Only eat oysters in months with an 'r'? | Hacker News Reader

Only eat oysters in months with an 'r'?

phys.org

52 pointsdnetesn46 comments

In the US you can ask to see a restaurant’s oyster tags. All restaurants are required to keep these tags and to show them on request. If they don’t have them or won’t produce them, don’t eat the oysters. The tags identify when they were harvested, when they expire and where they were harvested down to a specific zone of a designated harvesting region. If there is a harmful bacterial outbreak and a recall is issued then they can only comply if they have their tags and can identify affected product. Every type of mollusk comes with such a tag. If the restaurant is buying them cooked (i.e. canned) then they will have to tell you as much.

EDIT: I now recall one place I’ve worked that carried canned oysters and each can came with a tag attached as well.

There is no such thing as a guarantee of safety of any kind. With no reliable way of detecting this bacteria until people start getting sick, the smart thing to do is to take advantage of regulation. Also oysters are too amazing to only eat for a third of the year. They taste best chilled on a hot summer day.

I’ve never heard of this - do people actually do this - or is this like requesting to see an elevators maintenance log the is on file in the managers office (e.g. something you can theoretically do, but no one ever does)

In restaurants the tags usually go straight to the office. In a butcher shop I handled all of the seafood and we kept a little plastic filing box with the tags in a folder by month. I think there is some rule about keeping them 30 days or so after the stop of sale. We were always able to provide the tags easily because health inspectors check them. I told customers about the tags when they asked about the safety of eating oysters. I don’t remember ever being asked for them by a customer but once I turned away a box of either oysters or mussels from a supplier whose tag had fallen off.

Personally I would respect a customer who asks to see the tags once to see if the place is compliant. It’s like when a customer corrects someone who asks if the sushi-grade fish is “fresh” or “never frozen” (being frozen at extreme temperature is what makes it legally sushi-grade and the equipped ships are often at sea for months, so “fresh” is just a buzzword). It’s encouraging when consumers know the product.

Is this a federal thing? Restaurant regulations tend to be local, so I’d be very surprised.

Not maintenance logs, but plenty of US states require the elevator inspection to be posted in the elevator which also shows an expiry date (next inspection due).

> ...oysters are too amazing to only eat for a third of the year.

September to April: 3/4 of a year.

I guess for some people the rule is the month must end with an r? Sep to Dec is 1/3.

Anyway, Sep to Apr is only 2/3.

Do they track when the oysters with different tags are served?

I’m just imagining an outbreak and the restaurant saying, well, here are the 10 tags for the oysters I served in the past week.

Helpful, but your still going to have to figure out which batch was affected.

A bacteria dangerous to people with weakened immune systems is more prevalent in warm summer months.

https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2018/12/10/669624957/as...

This is regex golf[1]: /r/ matches the eight fall and winter months but not the four summer months (at least by some definition of the seasons based on academic sessions or oysters or whatever).

[1] https://www.xkcd.com/1313/

In Portugal we have the inverse rule about eating snails(1), even though the snails we eat are not captured "in the wild".

(1) If you're curious, they're boiled and of the small variety, loved by the south half of the country, disgusting to the north half. Here's an illustration: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/d7/59/35/d7593505490d79f4942c...

Looks very much like the ones we also eat where I live. Like baked with herbs and butter, although that variation is probably of French origin. We call them vineyard snails, and we've got a lot of vineyards here! ;-) Now I feel like eating!

the same rule applies for snails (the same kind) and sea urchin in Italy.

Tip: if you’re in Colorado and you see “Rocky Mountain Oysters” on the menu, be forewarned that its not really oyster. There are no oysters in the Rocky Mountains, oysters are seafood.

Are these synonymous with prairie oysters?

Yes, they are the same as prairie oysters. They are rich in zinc, so if you feel a cold coming then it may be a good idea to eat a few of these “oysters”.

