Black Forager Alexis Nelson: From Foraging to Publishing, Happy Snacking, Don't Die

From Her Own Backyard to the Google Auditorium

Alexis Nikole Nelson, better known on social media as the "Black Forager," recently appeared on Talks at Google to share her full journey — from learning about plants in the garden alongside her mother as a child to publishing her foraging cookbook, Happy Snacking, Don't Die! Her story isn't just about wild greens and mushrooms; it's a personal narrative about reconnecting with culture, history, and the food system.

The host noted at the outset that Alexis's content is "both eye-catching and deeply educational," as she uses a light, humorous approach to teach the public about edible wild plants while revealing the Indigenous and Black cultural roots behind foraging.

The Starting Point of Foraging: Her Mother's Garden and Curiosity

Alexis's foraging journey began in childhood. Her mother was an avid gardener, and there was always a well-tended garden at home. To spend time with her mother, young Alexis followed her around the yard, learning to identify all kinds of plants, including many wild edible varieties.

She recalls that at age five, someone told her "there are delicious things growing in the yard all on their own" — and that moment completely changed her understanding of the world. That sense of wonder has stayed with her ever since; she says she occasionally really does make the news because of her foraging knowledge.

From reading every plant book in the house to visiting public libraries and high school libraries, and continuing to self-teach edible native plants throughout college, Alexis accumulated nearly two decades of botanical knowledge. What actually prompted her to start sharing online was quite practical — after graduating from college, like many liberal arts graduates, she went through a period of financial hardship. A 69-cent pack of ramen couldn't make a decent meal, so she began putting her childhood foraging knowledge into practice and documenting her recipes on Instagram.

Why "Black Forager"?

When deciding to start a new foraging account, Alexis was out walking and chatting with a friend and asked what she should name it. The friend shot back: "What do you think this space is missing?" Alexis laughed and answered: "Black people."

After browsing countless forager accounts, she found almost no one who looked like her. And she herself had learned foraging from a Black woman. So she named the account "Black Forager," hoping that behind those food photos where you can't even see hands, people would know that this knowledge and content came from a Black creator.

She said: "If you trace anyone's ancestry back far enough, you'll find foragers. That's human history." She wants to remind people that foragers aren't all survivalist figures like Bear Grylls — most are just ordinary people who love food and the cultural history of wild foods.

The Rise and Fall of Foraging in America: From Public Lands to Racial Segregation

The most thought-provoking part of the interview was Alexis's account of the historical shifts in American foraging.

In the early days of the United States, some of the Founding Fathers envisioned preserving more public land for ordinary people to use — for grazing or gathering free food — because at the time, most land in England belonged to the Crown, and non-landowners couldn't use it. America did experience roughly a century of relatively open foraging.

But in the South, foraging held a completely different meaning for enslaved Black people. It was a matter of survival. The food provided by plantations was often rotten or extremely scarce, and enslaved people had to learn from their Indigenous neighbors how to identify seasonal plants and how to process and eat them.

After emancipation, plantation owners faced a problem of their own making: they had taught an entire population how to be self-sufficient — now who would do the work? According to historical records Alexis cited, after the Civil War, multiple Southern cities held fierce debates and ultimately passed laws prohibiting non-landowners from engaging in any recreational activity on their land. Suddenly, if you weren't a landowner, you couldn't fish, hunt, trap, or forage on someone else's land without risking jail.

Alexis pointed out that these "trespass laws" spread across the country in concentric circles, including Northern states. Add to that the emergence of "sundown towns," and even when land was public, people of color didn't dare venture into rural areas because their safety couldn't be guaranteed. After the rise of suburban culture in the 20th century, people didn't want to do anything that looked "poor," and foraging declined further. During World War II, George Washington Carver was commissioned by the USDA to write pamphlets encouraging housewives to use wild foods, and foraging saw a brief revival — but the postwar wave of suburbanization marginalized it once again.

This history reveals a key insight: the decline of foraging in America was not a natural evolution but was tightly interwoven with land privatization, racial oppression, and class anxiety.

Trespass Laws were a key legal mechanism in the decline of American foraging. After the Civil War, Southern states successively passed laws defining "engaging in recreational activities on another person's land" as a crime, including fishing, hunting, trapping, and gathering wild food. On the surface, these laws protected private property, but in reality they specifically targeted newly freed Black people — who had long depended on foraging on public and others' land to survive but couldn't afford to buy land. More critically, these laws often conflated "recreation" with "survival," denying the legitimacy of foraging as a means of livelihood.

Sundown Towns were a form of racial segregation prevalent in the United States from the late 19th to the mid-20th century. These towns or communities, through laws, threats of violence, or social pressure, prohibited people of color from staying after sunset. For foragers, this meant that even if the land was public and legal, people of color didn't dare venture into rural areas because if discovered, they could face arrest or even lynching. Sundown towns existed widely in Northern states as well, making the decline of foraging a national phenomenon rather than one limited to the South.

Happy Snacking, Don't Die!: A Foraging Cookbook Organized by Season

Alexis's cookbook Happy Snacking, Don't Die! originated from a video she posted on Instagram. She was hiking with her now-fiancé and explaining the difference between edible wild carrot (Queen Anne's Lace) and the poisonous poison hemlock (which is what killed Socrates). Her fiancé suggested she film it as a video, and she casually ended it with "Happy snacking, don't die."

