Inadequate pollination has led to a 3-5% loss of fruit, vegetable, and nut production and an estimated 427,000 excess deaths annually from lost healthy food consumption and associated diseases, including heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and certain cancers, according to research led by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. It is the first study to quantify the human health toll of insufficient wild (animal) pollinators on human health. “A critical missing piece in the biodiversity discussion has been a lack […]
ScienceDaily
Harvesting wild mushrooms requires an expert eye to distinguish between the delicious and the inedible. Misidentification can have a range of consequences, from a disgusting taste and mild illness to organ failure and even death. Culinary wild mushrooms staples, such as truffles or porcini, require symbiotic relationships with specific plants in the ecosystem that make it impractical or impossible to produce them commercially. This means they can only be harvested from their natural habitat, which is why porcini and truffles […]
