Bush Food Research Articles

Quality Assessment of Greek-Style Set Yoghurt Fortified with Extracted and Dried Australian Native Fruit, Illawarra Plum.

The Illawarra plum (IP) is native to Australia and has been used as a bush food for centuries. With rich phytochemicals and natural pigments, IP has the potential to be an added ingredient to improve the physicochemical properties of food, including yoghurt. This study prepared dried IP powders through vacuum drying (VD) and freeze drying (FD), produced extracts from these dried powders, and fortified them into Greek-style set yoghurt. The changes in colour, pH, titratable acidity (TA), syneresis, total soluble solids (TS), and phytochemicals were measured throughout a chilled storage period of 28 days. The results showed that FD and FD extract could provide a stable, distinct pink colour to yoghurt. IP powders and their extracts improved TS content and, thus, the consistency of yoghurt. Compared to the control, VD, FD, and FD extract of IP did not significantly affect the level of acidity or syneresis after 28 days of chilled storage. Yoghurt fortified with FD and FD extract had the greatest level of phenolics, anthocyanins, and radical scavenging antioxidant activities. This study revealed that IP powders and their extracts can positively improve the physicochemical properties of Greek-style set yoghurt. FD powder is recommended over its extract to fortify this yoghurt, as it can be cost-effectively prepared by freeze drying and then grinding the fresh fruit into powder. Future studies are needed to evaluate other variables in yoghurt preparation, including the concentration of IP and strains of yoghurt culture. Further, the consumer perception of sensory quality and acceptability of yoghurt fortified with FD IP powder should be investigated.

Food Choices, Sustainability and Australian Native Foods: Perceptions among University Students.

(1) Background: Urgent changes in our food choices are needed for more sustainable, resilient and equitable food systems. Australian native plant-based foods have both environmental and health benefits. Including these foods in our diet may reduce both the risk of chronic diseases and the impact of climate change. This study explored the perceptions and attitudes towards food choices, sustainability and Australian native plant-based food among university students. (2) Methods: A cross-sectional online survey was completed by 212 university students in Australia from October to December 2022. Questions included information about sociodemographic characteristics, food choices, Australian native foods and the impact on sustainability. Logistic regression was used for analyses. (3) Results: Most participants recognised the impact of food choices on sustainability. There was a significant association between recognition of the impact of food choices on sustainability and the environmental and nutritional benefits of Australian native foods (OR = 2.89, 95% CI 1.29, 6.46, p = 0.010). Students who were familiar with or had tried Australian native plant-based foods were significantly more likely to recognise their environmental and nutritional benefits (p < 0.001). (4) Conclusions: Students who recognise the impact of food choices on sustainability and the benefits of Australian native foods are more likely to include native foods in their diet. More studies are needed to investigate the specific native foods consumed and the barriers and facilitators to the intake of these foods.

Celebrating Australian native foods through hospital foodservices: Engaging patients, staff and the broader community

Objective: The modern Australian diet is largely characterised by too few fruits and vegetables and too many discretionary foods. This is very different to how Indigenous Australians ate prior to colonisation. Native plants and seeds like bush tomatoes, warrigal greens, Kakadu plum and wattleseed are not common features of the contemporary Australian diet. We developed an initiative to incorporate native plants and seeds into a hospital inpatient menu to normalise their use and provide nutrition education to patients, staff and the community of the nutrition and sustainability benefits of native ingredients. Design: Between May and August 2022, the Chef’s Special menu (for privately funded patients) featured Australian native ingredients in all dishes. The nutritional benefits of native foods were communicated to patients through a printed brochure delivered with the menu, to foodservices staff through in-service training, and to the broader community through social media. Setting: Urban hospital in Brisbane, Australia. Method: Data were collected on acceptability, engagement and reach of the education initiative. Results: The initiative was successfully delivered, with more than 8,000 patient brochures distributed, 45 staff attending training, and social media reaching approximately 10,000 people. The most frequently ordered main meal on the menu was grilled snapper (fish) with macadamia Asian herb salad and finger lime. Conclusion: The work highlighted how the patient menu in hospital can serve as a useful tool to communicate nutrition education to patients, staff and the broader community. In addition, we reflect on the many opportunities to continue to celebrate the nutritional benefits of Australian native foods in healthcare settings.

