Natural Energy Booster – Getting to Know Which Berries You Can Eat Outdoors

16, Mar 2015 by healthyplus in natural health     No Comments

Getting to Know Which Berries You Can Eat Outdoors

We’ve all heard the stories; people stranded outdoors turning to local plants and trees to supply them with fruit and vegetables, only to be poisoned and suffer with toxic overdoses, which can often be fatal. Most outdoors specialists will recommend that you only ever consume fruit from trees and bushes that you can identify perfectly. If you’re ever in doubt, you’re encouraged to steer clear of these types of wild fruits completely. So how can you be sure to find fruits that will keep you alive when outdoors, rather than potentially killing you?

Well the first thing to bear in mind is that fruit colours provide a lot of information about a fruit’s properties. What might seem a natural colour to the untrained eye might actually be a clear warning sign from the tree saying that if you eat this fruit, you’ll regret it. Let’s take a look at a few methods that can help you to decide between the toxic and the healthy plants available in the outdoors.

The first thing to do is to try and spot what the wildlife in your environment are eating. Birds, squirrels and even large mammals all share a similar digestive system, so it’s a fair observation to say that humans can share similar fruits. Watch out though – there are some fruits that only certain species of animals can stomach.

The next method is to check the way that the fruit is growing. If berries hang in large bunches that look too good to be true; they probably are. Unless you can clearly identify them, steer clear at all costs. A few berries that are safe to eat in bunches however, are blueberries, strawberries and blackberries.

Colour says a lot about fruit, especially the types that we see in our supermarkets. In the outdoors, it’s a completely different ball game. Red berries have a 50/50 chance of being toxic or healthy, so the rule of identification applies again here. Purple and blue coloured berries are all fine however. There are literally no known species of toxic blue or purple coloured berries in the world, so if you see these then the chances are that they are entirely safe for human consumption. If you’d like to learn anymore about the great outdoors, why not visit www.theoutdoorsman.org today and check out their great range of articles in their ‘getting to know the outdoors’ section?