A Vegan in a Polish Forest: An Interview with Ethnobotanist Łukasz Łuczaj

lukasz_luczaj_forum_.jpg, default, A Forest is Not a Simple Thing: An Interview with Ethnobotanist Łukasz Łuczaj, Łukasz Łuczaj, photo: Bogdan Krężel/Forum, center, #000000

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‘A natural forest is a multi-layered creation’, says Łukasz Łuczaj, ethnobotanist, populariser of wild cuisine, author of books on edible plants and insects, director of the Botany Department of Rzeszów University, and a resident of Pietrusza Wola in the Dynów Foothills.

MO: Let’s say someone has a lighter, a canteen, and a good knife and he or she wants to live for a week in a Polish forest. Would that be possible?

ŁŁ: It might be possible, but that person would have to have a large part of the forest available to him or her. Sometimes certain plants are protected or rare. The plant population of forests is more varied than that outside of forests. Sometimes very similar fields are located right at the edge of forests and, in fact, they differ quite a lot. A lot of Poland is covered by secondary forests – those are places which were once fields and they are planted with birch or pine trees. Such forests have far poorer flora and in that context they would be ill-suited for survival. But if we’re talking about natural forests where there was always a forest – or at least there was for a thousand years or so – there we’ll have better chances of finding biological variety and that which goes hand in hand with it: the availability of edible plants. Plants of the forest undergrowth grow very slowly, because they grow in the shade. They often require many years to accumulate nutritious substances in their rhizomes and root structures. Of course, when it comes to survival, it’s easiest to use trees, because they’re bigger, so it’s very important to be aware of what we can get out of any given species of tree that grows in Poland.

This is the season for beechnuts and acorns are falling, too. Those are good survival supplies. Really, the worst time of year from this point of view is midsummer, because either plants already have stringy leaves or else their roots and rhizomes no longer contain nutrients because those nutrients have migrated to their leaves. Of course, it’s not good if there is snow or frost. It would be easiest to survive in early spring or autumn. In the spring, there are young leaves and shoots, and the rhizomes and roots still contain starch. And, in the fall, there are forest fruits and mushrooms.

MO: You also wrote ‘The Insect-Eater’s Handbook’. Am I to understand that a forest survival diet doesn’t necessarily have to be vegan?

Thumbnail — ‘The Insect-Eater’s Handbook’ by Łukasz Łuczaj, photo: Wydawnictwo: Chemigrafia

ŁŁ: I would definitely complement such a diet with some sort of animal protein. Let’s not fool ourselves: if I were left in a forest with a rifle and a shovel, my first choice would be to shoot a deer or wild boar.

MO: Most people associate forest food with mushrooms. Are there any that you think are underappreciated or forgotten?

ŁŁ: There are a lot of such species, but some of them are very rare mushrooms which can’t be found in all parts of Poland. I would mention gołąbki (russula), excellent edible mushrooms which seem to be less popular these days. I’d also add that mushrooms really have few calories, but they have some. Most valuable in that sense are borowiki szlachetne or prawdziwki (boletes or porcini). They are simply the most nutritious.

MO: Many people think that mushrooms are just a tasty addition to the menu, but without any particular value for our organism.

ŁŁ: Mushrooms contain mineral salts, vitamins, and antibiotic substances. They ‘train’ our immune systems how to react to different stimuli. Let’s remember, too, that in survival or hunger conditions our metabolism shifts into a mode that burns fewer calories. So every hundred calories that we take in make an exceptionally large contribution towards our survival.

MO: Getting back to insects… You are an opponent of urban mosquito extermination, but, at the same time, you praise the flavour of ants. That seems inconsistent to me.

ŁŁ: Urban mosquito extermination is a scandal. The chemicals used don’t only affect mosquitoes, but they can kill other insects as well. First of all, we’re denying birds some of their food sources and, secondly, we’re poisoning the environment. And mosquitoes are tasty: it’s just hard to catch them. But I’ve eaten mosquitoes and their larvae. Ants, on the other hand, are easy to catch and they’re very nutritious. I’m not promoting digging up anthills; some species are protected. But it’s worth keeping in mind that they’re a fairly easy source of protein.

MO: There’s a very active discussion these days about getting protein from insects, even within the pragmatic vegan movement. Some think this is an ethical alternative to eating mammals, fish or fowl.

