Economic Botany
Volume 70, Issue 2, 1 June 2016, Pages 176-189
a
Laboratori de Botànica–Unitat Associada CSIC, Facultat de Farmàcia, Universitat de Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain
b Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain
c Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3), Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain
b Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain
c Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3), Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain
Abstract
A Matter of Taste:
Local Explanations for the Consumption of Wild Food Plants in the
Catalan Pyrenees and the Balearic Islands. Previous research has
documented different trends in the consumption of wild food plants but
has rarely analyzed the motivations behind their continued (or lack of)
consumption. In this article, we use empirical data to explore the
factors driving the consumption of a selected set of wild food plants.
We start by analyzing the different trends (i.e., abandonment,
maintenance, and valorization) across 21 selected species with different
food uses. We then explore the reported motivations that drive such
trends using data collected among 354 respondents in three
Catalan-speaking rural areas. The consumption of wild food plants is
decreasing in the three study areas and across the categories of food
use analyzed. Respondents listed sociocultural factors, rather than
environmental or economic factors, as more prominent determinants of
consumption trends; taste preferences seem to be the most relevant
motivation for those who continue to consume wild food plants, whereas a
myriad of motivations related to changes in lifestyle were provided by
those who explain the abandonment of their consumption. © 2016, The New
York Botanical Garden.
Author keywords
Edible wild plants; ethnobotany; motivations; quantitative analysis; Spain
