What is the Wildbiome Project?

If you are what you eat, what happens if you only eat wild food?

Charlie and Emily of The Old Way will be eating 100% foraged food for 3 months.

We have volunteered to become human guinea pigs in a study to see what happens to our bodies when eating an exclusively wild food diet. Since the Autumn we've been squirreling away berries and nuts, searching the woods for mushrooms, fishing for mackerel, whiting, dogfish and squid and are now busily rendering down deer fat, canning squirrel meat, leaching acorns and making venison jerky in preparation.

Spring foraging

One of the main concepts we teach on our 6 month nature Immersion course, The Old Way, as well as our year-round foraging club, The Wild Practice, is that compared to us today, our hunter-gatherer ancestors enjoyed relatively healthy and stress-free lives, free from chronic disease. Part of the reason for this was that they ate a phenomenally diverse, nutrient-dense diet which only took 3-5 hours a day of ‘work’ to procure.

It’s one thing to say this; quite another to try to emulate it.

For the months of April, May and June 2025 we will be putting this concept and ourselves to the test as participants in the Wildbiome Project 2.

The Wildbiome Project is coordinated by expert forager and academic Monica Wilde, author of the Wilderness Cure, and will be researched by the Universities of Bradford and Rzeszów. Using state of the art Medichecks researchers will assess the health of our gut microbiome, blood sugar, liver, kidneys, hormones, vitamins and minerals to give a better picture of how health markers change with the transition to a hunter-gatherer diet. This will help inform research into mesolithic diets of the past, as well as aid understanding into the health benefits and food security implications of wild food for the future. How fascinating is that?

The findings will be featured by Dan Saladino in BBC Radio 4’s The Food Program later in 2025 as well as in a documentary film. We will of course be documenting our personal journeys on Instagram @the_old_way_