Something’s jellyfishy in the state of Italy | Hacker News Reader

Something’s jellyfishy in the state of Italy

hakaimagazine.com

43 pointsbenbreen27 comments

As someone who enjoys eating Asian-style jellyfish, this article was quite weird to read, as the author made it a big deal of his personal experience being disgusted by it as a food. While I'm glad that the author eventually ended the article on a positive note having enjoyed the jellyfish (and relating it to the introduction of tomatoes to Italy!), describing his disgust in such detail was quite offputting. It's very normal for many cultures around the world for jellyfish to be a part of the standard diet. It reminds me of the stereotypes surrounding normal food of other cultures (especially Asian cuisines) that we see so often here in the US.

On that note, the fact that jellyfish was banned for consumption in the EU was mindblowing.

> I spot the turgid tentacles and part of the cap floating in the orange liquid, and my stomach turns. The first spoonful of broth goes down quickly. It tastes like a delicious––and fishy––tomato soup. Then I search for a piece of the jellyfish. I hesitate. I slurp it up.

> It feels like a gulp of the sea itself as the flavor of the jellyfish unfurls in my mouth with the strength of a tsunami. The texture reminds me of calamari or a piece of fat from a cooked steak. As I chew, trying to repress the impulsive disgust, I think of cooked tripe. I swallow.

You reaction seems a bit excessive, the entire article is covered with "keeping an open mind", the critical part is that he did, in fact, find it not great. It's pretty far from a "oh look at how disgusting this asian food is".

Yeah especially since there are people who view cheese as mostly disgusting. And that’s just cheese. Now snails. I find them disgusting but know people who love it. I hope they do not mind that I do not find them appealing in the least. I should be permitted to also feel disgusted.

> view cheese as mostly disgusting

Hi, that's me! I find cheese incredibly gross, from the smell to the texture to it's taste. But I'm certain that's probably because I was raised without dairy as kid (dairy set off my asthma incredibly badly), so I never developed a taste for it. Even as an adult I still find it (and milk) gross!

Yeah there are lots of foods which are normal because we were exposed to them as we develop into adults. Those not exposed to some of these items can naturally feel disgusted to the point some people will feel physically ill when trying to eat one of these items.

Hah... Just pretend it's stinky tofu!

Seriously, the only way I can deal with 臭豆腐 is thinking of it as weird cheese.

It is strange it is banned, I have eaten it in the UK (when it was in EU), so I don’t know the ban is enforced much.

> the fact that jellyfish was banned for consumption in the EU was mindblowing.

To me it's mind blowing that people would eat them. I had no idea you can do that or that you'd want to do that, as they're super gross.

They look like a bowl of jizz had intercourse with a bowl of snot. Who would look at those and think "yummy!"?

What food, apart from fruit and a few vegetables looks nice and edible in its raw state?

Cows, pigs, sheep, rabbits, etc. all are pleasant to look at while alive. Can't say the same for jellyfish.

Pleasant to look at != Mmm food.

Plus jelly fish can look quite beautiful.

More beautiful than a cow with shit on its arse etc.

Plus have you looked at a monkfish recently?

Great article, I wonder about the nutrition content. The only note is "Jellyfish are 95 percent water and a small percentage of proteins" which doesn't really make much of a case nutritionally.

I wonder if it is a source of any important nutrients, if it is not good for macros.

For what it's worth, cucumbers are 96% water.

And I love watermelon and it does not bother me that they are nutritionally light and contain sugars.

>doesn't really make much of a case nutritionally.

Aquired taste aside, it's decent diet food. Good for satiety. Interesting texture, tedious to eat and pretty filling for marginal amount of protein. Kind of like Shirataki Noodles but more protein.

So you're saying it is the next runaway financial success for selling stuff to people trying to keep their weight down? I'm sold, where do I invest?

There's a concern that the rise of jellyfish is due to over-fishing, and so the response of, "Hey, let's eat the jellyfish," is, well, worrisome.

It's also deeply human.

I wouldn't put it on one creature. All forms of life eat what is available to them to eat, generally preferring that which require the fewest resources possible.

It's not just overfishing (which reduces population of jellyfish predators) thats the problem, it's also related to the general loss of bio-diversity in our oceans. I read somewhere that climate change, pollution etc. favors more primitive species like jellyfish, which being simpler can thrive where more complex/interdependent species are showing signs of distress.

Yeah, warming oceans are a huge part of it. Jellies can thrive further and further north as the oceans fail to cool off as much in the winter. So their habitat is expanding, while the habitat of other species is shrinking.

Don't try this at home

1. Rhyzostoma is one of the few edible jellyfishes because its diet is a little special and they "don't have" stingers. Is known since decades that the entire family is mostly safe to eat. You can rub against an alive Rhyzostoma without major problems. Other jellyfishes aren't so benign.

2.Jellyfishes are >95% water, this means that if you try to just put it in a frypan with hot oil you will end with a fire in your kitchen. Not different than trowing a water glass into boiling oil. People eat it only after dessicated.

3.Flavor would be less than awesome; Probably not much different than eating agar-agar or everybody would be eating it yet since Rome empire age. The article mentions also the known problem with aluminium salts for processing it.

4. As Rhyzostoma is a filter feeder, often concentrate in rich areas with currents of fresh waters mixing with the seawater. This fresh water can be (is often) contaminated. If there are a lot of Rhyzostomas in some place will be a lot of nutrients (AKA contamination) in that water.

But is a solution for overfishing. Sort of.

I want to feed jellyfish flavoured water (think chicken stock), and then try to cook them. This couldn't be done with wild fishing, but if the jellyfish could be temporarily transferred to a holding tank while alive, it could. The chicken stock would penetrate deep into them due to the nature of their open circulatory system -- allowing the jellyfish to self flavour themselves.

You don't think that would kill them pretty quickly?

I had Jellyfish in a home tank and couldn't keep them alive for a week doing everything I could to protect them.

Shoutout to one of the WORST kick starters in history.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/blake-gratton/jellytank...

An easier solution might be to dry them out and add the resulting protein powder to animal feed. Jellyfish probably don’t need a lot of special, energy-intensive processing to make them palatable to pigs, and pigs don’t need a lot of special, energy-intensive processing to make them palatable to us.

What the hell, I didn't know there were so many "miscellaneous" kind of creatures in the ocean: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gelatinous_zooplankton

The article doesn’t mention it but I thought jellyfish have very little calorific value and for that reason are only a viable food source for creatures like turtles that can spend all day grazing on specific parts of them (like just the tentacles).

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