ŁŁ: That’s not veganism: insects are also living things. It’s really an ethical question as to whether it’s better to kill one sheep or a million – even a billion – insects. Because we can live for a year just fine on a vegan diet slaughtering one sheep, freezing it and taking a slice off of it once in awhile for a soup or something. Then we‘re responsible for just one sheep over the course of a year. That’s what I do, because I don’t buy farmed meat. I buy one sheep a year from an ecological farm and I have it sliced into half-kilo portions. That’s all the meat I consume. Unless I’m on a trip somewhere and then I might order meat dishes.

Collecting insects by hand seems to me ethically very fine, because we don't contaminate the environment with cattle raising. I am opposed to breeding insects – jamming them full of flour and treating them like poultry or panga fish. It makes no sense. Breeding cold-blooded animals will always be preferable to breeding warm-blooded animals, because the first consume less energy. So, from an ecological point of view, eating fish and insects will always be better for the biosphere than eating mammals. I limit my eating of insects to a few hunts for grasshoppers in the course of a year or coming across a nest of wasps or hornets and eating them. Unless I happen to be in Laos where I eat insects by the kilogram that I buy in the marketplace.

MO: Do such things make up your entire daily diet?

ŁŁ: No, that would be hard. Especially since I do research and travel.

MO: I’d like to ask also about the forest in the context of death. On your webpage, you wrote: ‘I’d like to have a funeral conducted by a person who understands the spirits of the forest’. What does that ability consist of?

ŁŁ: I can’t talk about that, because I’ll be misunderstood. Whoever doesn’t understand this shouldn’t be asking. I don’t want to discuss this in detail. When I talk about my own forest which I own and which I cultivate, I always describe it as a multi-dimensional creation. It’s a collection of trees, plants that were either there already or that I planted myself. It’s a collection of my memories and a sacred grove… I could expand on that in the context of modern animism, because I consider myself a bit of an animist.

Apropos the forest, I’d like to mention a certain book. When you called me, I was reading the book The Great Forest by Zbigniew Nienacki. Very interesting. Nienacki also wrote Once a Year in Skiroławki, a sort of communist-erotic story. Remarkable. I’ve been living for twenty-odd years in the country and that book conveys well the spirit of the countryside and how the people live there. The Great Forest is a similar thing. The forest is an actor in them, rather sinister, a kind of demonic anti-hero. I came across The Great Forest while looking for inspiration and combing through the literature in the context of my new book which will be coming out soon. The Ha!art publishing house will be publishing Sex in the Big Forest: A Botanical Handbook for Lovers Out in Nature. This is another aspect of the forest. A forest is not a simple thing. A natural forest is a multi-layered creation. It contains within it many secrets, it holds within it many different kinds of energy and traces of its former plant and animal residents and perhaps even of the spirits of people that came before. The spatial composition of the forest is far more complex than that of, for instance, a lawn.

MO: As an ethnobotanist, you study the presence of plants in Polish tradition and in foreign traditions as well. Would you be able to explain how the attitude towards plants differs between Poland and other countries?

ŁŁ: In Poland, there is certainly a lot of mycophilia, that is, a fascination with mushrooms. But that’s not a phenomenon limited to our country. I did research in Laos where mushrooms are eaten a lot and often the same species that we have here: gołąbki (russula), prawdziwki (boletes) and kurki (chanterelles). They all grow in tropical forests. Poles tend to avoid leafy greens. We try to eat nettles, lettuce or cabbage, but we treat them as a lesser form of food.

MO: Where can someone who’s interested in the place of plants in old Polish tradition look for information?

ŁŁ: There’s one source I would recommend in particular. It’s the long-lost dictionary of Adam Fischer which our team [Monika Kujawska, Łukasz Łuczaj, Piotr Klepacki and Joanna Sosnowska – ed. note] managed to locate in a Prague archive and partly filled in some missing entries [the book was published as Plants in Folk Belief and Customs – ed. note]. We also have the guides of Józef Rostafiński, but Fischer was the only one who attempted a synthesis in the field of plants. He collected entries from various informants. In his dictionary, we have a huge number of species described and information as to how they were used in Poland. Fischer was more focused on medicinal plants than edible plants, but, all the same, it’s a tremendous collection. Work on that book was not high up on my list of research goals, but we published it out of a feeling of obligation – that we owed it to Poland and to the Polish people. And, in fact, when I saw that brick – that five-hundred-page publication – I felt that perhaps – and I say this without modesty – this was the most important book in the history of Polish ethnobotany since the end of World War II.

