Blue fin tuna, wild freshwater eel, and other sushi ingredients are in steep decline due to the popularity as people around the world demand this Japanese cuisine. Restaurant owner and sushi chef Bun Lai says the ancient tradition of sushi must evolve and become sustainable. Living on Earth’s Annie Sneed reports.
Your wish is my command! Bugs, coming right up!
Thanks so much for making us your favorite restaurant! We are grateful for that! Being ribbed by SNL was cool, for sure! :)
Last night, Saturday Night Live poked fun at me for planning to cook with cicadas. In response to SNL’s reference to me, my friend Wendy Chan said “Everything you’re doing is super cool, which is what drives trends - and brings about changes!” I don’t think we will be starting a bug eating craze in America but I do think we can help people think about eating differently.
That said, for full disclosure, I ate nachos drenched in cheesy stuff at Denny’s the other day. And, I certainly know better. Eating bugs is exponentially healthier than anything on most fast food restaurant menus.
While digging for cicada nymphs (to test her theory that they taste better than adult ones), Vasi found a meal worm. It’s a tasty bug but its not very nutritious.
Here’s Vasi, the uber talented artist who designed the menu and logo for Miya’s. I was both surprised and thrilled to learn that she had her own ideas on eating #cicadas.
Two and a half acres of land can produce about 250 pounds of beef that is full of heart attack inducing saturated fats and pumped full of antibiotics and growth hormone. Beef production, also, releases more heat trapping green house gases than any other food. Also, factory farms are hideously inhumane. If we are going to mass produce animals for food then perhaps we should be mass producing animals that are lower on the food chain, not mammals that feel joy and suffer very much in the same way humans do.
Two and a half acres of land can produce about 2000 pounds of insects. Insects contain about the same amount of protein as a steak and much less saturated fats. And, unlike mammals and many types of our most popular farmed fish, they are ideal for factory farming because they are resilient and can thrive piled one upon the other. If we all ate insects instead of mammals, there would be a measurable impact on Climate Change. Climate Change will result in more floods, droughts, wars, terrorism and starvation than we have ever experienced in human history. It has become clear that our life choices are effecting everything and everyone on the planet.
Eating insects is, to me, mostly about changing the way we look things. Individual changes in perception can lead to individual changes in behavior which, in turn, can lead to vast cultural transformations. If you, as an individual, can change the way you look at things, you can have a huge impact on the world. We certainly don’t have to start eating insects, to make the world a better place, but we can make an effort to eat in a way that is much more open and aware.
That said, you really gotta try my cicadas. I promise you, they will be scrumptious.
Happy Mother’s Day Mom! Our mom doesn’t allow herself to be photographed so here’s a pic of Will’s mom, Suzanne. Will’s dad, Jock, adoringly refers to her as the most wonderful mom in the world, which makes me feel really happy, every time I hear him say that. I wish all the moms of the world were appreciated like the way Jock does Suzanne. That said, it’s not Suzanne’s fault that Will turned out to be a very naughty boy, but she has no idea. More about Will later. When I was growing up, my mom had a book on the shelf called, Why Good Parents Have Bad Kids. I always thought she bought it to deal with my brother, Ted, but it was probably me because I always got caught when I was being mischievous. My mom used to say to me, “God loves you because every time you are bad, you get caught.” I guess I never had the opportunity to go down the wrong path. My brother was, easily, twice as naughty as me and he never got caught. He would later go onto a stellar career in derivatives banking.
The other day, I was in the dollar store and I bumped into two obese women loading up on foods that were marketed as low calorie. I tried to explain to them that eating an apple or any whole, unprocessed foods is the best way to lose weight. Their situation reminded me of how difficult it is, for the average American, to learn how to eat well because they are constantly being mislead and misinformed by food companies. Here’s a brand called Nature’s Promise (Stop and Shop) hawking a product that is in every way not natural. It should be illegal to have margarine labeled natural or organic because it leads people into believing that its healthy and environmentally friendly, when it’s anything but. Margarine is made from a variety of monocrop derived vegetable oils that are high in omega 6 fatty acids that are implicated for heart disease. This oil is extracted using free radical releasing pressure and heat. Then, the oil is treated with sodium hydroxide to stabilize it. Finally, it is hydrogenated to give it that buttery texture; which converts the oil to a trans fat, which in turn increases your cholesterol, more than any other type of fat. The food companies have literally altered the culture of eating in America. They are, largely, responsible for the epidemic of obesity and heart disease. What can each of us do to restore, revitalize, and reinvent ourselves and our communities to a culture of heathy eating?
