I think the more important question is: have people really run out of interesting flavors at their local stores and restaurants, that they are so obsessed with eating things they find growing on the ground?
I’ll never understand mushroom culture.
I’ll never understand mushroom culture.
But, I still enjoy the hunt every spring.
* Foraging is very satisfying to do
* Foraging allows you to participate in your cultural practices (although sadly many people in the US are long-cut off from such cultural knowledge)
* You can get fresher food foraging
* There absolutely are interesting varieties that aren't sold because they are hard to farm/transport/store etc.
* Foraged food is free
I used to go in the forest and find maybe 5 types of really tasty mushrooms, come back with enough for the whole family. Add some cheese and some onions and it's Michelin star in the mountains.
People have been foraging for mushrooms for literally thousands of years, but mushroom cultivation is pretty recent, and the overwhelming majority of edible species have not yet been reliably cultivated.
Are you ignorant of where those interesting flavors come from (indeed, are discovered)?
This has strong "why should we care about farms? People get everything they need from the store" vibes.
No, really just this one. There’s not that many hobbies that have death as an outcome of a minor mistake. For something like free solo climbing, we all understand those guys are nuts and wired different for an incredible high. For mushroom foraging on the other hand, it seems to me like… your reward is a slightly different mushroom flavor?
Would you characterize beekeeping as nuts? Too many bee stings in a short(ish, weeks or months typically) period of time render one deathly allergic to further bee stings. Ooh, what about the risk of growing tomatoes, potatoes, or other members of the belladonna family? I mean, their greens are all toxic. Likewise for home grown rhubarb!
There are plenty of things people engage in for fun, on a regular basis, that are incredibly punishing of mistakes. Car and home repair come to mind. Downhill skiing, bicycling, motorcycling are all in there.
But the thing of it is, for every single one that I've mentioned, there are reasonable steps to be taken to mitigate a lot of those risks. Like, every mushroom foraging guide I've consumed goes to some lengths to point out how to correctly differentiate between dangerous and not dangerous mushrooms.
Your take on why people free solo is also misinformed. To be honest, I've never experienced an adrenaline rush from it, and if I did, I'd expect that to be in the 2-3 seconds before I met a violent and bloody end. It's not an "I survived that!" sort of experience, so much as it is a "I only had to focus on the climbing, not faffing with ropes and things" experience. A core goal of my climbing is already not to fall, and I can already get seriously hurt or killed, even whilst using the gear correctly. Neither the risk nor the sense of defying it are factors in why I do it.