Decolonising food regulatory frameworks: importance of recognising traditional culture when assessing dietary safety of traditional foods.

As interest in Australian native products continues to grow worldwide, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples (First Peoples) are striving to be industry leaders in the production of their traditional foods that are being developed for commercial markets. To successfully gain market approval both within Australia and globally, food regulatory authorities require at least a documented history of safe use to indicate dietary safety. Moreover, many countries also require compositional analysis and safety data to further support their safe human consumption. However, safety data are lacking for many of these traditional food items and the history that surrounds their safe use has rarely been recorded in written form, but rather passed on through cultural practices and language. This review evaluates the suitability of current frameworks for assessing the dietary safety of traditional foods and highlights the food-safety regulatory hurdles currently felt by First Peoples and their businesses attempting to enter the Australian native foods industry. These issues also extend to the requirements of food regulatory authorities around the world, when assessing the market eligibility of traditional food items. Potential solutions to these problems are discussed, including new proposed processes that can be incorporated into the current food regulatory frameworks. Importantly, these proposed processes would allow the dietary risk assessment of traditional foods to be completed in a manner that better accommodates the stories, traditional knowledge and interests of First Peoples, while also meeting the safety data requirements set out by regulatory bodies both within Australia and around the world.

Gift Giving, Reciprocity and Community Survival among Central Alaskan Indigenous Peoples

Inspired by a traditional ritual, the potlatch, Indigenous Dene communities in central-northern Alaska have developed new forms of reciprocity as a response to exogenous political threats to their autonomy. The potlatch involved the ritualized gifting of food and other items to selected guests as a means of creating political equilibrium by inculcating a sense of obligatory reciprocity. Today, people are reluctant to leave their communities and have begun shipping bush food from one community to the next instead of receiving gifts of food as invited guests. This new development is in response to a perceived threat to community survival. Since the 1990s, the Alaskan state government has been threatening to close schools with fewer than 20 students. This would affect most Native communities in the region, which generally have under 200 residents and correspondingly small schools. Closures would force people to move to larger villages with functioning schools or abandon their communities and move to a larger city (Fairbanks, in this case). While the government proposal to close smaller schools has yet to be implemented, it remains a constant threat (it was last revived in 2018). The new form of food redistribution allows people to stay and reaffirm their ties to their communities while reinforcing social ties to people of other communities.

Indigenous Uses, Phytochemical Analysis, and Anti-Inflammatory Properties of Australian Tropical Medicinal Plants.

Australian tropical plants have been a rich source of food (bush food) and medicine to the first Australians (Aboriginal people), who are believed to have lived for more than 50,000 years. Plants such as spreading sneezeweed (Centipeda minima), goat’s foot (Ipomoea pes-caprae), and hop bush (Dodonaea viscosa and D. polyandra) are a few popular Aboriginal medicinal plants. Thus far, more than 900 medicinal plants have been recorded in the tropical region alone, and many of them are associated with diverse ethnomedicinal uses that belong to the traditional owners of Aboriginal people. In our effort to find anti-inflammatory lead compounds in collaboration with Aboriginal communities from their medicinal plants, we reviewed 78 medicinal plants used against various inflammation and inflammatory-related conditions by Aboriginal people. Out of those 78 species, we have included only 45 species whose crude extracts or isolated pure compounds showed anti-inflammatory properties. Upon investigating compounds isolated from 40 species (for five species, only crude extracts were studied), 83 compounds were associated with various anti-inflammatory properties. Alphitolic acid, Betulinic acid, Malabaric acid, and Hispidulin reduced proinflammatory cytokines and cyclooxygenase enzymes (COX-1 and 2) with IC50 values ranging from 11.5 to 46.9 uM. Other promising anti-inflammatory compounds are Brevilin A (from Centipeda minima), Eupalestin, and 5′-methoxy nobiletin (from Ageratum conyzoides), Calophyllolide (from Calophyllum inophyllum), and Brusatol (from Brucea javanica). D. polyandra is one example of an Aboriginal medicinal plant from which a novel anti-inflammatory benzoyl ester clerodane diterpenoid compound was obtained (compound name not disclosed), and it is in the development of topical medicines for inflammatory skin diseases. Medicinal plants in the tropics and those associated with indigenous knowledge of Aboriginal people could be a potential alternative source of novel anti-inflammatory therapeutics.

