Еуэлл Гиббонс: Табиғат сыйларының жақтаушысы

American writer, outdoorsman, and health food advocate

Euell Theophilus Gibbons (September 8, 1911 – December 29, 1975) was an outdoorsman and early health food advocate, promoting eating wild foods during the 1960s.

Gibbons was born in Clarksville, Texas, on September 8, 1911, and spent much of his youth in the hilly terrain of northwestern New Mexico. His father drifted from job to job, usually taking his family (a wife and four children) with him. During one difficult interval of homesteading, Gibbons began foraging for local plants and berries to supplement the family diet. After leaving home at 15, he drifted throughout the Southwest, finding work as a dairyman, carpenter, trapper, gold panner, and cowboy. The early years of the Dust Bowl era found Gibbons in California, where he lived as a self described “bindle stiff” The second, in the August 1973 issue, featured Gibbons, along with granddaughter Colleen, grandson Mike, and daughter in law Patricia, stalking wild foods in four western states. His publishing success brought him fame. He made guest appearances on The Tonight Show and The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour, and received an honorary doctorate from Susquehanna University. A 1974 television commercial for Post Grape Nuts cereal featured him asking viewers, "Ever eat a pine tree? Many parts are edible." While he recommended Grape Nuts over pine trees (including the oft repeated quote that Grape Nuts' taste reminded him "of wild hickory nuts"), the commercials gained attention and fueled Gibbons' celebrity status. Johnny Carson joked about sending Gibbons a "lumber gram", and Gibbons himself joined in the humor; when presented with a wooden award plaque by Sonny and Cher, he good naturedly took a bite out of it (the "plaque" was actually an edible prop). He was satirized by John Byner on the Carol Burnett Show episode which aired October 6, 1973, shown eating tree parts and asking related questions, including "Ever lick a river?" In a 1974 skit on the children's television program The Electric Company, cast member Skip Hinnant (as Early Gibbons) was a proponent of eating items starting with the prefix "ST ," including a tree stump, a staircase (with a "first step," presumably made of wood), and sticks and stones. In Larry Groce's 1976 novelty hit "Junk Food Junkie", the singer extols his healthy lifestyle, claiming to be "a friend of old Euell Gibbons". (The record was released after Gibbons' death.) Often mistaken for a survivalist, Gibbons was simply an advocate of nutritious but neglected plants, which he typically prepared not in the wild, but in the kitchen with abundant use of spices, butter and garnishes. Several of his books discuss what he called "wild parties"—dinner parties where guests were served dishes prepared from plants gathered in the wild. His favorite recommendations included lamb's quarters, rose hips, young dandelion shoots, stinging nettle and cattails. He often pointed out that gardeners threw away the tastier, more healthful crop when they removed such "weeds" as purslane and amaranth from among their spinach plants. Gibbons is considered a saint by the God's Gardeners, a fictional religious sect that is the focus of Margaret Atwood's 2009 novel The Year of the Flood.

Gibbons died on December 29, 1975, aged 64, at Sunbury Community Hospital in Sunbury, Pennsylvania, of a ruptured aortic aneurysm, a common complication from Marfan syndrome.