Her fiancé is a lawyer, and he particularly appreciated that "don't die" advice — "as a lawyer, that phrase satisfies a lot of conditions."

The "Don't die" in the book title is no joke. Alexis mentioned that just recently, someone at a farmers' market in British Columbia, Canada, was selling a toxic lookalike as chanterelles. If someone bought them without knowing what fresh chanterelles look like, the consequences could be fatal.

The book is organized by season — Alexis says other foraging cookbooks not doing this drives her crazy, because readers get interested in a certain plant and then discover they have to wait nine months for it to be in season. Organizing information by season upfront lets readers plan their foraging and cooking from the moment they open the book.

Currently in the transition between summer and fall, Alexis recommends paying attention to autumn ingredients like acorns, black walnuts, and crabapples. She particularly notes that early autumn is the most calorie-dense season for wild foods — plants mature with the energy they've stored throughout the growing season. At home, she processes pounds of acorns into acorn flour, as well as hickory nuts and walnuts — these are the "meat and potatoes" of a year-round wild food diet.

How to Get Picky Eaters to Embrace Wild Food

When asked how to convince someone who's never tried wild food, Alexis's advice is: get them involved in the gathering process.

"If you can be part of the identification, if you and your friends complete a little task outdoors, you'll be much more willing to try the fruits of your own labor — rather than suddenly announcing at the Thanksgiving family gathering, 'I made acorn bread stuffing, try it' — I've tried that, and the effect is not what you'd hope for."

She gave the example of her neighbor's three-year-old: when the child helps pick dandelion flowers, stir the batter, and watch the adults fry them, they get excited about "being part of the process" and will at least take a bite.

Alexis also shared feedback that left a deep impression on her. At a wine club gathering in Columbus, she brought her own cow parsnip flatbread pizza topped with nettle pesto, black walnut vegan sausage, and groundcherries. A friend who worked in fine dining pulled her aside afterward and said the pizza was "so good," asking what was in it. She eventually had to drop him a location pin via Google Maps — "turn right at the giant dead sycamore that looks like a ghost, and when you get to where the fawns are grazing, you'll know you're there." The friend actually went and foraged those ingredients.

She says that as a forager, the best reaction is sometimes when others treat wild food as just ordinary delicious food, rather than something special. Although her initial instinct is to want people to "savor" the millennia of knowledge in it, people enjoying it as naturally as regular pizza is actually the highest compliment.

Cow Parsnip is one of the wild ingredients Alexis mentions, belonging to the Apiaceae family — the same family as carrots and celery. It's widely distributed in North American wetlands and riverbanks; its stems are edible, with a fresh fragrance similar to celery and fennel, and it's one of the traditional foods of Indigenous peoples. Note, however, that cow parsnip contains furanocoumarins — if the sap contacts your skin and is then exposed to sunlight, it can cause photosensitive dermatitis. Wearing gloves when harvesting is recommended.

Nettle is another wild plant she commonly uses, rich in iron, calcium, and vitamins A and C. Fresh nettle's stinging hairs release histamine and formic acid, causing skin irritation, but after blanching or drying, it's safe to eat — often made into pesto, soup, or tea. In European and American traditions, nettle is regarded as a spring tonic food and is one of the earliest green vegetables foragers can harvest.

Groundcherry is a plant in the Physalis genus of the nightshade family; the fruit is wrapped in a papery lantern-like husk and turns golden yellow when ripe, with a sweet-tart flavor resembling a mix of pineapple and tomato. Indigenous peoples of North America have a long tradition of eating them, but unripe fruit and leaves contain solanine and should not be eaten raw.

Reconnecting with the Food System

Alexis doesn't expect everyone to forage as extensively as she does. What she hopes for is to give people a greater sense of connection to the food system.

"Press a few buttons and hot food shows up at your door in 20 minutes" — she admits that she herself ordered takeout last night after arriving at her hotel. "We all love Grubhub and DoorDash. But precisely because we're so disconnected from the food system, because food comes from so far away, we forget how much time, energy, and blood, sweat, and tears went into that fruit salad at breakfast."

She believes that being more involved in where the food on your plate comes from makes people think more deeply about other food choices. Foraging is also a way to recalibrate the nervous system. She says that sometimes after staring at a screen for too long, she feels like "something's off in my brain," so she goes outside and walks among the plants before she can return to the "chaotic rectangular device" to keep working.

From her mother's garden to the stage at Google, Alexis Nikole Nelson uses foraging to connect personal memory, cultural history, and reflections on the food system. Her story reminds us that foraging was never just about finding something to eat — it's about who has the right to access land, whose knowledge gets seen, and how we can relearn to slow down and observe the world around us.

One-line Summary

Black Forager Alexis Nikole Nelson went from her mother's garden to the Google stage, using foraging to connect culture, history, and the food system.

Paragraph Summary

Alexis Nikole Nelson, known as the "Black Forager," shared on Talks at Google her journey from learning about plants with her mother in childhood to publishing the foraging cookbook Happy Snacking, Don't Die! She emphasized the diversity of the foraging community, traced the decline of American foraging to land privatization, trespass laws, and racial segregation, and noted that foraging is a way to reconnect with the food system and reflect on land rights and cultural knowledge transmission. Her book is organized by season, and its title stems from the real risk of confusing toxic plants with edible ones. She also recommends getting picky eaters involved in gathering and cooking to encourage them to try wild food.