Certification marks for Australian native foods: A proposal for Indigenous ownership of intellectual property

Recently, interest in ‘bush tucker’ foods has surged. Indigenous Australians should be empowered to determine how their knowledge is used when these products are commercialised. To exercise control over the development of the native foods industry, Indigenous Australians could establish a certification regime to ensure that their knowledge is appropriately converted into commercial products. This could be done through the strategic use of intellectual property, specifically through certification trade marks. Creating a certification mark for native foods could represent an important part of a decolonial policy agenda aimed at reimagining the regulation of native biodiversity and cultural knowledge in Australia.

'Now it’s not a billabong': eco-cultural assessment of billabong condition in remote northern Australia

Globally, the value of integrating multiple knowledge systems is being recognised in ecosystem assessments, monitoring and management. This paper describes a participatory eco-cultural assessment of freshwater billabongs in the South East Arnhem Land Indigenous Protected Area, northern Australia, that drew on Indigenous ecological knowledge (IEK) and Western science using social and natural science research methods. IEK holders were concerned about feral ungulates trampling and consuming traditional bush food resources and reducing water quality, affecting eco-cultural values of billabongs. We recorded qualitative IEK and conducted a multivariate snapshot assessment of billabong physiochemical water quality, ground condition, yarlbun (water lily) cover and macroinvertebrate assemblage that showed distinct seasonal variation. Although both knowledge systems revealed indicators of seasonal change over 1 year, IEK also revealed longer-term changes and that degradation of billabongs in the late dry season was exacerbated by feral ungulates. This participatory research illustrates how the condition of freshwater systems can be assessed using cross-cultural techniques, how these techniques can reveal more nuanced understandings of eco-cultural condition and the value of including IEK for setting ecological baselines and recording long-term change.

The Nutritional Potential of the Native Australian Green Plum (Buchanania obovata) Compared to Other Anacardiaceae Fruit and Nuts.

The native Australian green plum (Buchanania obovata) is a small fruit that grows in the northern parts of the Northern Territory and Western Australia. The fruit belongs to the family Anacardiaceae, which includes the other agriculturally important fruit mangoes, pistachios and cashew nuts. The green plum is a favored species of fruit for the Aboriginal communities and an important bush food in the Northern Territory. To date, only minimal scientific studies have been performed on the green plum as a food. This review is about plant foods in the family Anacardiaceae and the key nutritional compounds that occur in these fruit and nuts. It looks at the more traditional nutrient profiles, some key health metabolites, allergens and anti-nutrients that occur, and the role these foods play in the health of populations. This provides a guide for future studies of the green plum to show what nutritional and anti-nutritional properties and compounds should be analyzed and if there are areas where future studies should focus. This review includes an update on studies and analysis of the green plum and how its nutritional properties give it potential as a food for diet diversification in Australia.

Antioxidant and Antiglycation Activities of Syzygium paniculatum Gaertn and Inhibition of Digestive Enzymes Relevant to Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus.

