How would you know what's safe to eat?

Adlemons said:

How would he be able to decide what is ok to eat - short of trying everything? At the moment his diet seems to just be meat because he can cook that. But what about fruit/berries?

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On Earth, in North America, the general rule is that white and yellow berries are poisonous, blue and purple are fine and red can go either way.

The customary test is to take a berry and crush it on the back of your hand. A reaction means don't eat it. After an hour with no reaction, touch the crushed berry to the outer lips. If still no reaction for another hour, touch it to the tongue. If it's bitter, spit it out. Otherwise, no reaction for two more hours, eat one berry. Wait 24 hours. If no reaction, they should be safe.

The same testing works for all plant materials (as well as insacts), though fruits/berries/nuts/seeds, shoots and roots are usually the more nutritious and useful parts. Many plants have perfectly edible roots and poisonous fruit or vice-versa.

The other thing is watch what mammals eat. Birds and reptiles can often eat things poisonous to mammals so don't rely on them.

Jeff

Your best bet to say is if the MC can eat a critter then its more likely that the things that the critter can eat he can eat.

Avoid eating apex predators as they will have the most pollutants and such collecting in them. But as many people have said this already...

As a writer I'd set the situation so its a bit hit or miss for the character in his first days. He gets lucky and the first creepy crawly they eat is safe that way from there on they have something reliable but can be made scarce as the story requires. From there things like him taste testing things can have drastically bad results that ends up with him waking up a day later in cold sweats and dehydrated or such and force him to re-evaluate his methodology.

Failure is what keeps the book interesting and your MC from getting complacent.

WeaselFire said:

The other thing is watch what mammals eat. Birds and reptiles can often eat things poisonous to mammals so don't rely on them.

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True for Earth. On another planet, where presumably everything evolved independently from Earth, you can't assume that something that looks like a bird, reptile or mammal is in the least bit similar biologically to their analog, or to you.

WeaselFire said:

On Earth, in North America, the general rule is that white and yellow berries are poisonous, blue and purple are fine and red can go either way.
Jeff

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Doesn't deadly nightshade have a dark purple berry?

Quickbread said:

Doesn't deadly nightshade have a dark purple berry?

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Yes.

It's future tech - you should have a sensor to detect caustic/noxious substances or perhaps an injection to keep you from dying from common poisons.

If you want the character to suffer a bit don't forget all the lovely way plants protect themselves from predators (like the MC): nasty bristly spines, spines coated with toxin, teeny little hairs that break off in your skin and irritate you to madness, caustic substances that give you a horrible rash, toxic substances to wreck your central nervous system or paralyze your lungs or burn out your esophagus, acidic fluids, basic fluids, gradual toxins that build up over time and murder your face in a few days or weeks, tough outer shells to protect their tasty innards, or horribly toxic leaves/flowers/stems and tasty roots.

That's just on Earth! On a planet with a different biological foundation you get to decide if anything is edible or digestible to your MC. THe likelihood is that it isn't but that's boring real science stuff. For storytelling purposes having some miserable side effects is a lot more fun. Having truly embarrassing effects like causing extreme flatulence or a case of Montezuma's Revenge is likely and gives you something to remind readers not to leave the spaceship without a healthy supply of protein bars and water recyclers.

Quickbread said:

Doesn't deadly nightshade have a dark purple berry?

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No, the berries are red. You probably are thinking of Black Nightshade, some varieties of which are edible.