Image via Archinect.

There are plenty of examples of structures built from recycled materials—even Buddhist temples have been made from them. In Sima Valley, California, an entire village known as Grandma Prisbey’s Bottle Village was constructed from reused glass. But this is no new concept—back in 1960, executives at the Heineken brewery drew up a plan for a “brick that holds beer,” a rectangular beer bottle that could also be used to build homes.

Gerard Adriaan Heineken acquired the “Haystack” brewery in 1864 in Amsterdam, marking the formal beginning of the eponymous brand that is now one of the most successful international breweries. Since the first beer consignment was delivered to the United States upon the repeal of Prohibition in 1933, it has been a top seller in the United States. The distinctive, bright green of a Heineken beer bottle can be found in more than 70 countries today. The founder’s grandson, Alfred Heineken, began his career with the company in 1942 and was later elected Chairman of the Executive Board at Heineken International. Alfred, better known as “Freddy,”oversaw the design of the classic red-starred label released in 1964. He had a good eye for marketing and design.”Had I not been a beer brewer I would have become an advertising man,” he once said. When Freddy’s beer took off in the international market, he made it a point to visit the plants the company had opened as a part of its globalization strategy.

A display of WOBO “bricks” from the Heineken Experience, in Amsterdam. Image courtesy of Flickr user seaotter22.

In 1960, Freddy took a trip to the island of Curacao in the Caribbean Sea and discovered that he could barely walk 15 feet on the beach without stepping on a littered Heineken bottle. He was alarmed by two things: First, the incredible amount of waste that his product was creating due to the region’s lack of infrastructure to collect the bottles for reuse. (Back then, bottles were commonly returned for refilling, lasting about 30 trips back and forth to the breweries). Second, the dearth of proper building materials available to those living in the impoverished communities he visited. So he thought up an idea that might solve both of these problems: A brick that holds beer.

The rectangular, Heineken World Bottle or WOBO, designed with the help of architect John Habraken, would serve as a drinking vessel as well as a brick once the contents were consumed. The long side of the bottle would have interlocking grooved surfaces so that the glass bricks, once laid on their side, could be stacked easily with mortar or cement. A 10-foot-by-10-foot shack would take approximately 1,000 bottles (and a lot of beer consumption) to build. Yu Ren Guang explains in Packaging Prototypes 3: Thinking Green:

“On returning to Holland [from Curacao], Alfred set about conceiving the first ever bottle designed specifically for secondary use as a building component, thereby turning the function of packaging on its head. By this philosophy, Alfred Heineken saw his beer as a useful product to fill a brick with while being shipped overseas. It became more a case of redesigning the brick than the bottle.”

A handful of designers have accepted Alfred’s WOBO as one of the first eco-conscious consumer designs out there. Martin Pawley, for example, writes in Garbage Housing, that the bottle was “the first mass production container ever designed from the outset for secondary use as a building component.”

A WOBO wall. Image courtesy of Flickr user greezer.ch.

There were many variations of the original prototype—all of which were ultimately rejected as many components were considered unworkable. For example, a usable beer bottle needs a neck from which to pour the beer and a protruding neck makes it harder to stack the product once the beer’s run out—problematic for brick laying. The finalized design came in two sizes—350 and 500 milimeters (35 and 50 centimeters)—the smaller of which acted as half-bricks to even out rows during construction. In 1963, the company made 50,000 WOBOs for commercial use.

Both designs (one of the wooden prototypes is pictured in Nigel Whiteley’s Design for Society), were ultimately rejected by the Heineken company. The first prototype for example, was described by the Heineken marketing team as too “effeminate” as the bottle lacked ‘approprate’ connotations of masculinity. A puzzling description, Cabinet writes, “considering that the bottle consisted of two bulbous compartments surmounted by a long shaft.”

For the second model, Habraken and Heineken had to thicken the glass because it was meant to be laid horizontally—a costly decision for an already progressive concept. The established cylindrical designs were more cost effective and could be produced faster than the proposed brick design. But what most likely worked against Habraken’s design was that customers simply liked the easy-to-hold, cylindrical bottle.