Advanced glycation end-products (AGEs) may be a contributing factor in the development of diabetes-specific vascular pathologies that affect the retina, glomerulus and peripheral nerves. In this study, Australian native food plant species Syzygium paniculatum was investigated for activities relevant to Type 2 diabetes mellitus including inhibition of α-amylase, α-glucosidase and protein glycation. A methanolic extract of the leaves showed the strongest α-amylase inhibition (IC50 = 14.29 ± 0.82μg/mL, p < 0.05) when compared with other extracts. For inhibition of α-glucosidase, the strongest inhibition was shown for the water, methanolic and acetone extracts of leaves with IC50 values ranging from 4.73 ± 0.96 to 7.26 ± 0.92μg/mL. In the BSA-glucose model, fruit and leaf extracts inhibited formation of protein-bound fluorescent AGEs with IC50 values ranging between 11.82 ± 0.71 and 96.80 ± 13.41μg/mL. Pearson's correlation analysis showed that the AGE inhibition significantly correlated with DPPH (rp = -0.8964, p < 0.05) and ABTS (rp = -0.8326, p < 0.05). α-amylase inhibitoryactivities strongly correlated with DPPH (rp = -0.8964, p < 0.001). α-glucosidase inhibitionstrongly correlated with TPC (rp = -0.9243, p < 0.05), FRAP (rp = -0.9502, p < 0.01), DPPH (rp = -0.9317, p < 0.01) and ABTS (rp = -0.9486, p < 0.01). This study provides a strong rationale for further investigation aimed at isolating and identifying the active compounds responsible for the observed effects on targets relevant to diabetes.

Vitamin D Content of Australian Native Food Plants and Australian-Grown Edible Seaweed.

Vitamin D has previously been quantified in some plants and algae, particularly in leaves of the Solanaceae family. We measured the vitamin D content of Australian native food plants and Australian-grown edible seaweed. Using liquid chromatography with triple quadrupole mass spectrometry, 13 samples (including leaf, fruit, and seed) were analyzed in duplicate for vitamin D2, vitamin D3, 25-hydroxyvitamin D2, and 25-hydroxyvitamin D3. Five samples contained vitamin D2: raw wattleseed (Acacia victoriae) (0.03 µg/100 g dry weight (DW)); fresh and dried lemon myrtle (Backhousia citriodora) leaves (0.03 and 0.24 µg/100 g DW, respectively); and dried leaves and berries of Tasmanian mountain pepper (Tasmannia lanceolata) (0.67 and 0.05 µg/100 g DW, respectively). Fresh kombu (Lessonia corrugata) contained vitamin D3 (0.01 µg/100 g DW). Detected amounts were low; however, it is possible that exposure to ultraviolet radiation may increase the vitamin D content of plants and algae if vitamin D precursors are present.

Buchanania obovata: Functionality and Phytochemical Profiling of the Australian Native Green Plum.

The green plum is the fruit of Buchanania obovata Engl. and is an Australian Indigenous bush food. Very little study has been done on the green plum, so this is an initial screening study of the functional properties and phytochemical profile found in the flesh and seed. The flesh was shown to have antimicrobial properties effective against gram negative (Escherichia coli 9001—NCTC) and gram positive (Staphylococcus aureus 6571—NCTC) bacteria. Scanning electron microscopy analysis shows that the antimicrobial activity causes cell wall disintegration and cytoplasmic leakage in both bacteria. Antioxidant 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) testing shows the flesh has high radical scavenging activity (106.3 ± 28.6 μM Trolox equivalant/g Dry Weight in methanol). The flesh and seed contain a range of polyphenols including gallic acid, ellagic acid, p-coumaric acid, kaempferol, quercetin and trans-ferulic acid that may be responsible for this activity. The seed is eaten as a bush food and contains a delphinidin-based anthocyanin. The green plum has potential as a functional ingredient in food products for its antimicrobial and antioxidant activity, and further investigation into its bioactivity, chemical composition and potential applications in different food products is warranted.

