Indigenous Bushtucker Australia's New Superfoods

Vic Cherikoff is an Australian food scientist  who has been researching the health benefits of traditional Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander foods, many of which are mentioned in his forthcoming book Australian Wild Foods, Looking Back 60,000 Years for Clues to our Future Survival. Last month he explained to Good Food why some of these are so important.

Cherikoff believes we have a lot to learn from the Indigenous hunter-gatherers of the past, as they ate better quality foods, and with a much greater variety, than we do today. "They harvested foods that yielded complex carbohydrates and fibre and huge levels of antioxidants, anti-inflammatories and other micro-nutrients that all provided a protective role against diabetes and a myriad other modern diseases of poor nutrition," he said.

Indeed, there has been a movement towards high end restaurants using traditional Australian foods, with InterContinental Sydney executive chef Tamas Pamer, the host of ABC's Wild Kitchen and Indigenous chef Clayton Donovan, and Melbourne's Attica chef Ben Shewry progressing the movement.

Some of the foods that have been making a comeback are:

• Lemon myrtle
• Pepperberry
• Saltbush
• Mountain pepper
• Wild Rosella
• Kakadu plum
• Wattleseed
• Quandong

Cherikoff describes these as some of the original superfoods, and if you're interested in experimenting with them then a wide range of native herbs and spices can be found at Australian Functional Ingredients and Herbie's Spices.

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Mireille Kilgour

Mireille Kilgour has been an entrepreneur for 35 years in the hospitality sector. French born, she has been an accomplished business owner and operator for a number of Sydney venues. Leading the industry with high profile institutions such as Lamrock Café Bondi, she has endless passion for the industry, and now has the pleasure of supporting restaurants to fill their tables with the new Good Food Gift Card program.

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