation of plants is good for the climate, just as I believe that a varied diet is good for health. That the healthiest way to achieve this is that more people start trying to cultivate both for themselves and for their surroundings, even if on a small scale, feels obvious. By "healthiest" is meant: both the healthy habits that arise when spending time outdoors among vegetation and soil, the natural consequence which is a greater understanding of diet and health, as well as the climate’s health – which benefits from the richer ecosystem that arises when more species are cultivated in several places rather than a single species over a very large area.

Not everyone can be self-sufficient in everything, but most can be self-sufficient in something. That has been heard a few times. There is some truth in that.

So what alternative plants could you cultivate for consumption & use?

It was with this question in the background 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.

More posts will be added here regarding cultivation and use of various plants, interesting facts and history about plants, as well as thoughts on desired societal development. See you in a later post 👋

/ Johannes Billsten