A second book published after the war which I find fascinating is Adam Paluch’s book Pick the Herbs From Nine Balks. Paluch is a well-known Wrocław ethnographer who studied the tradition of the use of herbal remedies in Poland. A phenomenal book: clear, well-written, easy to read.

MO: For some time now, one can observe a return in Polish cuisine – both domestic and in restaurants – to forgotten plants. Do you see this as a passing fad, or do you think that this is an indication of a growing awareness of the richness of our domestic flora?

Миниатюра — Łukasz Łuczaj, fot. Bogdan Krężel/Forum

That’s rather an attempt to revive local identity that was lost during the years of Communism. This undoubtedly also stems from the fact that Poland is now wealthier and people have the strength and time to dig these things up again. I very much like to find that kind of information and to write on my blog or in my books about some dish or plant that once used to be eaten. So that people will be happy that they have such plants. Because Poland isn’t a country particularly well-off in the variety of its species – in fact, it’s pretty uniform, especially in its lower areas. It’s worth talking about the juniper beer brewed in the Kurpie lowlands or the forgotten tradition of collecting manna. In general, I’m fascinated by forgotten grains. You can see a broad trend developing to create a counterweight to the few species of plants which are for the most part being cultivated. Maize, wheat, potatoes and rice – at this time we live mostly from these four plants. Cultivation of a greater number of species gives us security in a time of pandemic or in the event of the appearance of a new pathogen. Because, if some disease were to arise now that could wipe out the harvest of rice or potatoes, we would have famine in many countries. There have been such famines in our history: in Poland, we suffered a potato famine. In Poland, for example, the grain ber (Setaria italica or foxtail millet) was once cultivated. Who today has heard of ber? You can’t find it in the stores. These days it’s only grown in the tropics, in China. But once it was grown outside of Tarnów.

MO: I was recently surprised to find sorghum mentioned in 'Meatless Cuisine', published in Lwów between the wars.

ŁŁ: We have things in our cuisine that are falling out of favour and we have new things, too, but some of them are ephemeral. That’s the case with dandelion which featured in noble kitchens and sometimes in peasant cuisine as well. There are plants that are simply pulsing now with popularity. An interesting subject is guinea pigs in Polish cuisine. Between the wars, there was a fashion for eating them. I’ve been able to establish that that began in Upper Silesia, spread throughout Poland and reached as far as Lwów, where they ate a guinea pig stew. I got a lot of hate mail after I wrote that we could go back to eating guinea pigs in Poland. Not everything that I write meets with general acceptance. This also applies to my skepticism about the government reaction at various levels to the real COVID-19 pandemic which has bordered on mass hysteria.

MO: There’s a lot of that. Do any of your students show an interest in wild cuisine and old traditions connected with plants?

ŁŁ: That interest is growing. I conduct classes about edible plants on the Dietetics Faculty of Rzeszów University and I see that from year to year there’s greater respect from the students and the subject is becoming important to them. On the other hand, students are students: they’re pretty passive unfortunately.

MO: In one of your earlier interviews a couple of years ago, you said that you don’t eat desserts, but you still dream of 'bitter cheesecake' [sernik na gorzko]. Has your dream been fulfilled?

ŁŁ: Yes. It’s just a bitter cheesecake; it’s not worth discussing in an interview.

MO: I was curious, because cheesecake and poppyseed cake have a strong place in Polish cuisine.

ŁŁ: Poppyseed has lost its prominence in Polish tradition, because unfortunately the cultivation of the [opium] poppy has been banned in Poland. But I think it should be legalised in the context of an ecological horticulture movement. Of course, for personal use. I’m a big advocate of legalizing the cultivation of all narcotic plants. I’m no fan of using them, but I think that anyone should have the right to grow any plant he or she wants and to do with it whatever he or she wants. I’m not talking, of course, about trafficking. I am in favour of prohibiting the sale of synthetic narcotics of any kind. But I believe that all plants should be permitted.

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