"We Will Show the Country": Bringing History to Life

"We Will Show the Country": Bringing History to Life

The Colonial Kitchen: Australia 1788–1901 by Charmaine O'Brien. Lanham

Reviewed by: The Colonial Kitchen: Australia 1788–1901 by Charmaine O'Brien. Lanham Cecilia Leong-Salobir The Colonial Kitchen: Australia 1788–1901. By Charmaine O'Brien. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016. The Colonial Kitchen is a meticulously researched study on the food history of colonial Australia. Each page is a pleasure to read, rich in detail, and written in an engaging manner. The author analyses a trove of primary sources via colonial cookbooks, diaries, personal accounts, newspapers, magazines and journals. The Colonial Kitchen also draws on an impressive range of literature in food history/studies, colonial history, Australian history and cultural history. The gist of O'Brien's book is to challenge the generally accepted view that the British ate extremely bad food in the early years of settlement, sticking to mainly Anglo-Celtic insipid meals. For example, John Newton in The Oldest Foods on Earth: A history of Australian native foods states that European Australians have "hardly ever touched" the native flora and fauna of the Aboriginal peoples for over two hundred years of occupation.1 O'Brien, however, is not the first to debunk the myth that British settlers shunned local or native foods. Barbara Santich in Bold Palates: Australia's gastronomic heritage notes that from the early years, "Australian cooks improvised and substituted, invented and innovated. Sometimes from necessity, sometimes by serendipity and occasionally by using unorthodox methods, they adopted and domesticated indigenous ingredients."2 Santich's book covers the food history of Australia from the late eighteenth century to contemporary Australia, over 200 years. The Colonial Kitchen focuses on a century of British settlement in Australia through its kitchens, cooks, cookbooks, literature, gardens, producers and providers. Australia's first cookery book, The English and Australian Cookery Book: Cookery for the Many as Well as for the "Upper Ten Thousand,"3 had a section on cooking native game and several recipes for cooking kangaroo. The opening chapter sets the scene at the southeastern edge of Australia in the late eighteenth century where the Aboriginal people, the Eora, ate kangaroo, emu, fish, prawns, eels, oysters, mussels, crabs and whale (2). Founders of the new colony first existed on rations from the ships and these were gradually supplemented with produce from the sea and land as well as cultivated fruit and vegetables. In the second chapter, O'Brien observes that early Australians did consume native foods, that they were "foraging for wild vegetables, catching kangaroos and green turtles, broiling fish, birds, and lizards and infusing the leaves of native similax to drink" (30). However, colonists were at pains to downplay the consumption of native foods as this was seen as primitive. Euphemisms were used to describe indigenous foods: "young beef" for emu, "flying sheep" for mutton birds, "spinage" for wild greens, "apples" for native fruit and "turbot, sole or skate" for local fish. Still, O'Brien states that the settler's consumption of native foods could be seen as "eating around the edges". Any reluctance to testing the "new" flora and fauna was attributed to their potentially unpalatable and even toxic properties. Further, there was anxiety that foraging for foods further inland would subject the colonists to attack from Aboriginal people. Another view that The Colonial Kitchen challenges is that colonial Australians were not growing and eating sufficient vegetables. The author points out that kitchen gardens at pastoral stations and farms supplied fresh vegetables. As well, fresh vegetables were purchased from market gardens established on the edges of towns. Among the growers were the Chinese who arrived in the years of the gold rushes from the mid-nineteenth century. Less was recorded of the types of vegetables eaten than the highly valued meats (more available and cheaper than in Britain). Colonial Australians were keen to be upwardly mobile and to be seen as civilized and genteel. A vegetable-based cuisine would have echoes of a peasant diet while the consumption of copious amounts of meat demonstrated affluence. Much more was written about meat in personal accounts and colonial cookbooks. O'Brien also suggests that the popularly held notion of the bland and unappetizing colonial meals was due, in part, to the absence of literary and visual rhetoric in colonial...

