In May 2023, I participated in The Wildbiome project, a citizen science project led by forager Mo Wilde, to examine what effect a wild food only diet would have on the gut microbiome. Along with fellow forager Matthew Rooney, Mo had spent a year eating only wild food during lockdown, the experiences of which were documented in their book The Wilderness Cure. They both found significant health benefits and interesting changes to their microbiome during this time, and wanted to expand the project to allow further tests as a basis for research. 

I was one of 26 who lived a wild indigenous British diet during May 2023, with half the group eating wild for 3 months and the remainder for one month. This meant,  for the most part -  due to what was classified as wild and available in the UK - cutting out sugar, dairy, most carbs and fat as well as caffeine and alcohol.  As a citizen science project, the plan was to raise funds, log and document everything we picked and ate, as well as taking a lot of tests to analyse changes to our health. These included nutrition and hormone tests, blood glucose monitoring  in addtion to gut microbiome samples.