A Matter of Taste: Local Explanations for the Consumption of Wild Food Plants in the Catalan Pyrenees and the Balearic Islands¹

© 2016, The New York Botanical Garden. 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.