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Comment by AlecSchueler | Hacker News Reader

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 connection with the coast line could lack a seaweed culture.

Until I saw this article I was starting to think seaweed was unique to rockier island coastlines, but I guess it just comes down to taste/fashion?

After all, you can sail the seven seas as pillage the world of all its spices, but nothing compares to a broodje kaas! Have heard the theory that it's part of Calvinistic protestantism to avoid strong flavours, but then I'd expect to see more seaweed etc in the South.

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Cheese and milk products in general are popular because it keeps well in winter, and large swathes of the country would get flooded on occasion; only grass would survive, which cows eat, and cows produce milk. Hard to build underground cold storage as well in case of flooding or just a high water table. Cheese will save us all.

> Cheese will save us all.

Except vegans, of course.

Interestingly the Netherlands is actually one of the biggest markets for vegan cheese altnernatives. Many people here, even if they aren't vegan, try to limit their reliance on animal products for health, climate related or other moral reasons.

Moving here from London was a shock: I thought London was one of the better places for vegetarian food, I wasn’t prepared for the huge selection of vegan alternatives in everyday Dutch supermarkets

> Moving here from London was a shock: I thought London was one of the better places for vegetarian food, I wasn’t prepared for the huge selection of vegan alternatives in everyday Dutch supermarkets

They are often the source for lots of Asian ingredients in mainland Europe, while I was in the UK we sourced lots of things like umeboshi and miso from Holland; to my surprise being from CA with lots of access to Japanese/Chinese/Korean ingredients I found lots of the Dutch stuff to be really good.

I'm not sure if that has to do their with relationship (and desire for it's food) with Japan during the isolation period, but there were lots of Japanese products in a biodyanmic farm/shop I worked at in Germany too.

Sadly, it was rather limited in scope because they are the main exporters of conventional food in the EU for a reason.

Lol we really aren't as unique as we think, are we? I had the inverse experience.

After a few years living in the NL I was travelling home via London. I'd come to love vegan food while living here and expected London would be beyond my wildest dreams for choices, being so big and so diverse.

Imagine my dissappointment when I went to the shop and the closest thing to a vegan option I could find was a cheese and egg sandwich!

Ended op going to Boots where I found mint and sweetpeas.

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

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

Ancient cheeses might have abused a larger variety of species given regional variations in prokaryotes.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9792889/

Ancient people did not see animals are beings with feeling, they were seen as useful production machines.

It's only in modern times that we have the luxury of taking the animal's feeling into account at all. I'm sure you would want even more consideration for the animals, but it's much better today than it was.

How do you know that "ancient people" never thought of animals as having feelings? Seems an extraordinarily broad claim given all the cultures and ages that encompass "ancient people"

Because I read some of their writings? The concept of a "Pet" was foreign to them. Animals - even dogs, were there to work.

The concept of how an animal was feeling simply didn't occur to them. An animal was a tool, and you took good care of the tool, but not because of the tool, but because then it was more useful.

It was the 18th century when animal rights started becoming a thing, which exactly corresponds with the industrial age when things became less scarce and people could worry about animals, and not just themselves.

"Some of", indeed. The poster above is correct that your statements are over-broad.

There are hundreds of Roman monuments, inscriptions, and poems [celebrating dogs](https://thepetrifiedmuse.blog/2015/06/20/every-dog-has-his-d...) as companions and pets. There are medieval European graves that strongly suggest sentimentality towards the animals buried in them. There's this [lovely ninth-century Irish poem](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/48267/...) about a cat. Someone with more knowledge in the area than I possess should comment on animal portraiture in ancient and early-modern China and Japan, but that was a thing as well.

I think the fairest thing to say is that people in every era - very much including today - instrumentalize some animals, and sentimentalize others.

Buddhism even back then 2500 years ago was very conscious of all that.

You read some writing by some "ancient" people (post writing 'ancient it seems) and you're launching into broad sweeping generalisations about all "ancient people" ?

Wow.

Meanwhile, I've travelled a lot for work - mostly to odd corners of the world, and I've yet to meet people that didn't have stories about animals and animal behaviours.

Famously, for example, Australian Aboriginal Dreamtime stories are largely about animals, Tiddalick the Frog, Emu and the Jabiru, etc.

They encapsulate the place of animals in the environment, and as hunter gatherers attuned to where next years meal will come from, attention is paid to breeding and caring for the young so that there are full grown adults to breed again and to eat.

Rightly or wrongly the stories are about the imagined feelings of animals, the things that make them happy and plentiful, the bad things that cause numbers to dwindle.

Various people had various relationships with various animals, not as "pets" but as other beings in the world.

For example: Ngarritj - the Yolngu speaking bird

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbSxc6Y1aVA

some != "all people across all cultures for all time"

I mean even my own currently-alive ancestors (farmers, the majority of them) don't look at livestock as living, conscious beings. They obviously care for each animal and give them a swift and as-painless-as-possible butchering when the time comes, but they're not the bleeding hearts that many people these days are, they're mostly just vehicles for vital necessities.

I don't find it difficult to imagine my great-great-great-great-(fill in the appropriate number of greats here to qualify for ancient ancestors) grandmother butchering a pig and not really giving it a second thought at all, having grown up on a farm myself. Hell, my current grandma is probably much gentler and gives the pork a much better time than my ancient ancestors did

I think it's a mistake to look at cultural trends across the last century and to extrapolate from there without any broader research.

"A wise person does not kill any living being."

