Going wild for great British game

Meet the passionate farmers, stalkers and chefs working tirelessly to put sustainable and healthy game meat on the country’s tables

- Amanda Morison

THE PHYSICAL beauty of game inspires poets and artists, and can stop most of us in our tracks. Hides in myriad tones of bronze, feathers in stained-glass hues and boar… well, a row of piglets trotting after their mother couldn’t be any more adorable. You certainly never forget the first time you see emerald flashes from teal wheeling in the sky or a silhouette of antlers against a sunrise. But what’s just as uplifting are the health benefits of eating these beauties.

In comparison with other meats, game would be the undisputed Top Trumps winner. Pheasant has more protein, less fat, five times as much iron and three times the selenium of chicken, and half of the calories.

Venison has extremely high iron, zinc and protein levels and, compared with beef, it’s a winner in calorie content, too: 104 kcal per 100g, compared with 191 kcal in beef and only 1g of fat, with trace levels of saturated fat compared with 11g in beef. Venison is also rich in vitamins B6 and B12 and its omega-3 levels are five times higher than those of beef.

Annette Woolcock, head of wild food at BASC, believes that there is something special about wild food because “there’s nothing artificial or chemical in its diet”. BASC has commissioned research from the University of Nottingham to look into the precise nutritional values of game. “We believe vitamin and protein levels are likely to be higher than in farmed equivalents, but most of the current research has been conducted on farmed meat,” says Woolcock, who imagines a future where venison from different species of deer can be targeted for care homes or for post-operative patients in need of specific health benefits. “With 92% of people going into care homes being underweight, and many having lost their appetite, it’s a huge market we could fulfil.”