Foodies are famous, often parodied, and notorious for their desire to always be trying new foods. But are they dangerous? According to Russ Cohen, they might be. 

Russ Cohen is a professional forager living in Massachusetts where he teaches classes to groups on how to forage. When he sat down to talk with me, he was making black birch twig tea for a class he would teach the next morning to a gardening club. He described the tea as like “drinking Wintergreen flavored life savers.”

Starting as a kid in the 1960s, he has spent the majority of his life foraging. First taught by his parents, who he clarified “weren’t hippies or anything,” he really grew into it after taking a high school course on foraging. Since then, Cohen has traveled the globe, from New Zealand to Norway, eating wild foods- including once where he illegally harvested mushrooms in Switzerland. 

He is chatty and willing to share his love of foraging with anyone who asks. Our chat quickly ended up being over an hour long as he told me about his life and foraging. When I asked him what he likes to forage, he whipped out a jar of hickory nuts. He told me that they’re great in cereal and for snacking, and even easier to forage than acorns.

Cohen shares similar information in the 40 programs he teachers a year, each to different groups. He travels around Massachusetts and educates people in clubs, the Massachusetts Audubon Society, the Wild Seed Project, and more on how to forage responsibly. This includes showing people what is safe to harvest, how to take enough without depleting an area (for example, taking one leaf per plant), and where foraging is allowed. 

In the 40 years he’s been foraging and teaching others, the biggest problem Cohen has noticed is not climate change, social media, or even foraging laws- its foodies and the chefs that cater to them by overharvesting. 

In the past, chefs in high end restaurants have focused on local produce and farm to table food- now they have expanded to foraging. Foodies – people who eat as a hobby by trying different cuisines – are eating it up. There are dozens of restaurants that specialize in this around the world, like Blue Hill at Stone Barns in New York who offer food from the Hudson Valley year round. 

Adventurous young eaters have influenced food trends for decades with their desire for new and exciting experiences. In the 80s, young American professionals  focused on food from far away countries and continents. In the 2020s, there has been a complete reversal. Now, foodies want hyper local food. 

And, according to Cohen, chefs have turned to foraging to fulfill foodie’s desires. Fiddleheads (a sweet vegetable from ferns) and ramps (a wild plant with a garlicky taste) are exceedingly popular, as are mushrooms. They provide nutrient-dense, delicious food that is not going to be found in grocery stores. 

But foragers hired by restaurants often pick entire patches and leave nothing behind. Harvesting sustainably means causing no permanent damage to an ecosystem. There must be enough plants left for others, animals, and the future. This is not the method restaurant foragers use. Cohen has “seen places where the plants used to grow, where every single plant was dug up and they’re gone. They’ve been extirpated from that habitat” in the name of foodies having something new to try.

This leaves sustenance and hobbyist foragers in the lurch. Cohen has noticed this especially in areas such as Camden, Maine where wild food restaurants are popular. Wild plants may have all been harvested before anyone else can even touch them. 

Cohen is concerned about this consumption, especially when it means that the only way locals can try foraged food is when they pay for it and have someone else do the actual harvesting for them. With restaurants like Blue Hill at Stone Barns charging a whopping price of $398 – $448 a person, this is not possible for the average person. Cohen believes in the value of connecting with nature while foraging, describing it as a religious experience for himself. But this hobby has become a tool to bring consumers in and push locals out. 

People who are hired to forage for restaurants are often locals who rely on this work, even if they don’t get to try what they harvest. Foraging for high-end restaurants provides them an alternative income that can be the difference between making rent or not. Russ Cohen is aware of this, and says that he tries not to be sanctimonious about it since “it could make a significant contribution to their overall financial situation by, you know, doing some picking fiddleheads in the spring or something like that.” 

It is a necessary harm for many who rely on these restaurants for income. But when this trend fades, as all trends do, the problem will remain. Patches can’t recover when there are no seeds or roots left to grow back from. 

When this trend started, Cohen was so concerned he thought about quitting teaching entirely. He questioned if he was one of the people allowing this to happen through his lessons. He asked himself, “Am I part of the problem for sharing information about these plants and should I shut the hell up?” 

Thankfully, he decided to teach with a focus on conservation instead. He preaches sustainable, ethical foraging to all of his students. He also shares an idea on how to satisfy the desire for foraged food without endangering ecosystems: invasive species. 

Invasive plants take over an area they are not native to and smother indigenous species. These invasive plants cannot be overharvested and provide plenty of cooking inspiration. Kudzu, Japanese knotweed, stinging nettles, and dandelions are all perfectly edible, perfectly delicious invasive alternatives to fiddleheads and ostrich ferns and could replace the drive for unsustainable foraging. Cohen explains that if a “restaurant puts Japanese knotweed on the menu, it’s hard for me to get, you know, worried about, because we’ll never wipe out Japanese knotweed.”

Eating local isn’t inherently bad – in fact, it’s a suggested behavior by environmental scientists.  Foodies don’t have to give up their cravings, but neither do foragers. Foraging sustainably (and invasively) is a happy medium that keeps the planet – and foodies- happy.