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Early Europeans ate seaweed for thousands of years

smithsonianmag.com

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Re: Early Europeans ate seaweed for thousands of years

#231

Post by AlecSchueler »

bboygravity wrote: post #151
AlecSchueler wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha, I clicked on comment to be the token Northern Irishman bringing this up, but you beat me to it! I didn't know seaweed wasn't a common food until I moved to the Netherlands and started enquiring about the local seaweed, only to be met with blank looks or people pointing me to the sushi nori at Albert Heijn. I've been here for years and I still don't understand how such a seafaring nation with such an intimate co…

I suspect Dutchies used to eat quite a bit of seaweed and aquatic plants (and that some still do, zeekraal is fairly popular), but that it was just forgotten by most Dutch people/culture. If you're interested you might want to look for hiking/walking tours into the dunes with some nature-freak and/or chef. Or do some internet searching. I recall going on walks with guides as a kid with the family and they would point…

That's a brilliant idea, I'll definitely look for those, thank you.

I know what you mean about the dancing too. I play traditional music from Ireland and we have a regular folk dance evening here in Rotterdam. It's always a pity that we have to look so far afield for the music and the steps.

From what I've heard there's a perception in Dutch society that folk dance would be mainly associated with the far right. Do you recognise that? Always surprises me because at home the traditional music is very much anti colonial.

Re: Early Europeans ate seaweed for thousands of years

#233

Post by LemmyInThePub »

oregano wrote: post #172
thedaly wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think our ancestors had the luxury of being vegan.

Our ancestors didn’t abuse animals on the scale we do now.

> Our ancestors didn’t abuse animals on the scale we do now.

It's sad this type of trolling is becoming tolerated on HN.

Re: Early Europeans ate seaweed for thousands of years

#234

Post by thaumasiotes »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #52
tecleandor wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kind of funny it's salty but it's called dulce/dulse (Spanish for 'sweet'). I'd love to know the pronunciation for 'Duileasg'

The etymology is completely distinct tho, not a cognate. From Old Irish duilesc (compare Scottish Gaelic duileasg), from Proto-Celtic doliskos, duliskos (compare Welsh delysg), from Proto-Indo-European dʰelh₁- (“to bloom, be green”) (compare duille (“leaf”)). Whereas Latin 'dulcis' comes from PIE dl̥kús ("sweet") Actually probably cognate with Latin 'folium' (Italian foglia, French 'feuille'). EDIT: Actually no. Not…

Comparing this other comment:

> Note that phonetically dulce in NI would be pronounced "dulis."

is interesting in that the modern pronunciation looks much closer to the ancient pronunciation than the modern spelling is to either. What happened?

Re: Early Europeans ate seaweed for thousands of years

#235

Post by thaumasiotes »

raffraffraff wrote: post #211
opportune wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My mostly-uninformed hypothesis is that seaweed’s relative lack of popularity outside of East Asia stems from the industrialization timeline of Asia vs eg Europe. People in Europe could and did farm seaweed, but with the technology of the mid 19th century it was not possible to do so in a mechanized way, while they did have the technology to produce grains, get wild fish, and farm animals in a mechanized way. The dou…

You're probably mostly right. There was a different type poverty back then. These days owning your own home is a dream, but you can walk into a supermarket and buy things that my father wouldn't have dreamt of as a child. Cooked chickens? Every type of fresh fruit and vegetable from all parts of the globe? A frozen food section? Jesus. Remember that video of Yeltsin in the US supermarket? My father is 96. He grew up…

> Even the poor families in our part of the world owned their own house and a plot of land. Daily bread was the big issue!

Owning your own land is how you go from being a poor bachelor to being a poor family.

It is definitely not the case in general in the ancient world that poor people are likely to own land.

(Though also: were there no Travelers in rural Ireland?)

Re: Early Europeans ate seaweed for thousands of years

#236

Post by sct202 »

ssnistfajen wrote: post #196
civilitty wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's the consequence of the food industry becoming hyperindustrialized in which uncommon ingredients and "off-cuts" no longer fit with the goal of pursuing economy of scale. Ultraprocessed food is efficient to produce and distribute and formulated to specifically target innate human cravings (high sugar/sodium/carb/fat) in ways that were not possible before. Hyperindustrialization has done the exact opposite! The m…

Why do you think people in North America no longer see offal (or seaweed) as edible food for humans despite the opposite? It's because of hyperindustrialization has distorted how these people view food ingredients.

A lot of people don't know how to use these ingredients. For offal, I would need a lot of videos showing me how to make really delicious things with some of the parts before I would even bother trying. Also, whenever I see organs at ethnic markets, they're whole organs, and I don't really have much butchering experience since everything I normally buy is already precut into appropriate sizes (eg single chicken breast/thigh/leg, steak of appropriate thickness).

Re: Early Europeans ate seaweed for thousands of years

#237

Post by tessierashpool »

thedaly wrote: post #162
TeMPOraL wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Cheese will save us all. Except vegans, of course.

I don't think our ancestors had the luxury of being vegan.

I don't think our ancestors had the luxury of being vegan.

on the evolutionary scale, this is provably false. all the great apes are vegetarian. we have flat, grinding teeth like cows, and long intestinal tracts like cows too -- not the quick, short intestinal tracts of predators or their sharp, pointy teeth.

strictly speaking, not even cows are vegan. not absolutely, perfectly, and totally. one of the weird side effects of ubiquitous cameras today is people have caught cows eating birds that were trapped in fences. it doesn't happen a lot, but it happens.

but overall, with a reasonable margin of approximation, then yes, our ancestors were definitely vegan, at least our evolutionary ones.

Re: Early Europeans ate seaweed for thousands of years

#238

Post by talideon »

HeckFeck wrote: post #17

Some of us still do! In Northern Ireland, we have a lesser-known seaweed dish called Dulce. https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20180522-the-renaissance-... It's tricky to find it fresh, you usually only get it in small greengrocers or at the Auld Lammas fair. Used to be quite cheap for a bag. Very salty but quite edible and said to be nutrient-dense.

I wouldn't say that Dulce/Dilsk/Dillisk is 'lesser known' at all! And along the west coast of Ireland, it's also commonly eaten, and works great as a flavour enhancer in stews.

Re: Early Europeans ate seaweed for thousands of years

#239

Post by talideon »

deaddodo wrote: post #119
HeckFeck wrote: post #17

Some of us still do! In Northern Ireland, we have a lesser-known seaweed dish called Dulce. https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20180522-the-renaissance-... It's tricky to find it fresh, you usually only get it in small greengrocers or at the Auld Lammas fair. Used to be quite cheap for a bag. Very salty but quite edible and said to be nutrient-dense.

In the Republic, they have carrageen; which is a seaweed in the Irish Sea. It's used as a natural thickener and ingredient in foodstuffs like Carrageen Moss Pudding: https://www.atlasobscura.com/foods/carrageen-moss-pudding

We have dilsk in the Republic too, but it's more of a thing along the Atlantis coasts, not so much the east coast.

Re: Early Europeans ate seaweed for thousands of years

#240

Post by xcxcx »

breakfastduck wrote: post #108
xcxcx wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You're right, every person has exactly the same reaction to all foods. Minor digestive allergies are all made up nonsense! /s

First world problems for people staring too long into artificial lighting
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