For those wondering:

> "Rocky Mountain oysters ... is a dish made of bull testicles."[0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocky_Mountain_oysters

Oysters spawn as the water warms. In the northern hemisphere this would be the months (in English) without an "r" in it. Spawning requires a lot of energy and the oysters lose weight, texture and flavor. Warm water oysters such as those in the Gulf of Mexico may spawn continuously, albeit at a more leisurely rate. Their flavor tends to be fairly constant year-round although never reaches the peak of a cold water species in the "r" months...

The article is light on information about shell rings, so I immediately went to read more about them:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_ring

I had ordered Oysters in Ireland in November. I realized that I might be prone to illness by eating them (every foreign trip has led to some illness for me) but the month 'r' strategy softened me up a bit but was worried that it was a grey zone time period from the warm summer dangers. I learned a lot about Irish oyster farming.

I was sick the next week back in the states lol - a stomach bug.

In the Southern Hemisphere we need a completely different rule about oysters.

Not sure about where you're from, but aren't most oysters flown in from the northern hemisphere?

There's plenty of home-grown oysters in Australia.

Yeah, but they're all trying to kill you.

Bluff oysters, coffin bay oysters, sydney rock oysters, tasmanian oysters, etc, etc. And that's just some of the 'local' ones.

Never heard of an oyster flown in from the Northern hemisphere. Pacific oysters (from Japan) are cultivated in Coffin Bay and Tasmania. Native oysters predominate in most of NSW, where Pacific oysters are classed as a noxious species.

I never touch Pacific oysters in the later summer months - mainly because spawning makes them taste awful. Sydney rock oysters are great in the summer fortunately.

Only eat oysters in months without an 'r'?

No, silly, it's only in months with an ɹ.

Germany has this rule with carp.

If I wanted oysters, I could just walk down to the beach and get them. I tried it a while back. Steamed them. Not bad. But I don't really care for the taste of oysters anyway.

I suppose it's nice to know they are there as a potential SHTF food supply.

This reminds me of a 'rule' in Poland that you shouldn't get married in a month with an 'r' in it.

A better idea that a lot of people have is the you should never get married in a month that has a Wednesday in it.

A similar idea is that one should enjoy a beer on days of week that end with 'y'.

days that start with a T, like tuesday, thursday, thaturday thunday, today, and tomorrow.

In Italy you shouldn't get married (or leave for a trip) on Tuesdays and Fridays.

Possibly because those are the days associated with Mars and Venus in romance languages.

I thought Mars is the god of marriage, and Venus is the god of venturing. It's right there in the name.

No, Mars is the god of war (and the archetype of masculine) and Venus the god of love (archetype of feminine).

According to the OED, the Latin root of “marriage” is of uncertain origin. As far as I’m aware, there’s no known connection to Mars.

Spain: "en martes ni te cases ni te embarques" (on Tuesday, don't get married and don't board a ship)

In English, Tuesday is named for Tiw and Friday for Frig. Monday for the moon, Sunday for the sun, Wednesday for Woden (more commonly known by his Norse name, Odin), and Thursday for Thunor/Thunder (Norse name: Thor).

When your ancestors met mine, they decided Tiw was the equivalent of Mars, Woden of Mercury, Thunor of Jupiter, and Frig of Venus, and hence the correspondence.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretatio_graeca#Interpr...

Sadly, English mythology is now much less well known than Roman, so most people aren’t even aware of these etymologies.

> Sadly, English mythology is now much less well known than Roman, so most people aren’t even aware of these etymologies

In my experience most people aren’t even aware of any etymologies. Or even the word itself.

you shouldn't start a business/project either ("...né si dà principio all'arte")

I believe it's the opposite (only marry in r-months).

But unlike English, in Polish r-months are randomishly distributed over the year:

• March (marzec)

• June (czerwiec)

• August (sierpień)

• September (wrzesień)

• October (październik)

• December (grudzień)

… so it's not like either rule would make any sense.

I too have heard the positive version of the rule. The randomness might be intentional, so as to make one wait a random but not too large number of months, perhaps to discourage marrying in haste or as an artificial (but reasonable) constraint on planning to increase the perceived value of the event.

Perhaps that's also why there are two variants, so that it works whichever month you are currently in!

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