- Mahavira, 6th century BC

(Translated, of course.)

We can easily conclude that Mahavira was either a dumb person, or an hypocritical one, 21th century AD.

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

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

How is this trolling? The development of factory farms where living creatures are so inhumanely mistreated at scale is a very recent development.

They probably misunderstood scale to mean something like “in the ways,” not more literally “by the numbers.” I’ve seen people suggest that we’re more savage and brutal towards animals these days on other websites, and I think that’s an absurd conclusion to draw because I don’t think we have sufficient evidence for it. It seems unquestionable that we’re doing it to more animals, though. There are more people eating far more animals these days. I suppose some might argue they aren’t suffering or something? That’s crazy, to me.

By the standards of modern "meatlovers" they might as well have been, given just how rarely they had meat.

It depends on where you lived whether you had large supplies of meat.

And even more on when you lived! Who are my "ancestors?" Big difference if we're talking about the ice age or the 18th Century.

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.

Chimpazees do hunting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimpanzee#Hunting

" their sharp, pointy teeth." Humen can create weapons and fire. No need for long teeth.

Australopithecus did eat animals. "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australopithecus#Diet"

Its a common misconception among vegetarians that humen were originally vegetarians. Quiet the opposite is true.

we have evidence for hunter gathering societies since 1.8 million years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter-gatherer#Archaeological...

1.8M years is a drop in the bucket on an evolutionary timeline

Humen can create weapons and fire. No need for long teeth.

sure. is that evolution or technology?

1.) Can you just admit that your original claims are debunked by wikipedia? 2.) Of course 1.8 Million years matter in Evolution. Please make you familiar with the Wikipedia article instead being a pseudo sceptical.

sure, ok. I misspoke when I said all the great apes are vegetarian. in reality, all the great apes are and were mostly vegetarian.

idk if that's really worth the effort, but I admit it, you made a point.

edit: to everybody else, I apologize for the passive-aggressive vibe, I just don't see where else this (requested!) reply can really go.

When you're starving to death in the middle of winter everyone is an omnivore.

Thankfully fewer and fewer of us are regularly facing starvation. Yay for choice and luxury!

That makes a lot of sense actually, thanks for the insight! I guess that kind of chimes with the Dutch passion for preservation as well, with the salted herring etc. Anything you can preserve you can sell further afield as well!

You also reminded me of something I heard on the great History of the Netherlands podcast from the University of Amsterdam. Apparently back in the day in Friesland they would tether their cows to something and let them float when the regular flooding came.

But speaking of the flooding: I can see how that would be bad for other kinds of crops, but surely seaweed would actually be pretty notable for dealing well water? Sounds like even more reason why I'd expect to see it as part of the culinary traditions here.

Seaweed must have water though.

I deplore cheese. It’s a personal thing but I just cannot fathom people eat rotten solidified milk. Same applies to yogurt. I’ll happily eat seaweed and insects though.

I have only ever eaten it dried, but last time I was in Portstewart I saw someone collecting it fresh, and got talking to him.

It tastes a LOT nicer fresh. But that's not saying a lot, I mean it still tastes like salty rubber.

As for the content below, that it tastes like bacon?? I mean, yeeeeeaaaaaahhh? In the same way that a used condom might taste of bacon?

I'm assuming that is more texture based. I think it just tastes of seaweed. I'll bow to your greater experience on the flavour of used condoms.

Wasn't expecting to see Portstewart on Hacker News today but here we go!

Aye, I've only had the fresh stuff myself as a child. My aunties would rent a caravan down on the Strangford coast and we would go down to get it ourselves, and we'd pick mollusks from the rocks and other things of that nature. Some great memories there, thank you for bringing them to the fore.

Salty rubber is right. I don't actually like the stuff myself but I still enjoy eating it somehow! The iodine flavour is always the main thing for me, but I can see the appeal for sure.

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 out tons of stuff that was edible, but somehow ceased to be popular food.

This reminds me of some other losses of Dutch identity/tradition: Dutch folkloric dances (almost no Dutch person will be able to tell you what they where) or the fact that only Japanese seem to know what "Dutch coffee" is.

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.

Typically you get Salicornia in the Netherlands which is not strictly seaweed but I guess somewhat comparible (aquatic plants is I guess what they call it in the article)

Ah yes samphire! Zeekreel. Funny enough it's something I've seen growing at home in Ireland but never thought it was something I could be eating. I'll check that out for sure, thank you.

Zeekraal is really nice in lots of dishes. It goes well with at least pasta, patatoes and salads.

This is something I really miss now that I don’t live in NL. I have found it along the coast in Washington, but almost never for sale.

Northern Irish, living in the Netherlands, commenting on hacker news, there must be severals of us!

Dozens of us

Dozens! A wheen at least :)

a brave wheen

Do I smell a meetup coming? I know a place in Rotterdam that does Tayto and bottles of bucky!

>Have heard the theory that it's part of Calvinistic protestantism to avoid strong flavours

That's very believable. Puritan protestants banned all kinds of things that produce "pleasure". How do you think westerners got so prudish about intercourse?

> but then I'd expect to see more seaweed etc in the South.

Warmer waters carry less oxygen(I think that's the gist of it), so less seaweed grows.

Just think about a perfect beach, with clear blue waters and seeing all the way down to the sand on the seafloor... you know it's somewhere very warm and there's no seaweed.

I meant the South of the Netherlands, sorry, which doesn't have a drastically warmer climate than the North of the country.

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