Eggplants and Aquaculture with Dann Reid

Today is a departure from a direct discussion of the medicine or the US medical system. We delve into food. Food, is medicine in a way since it has physiological effects on how our bodies function. There's also a lot of rules and regulations around food that prevent people from being as healthy as they could. Finally, what's the deal with eggplants?

Where Your Food Comes From is Important

It is no longer a secret that the source of our food is an important bit of knowledge worth having. If the food is locally sourced it has many inherent advantages like improved 'ripeness' at harvesting, decreased transit time and chance to spoil, and it supports a local food network. Supporting local food sources creates a more robust supply chain which should offer protection if and backups in the events of disasters or a disruption in transportation of products. Unfortunately, many forms of government work to prevent the local sourcing of food through their regulations (usually written by massive food producers.)

The regulations favor large operations that are probably less safe in some ways because they mix all sorts of products together in one centralized location. It may add convenience and some lowering of costs by scale but presents risk. One example would be mixing many different cows in a collection of ground beef. Contamination of just one of the cows could potentially spoil millions of pounds of beef. In contrast, buying your meat from a local farmer doesn't risk infecting an entire food supply - just one family. Also, with the farmer working with just one cow it is a lot easier for them to recognize problems and treat them.

Is Aquaculture Common?

To my surprise, Dann spoke about how common aquaculture for seafood is. On average, 50% of our seafood and fish come from farms all over the world. These environments are of dubious safety  for the animals and the potential for disease is much higher with these creatures penned in together in abnormal living conditions. What's surprising is that a large collection of seafood can be grown in aquacultures like shrimp, mussels, oysters, tuna, and salmon to name but a few.

Unfortunately, it is very difficult to determine where your seafood came from if you're at the store. The only reliable way is to ask the employee at the fish counter if the fish was fresh caught or not. Although the US has a number of restrictions in place to prevent the movement of seafood from countries with unsafe aquaculture practices, it is not uncommon for them to move the seafood to another country and package it there in order to change the 'country of origin' label. Only by seeking out fresh caught can you be certain of the fish being from a sanitary environment.

What's the Deal with Eggplants?

Before the interview in jest, I sent Dann a question about why would anyone want to eat an eggplant. I've always seen eggplants as pretty but inedible. Dann surprised me in sending in all sorts of reasons why I should not only eat eggplants, but why they are an amazingly versatile vegetable (berry really) for cooking. Eggplants are a rare food that maintains its structure despite being cooked thoroughly and also absorbs all the flavors from the spices and other foods it's cooked with. Our discussion almost made me want to go out and buy an eggplant. Almost.