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Comment by jameslk | Hacker News Reader

I don't quite understand... Do the locals or larger Nordic/European populace not eat as many oysters? Why the Chinese versus any other nationality?

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The problem is lack of demand for this particular oyster in Europe. Otherwise this would be considered a boon for local fisherman. The oysters the article is referring to are of the "giant" variety with many of them being about the size of a human hand (fingers and all).

Not having eaten them myself, I would guess the taste isn't quite the same as their smaller cousins served over ice on the half shell. Also, even if they did taste similar, the sheer size would likely make them unappetizing to even the most adventurous westerners.

The Chinese on the other hand are very familiar with the giant pacific variety and have many traditional recipes for them.

Consuming oysters in a larger than usual amounts would result in high amounts of unwanted metals from the polluted sea (mercury etc.) in the body. Oysters are wonderful sea cleaners.

It is better for a larger population to consume them all, instead of a smaller one consuming more per individual.

Mercury contamination isn't usually a problem with shellfish because they're so near the bottom of the food chain. It's more a problem with big predatory fish like tuna, because each level of the food chain concentrates the mercury.

However, shellfish are very good at collecting micro-plastics, which is an unknown risk.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_oyster

These seem to be the normally eaten oysters everywhere.

I think it's just the Chinese running with a joke.

We farm the Sydney Rock Oyster [1] in Australia, rather than these. Sydney Rock oysters are pretty good eating.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sydney_rock_oyster

Pacific oysters are sold 5-10 to the glass jar at my local Chinese supermarket. The trick is to thoroughly rinse out any sand, then pick a cooking technique that brings out their umami sweetness -- slow cooking them in a clay pot with some green vegetables, ginger, garlic, scallions, and tofu makes a really simple and delicious meal.

> Also, even if they did taste similar, the sheer size would likely make them unappetizing to even the most adventurous westerners.

I think that's taking it a little too far. It's not that crazy a thing to try eating.

Scandinavia and Beijing has approximately the same population, and Denmark is about a fourth of that.

The poor danes would have to eat oysters 24/7 to compete with China, and even if they certainly appreciates good food a bit more than most, it might still actually be too much oysters :)

It's originally just an internet meme that indicates the Chinese eat all kinds of stuff no matter what. People were just self-mocking at first. Since oysters are considered fine food after all, so some companies exploited this trending topic as marketing materials. That's how we get here now.

> It's originally just an internet meme that indicates the Chinese eat all kinds of stuff no matter what.

All countries with a great culinary culture tend to use a great variety of ingredients in all their plates.

And countries with a cultural revolution tend to appreciate more what any nutritious food source they can get.

If by cultural revolution you mean famine, then, by your logic, Ireland should have one of the best cuisines in the world.

Take my comment as someone from the Nordics without any fact to base this on:

Most nordics consider oysters as exotic as eating frog, snails, or calf brain - not something they would be caught doing. (You might have more people ready for the Idea in the capitals) so yes, outside of restaurants there is pretty much no demand for oyster.

As for the Chinese, they are shown in the news to eath all kinds of things that there is zero demand for at home - be it types of fish that aren't part of our cuisine, and byproducts of poultry, pigs and others that have traditionaly not been used in food production.

Really? Frogs, snails or calf brain?

In Belgium (and I'm pretty sure this applies to the UK and France as well), it's not at all uncommon to eat oysters. I don't mind the occasional oyster, but probably couldn't be caught eating calf brain..

Seriously? I am English and whilst I only eat oysters occasionally I wouldn't think they would be considered unusual - and certainly not "exotic". I would have thought our fish and shellfish eating habits would be fairly similar?

Maybe we in Britain picked up the habit from the Romans during the occupation. I'm no expert, but I believe Scandinavia was never occupied by the Romans, so perhaps they never had a chance to learn the mysteries of the oyster.

I'd suspect probably not as many per person, and certainly not as many overall due to population.

It's easy to think of Nordic countries as "big" because they are, after all, "entire countries", but they're really pretty small population wise. Denmark has as many people as Detroit. Norway is similar, Sweden has about twice that population (the total of all 3 being around 20 million people). China has maybe 20 cities that each have more population than Denmark, overall China has about 250x Denmark's population.

This is certainly untrue: Detroit's population has shrunk so much that they are less than a million [1]: Denmark's population is 5.6 million. Perhaps you meant another city?

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detroit

He may have meant the entire metro, which is 4.4 mil. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro_Detroit

Population.

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