Land conservation has many obvious benefits -- protecting habitats and watersheds, preventing erosion, offering places of beauty and respite. Few of us consider the additional benefit to our health and well-being that derives from the wild, nutrient-dense foods these natural areas can provide. Take a provocative look at agriculture (particularly small-scale) and its effects on the environment and human health. How does clearing the canopy and understory of a natural area affect wild food sources? Do changes in our diet over the past century have a physiological and genetic impact? Appreciating the critical need humans have for wild food provides another powerful argument for the protection of land from uses that drastically alter its ecological function.