Local communities’ valuation of environmental amenities around the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park in Southern Africa

ABSTRACTThis paper seeks to examine how communities value a variety of dryland environmental amenities provided by the Kgalagadi Transfontier Park where there is an interest in limiting their access, both in order to protect the environment and in order to make it more attractive for tourists. This is done using a choice experiment, which targeted households in the Kgalagadi area. The values placed on environmental amenities by indigenous communities are estimated using a conditional logit model, a random parameter logit model and a random parameter logit model with interactions. The results show that local communities would prefer getting increased grazing opportunities and bush food collection. This is an important policy issue in itself, and it also ties in well with on-going discussions on how to compensate (or at least attach reasonable cost estimates to) losses to local communities linked to environmental preservation policies.

Creating multi-functional landscapes: Using exclusion fences to frame feral ungulate management preferences in remote Aboriginal-owned northern Australia

Invasive species can have negative and positive impacts for local communities. Conflict between these different values can complicate and sometimes prevent broad-scale management and decision-making. Multi-functional landscapes and community-based conservation paradigms have emerged as constructive approaches to integrating competing interests and the development of sustainable and locally meaningful management planning. Here, we report on a five year feral ungulate exclusion fence project that was used to focus local people's attention on the eco-cultural and socio-economic impacts of feral ungulate invasion in a remote Aboriginal-owned region of northern Australia. Exclusion of feral buffalo, horses and pigs from three culturally significant freshwater billabongs from 2009 to 2013 resulted in variable increases in smooth ground (from 64–93%), ground cover vegetation (from 18–95%) and water lily cover (bush food) (from 20–60%), dependent on the site. The reduction in feral animal ground surface damage in the fenced areas was fastest at the floodplain billabong, Nalawan, which took only a year to become negligible. At the two channel billabongs, Costello and Namaliwiri, feral animal damage was negligible after 3years. Senior Aboriginal Traditional Owners of these areas were pleased that these environmental assets were protected, but only agreed on the wholesale culling of pigs. Despite recognition of the negative eco-cultural impacts of feral ungulates as observed through the exclusion fence project, they wanted to maintain buffalo and horse on their Country to financially benefit from potential pet-meat and live export industries. Fencing was requested for culturally meaningful sites including those that were used for fishing and were sacred. Fenced areas were viewed by Traditional Owners as “protected” areas of ecological and cultural resources. These multiple management preferences can be combined to build socio-ecological resilience into regional strategic planning for feral ungulate management that will deliver multiple benefits for local communities.

Conceptualising climate change adaption for native bush food production in arid Australia

Conceptualising climate change adaption for native bush food production in arid Australia

Enrichment plantings as a means of enhanced bush food and bush medicine plant production in remote arid regions – a review and status report

Enrichment plantings as a means of enhanced bush food and bush medicine plant production in remote arid regions – a review and status report

Strategies to Support the Interests of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples in the Commercial Development of Gourmet Bush Food Products

Abstract:Indigenous groups and individuals may have different needs and aspirations in relation to their local plant foods (“bush foods”). Interests may reflect totemic relationships, customary rights and duties, social positions, political and economic motivations, and personal capacities. This article uses a systems method to identify strategies to support the diverse interests of Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in the commercial development of gourmet bush food products. The aim is to identify possibilities for further consideration by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

Hunger and the humanitarian frontier

Within a few days of settlers' arrival in Eora country in 1788, disruptions to the ecological balance between population and food supply were set in train. The first conflicts were over fish and the officers soon observed that the local people were 'very hungry'. Over the next century and a half as settlement spread across the continent, so too did these disruptions. Their rate and extent was not everywhere the same. Different economic modes and different demographics varied their impacts, and bush food continued to be important. Indeed, recent research shows that in some contexts settlers embraced and depended on Indigenous foodways. But while such insights are important in variegating the larger story, disruption to food supplies was one of colonialism's irrefutable consequences. This knowledge has informed the writing of Indigenous historiography since the 1970s. Henry Reynolds' influential 'The Other Side of the Frontier' (1981) saw the European invasion resulting in 'chronic insecurity' in relation to food, and much of his analysis of resistance proceeds from conflict over resources. A decade earlier, C. D. Rowley wrote that there was 'a kind of inevitability' in the progression from the 'destruction of native food supply, or of the incentives to hunt and gather it' to rationing.