Though the brick bottles never saw the market, in 1965 a prototype glass house was built near Alfred Heineken’s villa in Noordwijk, outside Amsterdam. Even the plastic shipping pallets intended for the product were reused as sheet roofing. The two buildings still stand at the company’s former brewery-turned-museum, The Heineken Experience. 

A Heineken label circa 1931. Image courtesy of Heineken International.

Where Heineken failed in creating a reusable brick bottle, the company EM1UM succeeded. The bottles, which were easier to manufacture for most automatic bottling machines than Heineken’s design, were made to attach lengthways or sideways by pushing the knobs of one into the depressions of another. EM1UM was mostly successful in Argentina and collected awards for bottle designs including prisms, cubes and cylinders.

In 2008, French design company, Petit Romain, made plans to make its own take on Alfred Heineken’s WOBO design, the Heineken Cube. It’s similar to the original concept in that it’s stackable, packable and altogether better for travel than the usual, clinky, cylindrical bottles. The major difference is that the cube is meant to save space, not to build homes. Like Freddy’s WOBO, the Cube is still in the prototype stage.

The prototype Heineken cube from Petit Romain via Laughing Squid

Though Freddy’s brick design never took off, it didn’t stop Heineken International from maintaining the lead in the global brew market. By ’68, Heineken merged with its biggest competitor, Amstel. By ’75 Freddy was one of the richest men in Europe.

A fun, slightly-related fact: Alfred Heineken and his chauffeur were kidnapped in 1983 and held at a 10 million dollar ransom in a warehouse for three weeks. Lucky for Freddy, one of the kidnappers gave away their location mistakenly while calling for some Chinese takeout. According to the Guardian, after the incident, Heineken required at least two bodyguards to travel with him at all times.

Alfred played a large role in the company’s expansion, championing a series of successful acquisitions, right up until his death in 2002. While his plans for translucent, green bottle homes never came to fruition commercially, the Wat Pa Maha Chedi Kaew temple, constructed from a mix of one million bottles from Heineken and the local Chang beer remains proof of the design’s artfulness. For some designers, it seems, there is no such thing as garbage.

How much would you pay for a cup of coffee? Wikimedia Commons.

When Starbucks announced in late November that it was unveiling a new $7-per-grande-cup brew in select stores, reaction was mixed. Seattle Weekly’s food writer, Hanna Raskin wrote about an office taste test, “The consensus was that the coffee’s good, but not appreciably better than Starbucks’ standard drip.” And yet, the Costa Rica Finca Palmilera Geisha has been doing okay. The Los Angeles Times reported that the online stock sold out in 24 hours, at $40 a bag.

While the news might elicit a Liz-Lemon worthy eye-roll or shooting pangs of jealousy depending on the person, it might actually be something we just have to get used to. Published just a few weeks before Starbucks unrolled its cup of liquid gold, a study from the Royal Botanic Gardens in the U.K. and the Environment Coffee Forest Forum in Ethiopia warned that up to 70 percent of the world’s coffee supply could be gone by 2080 due to climate change.

A map of the world’s coffee producing regions. R indicates Coffea robusta, A represents Coffea arabica and M includes both. Wikimedia Commons.

Turns out, the warnings are actually pretty consistent across the board, the World Bank is practically hoarse with all its calls for caution. On November 18, the World Bank released a new study about the effects of climate change over a long period of time, concluding, “The world is barreling down a path to heat up by 4 degrees at the end of the century if the global community fails to act on climate change, triggering a cascade of cataclysmic changes that include extreme heat-waves, declining global food stocks and a sea-level rise affecting hundreds of millions of people.”

New York University associate professor of food studies and economist Carolyn Dimitri says attention to the vulnerability of the world’s food systems is a step in the right direction but not enough. “These are really big and important groups that are talking about this, but how are they going to gain traction given the way our food system has become so industrialized?”

Carolyn Dimitri is currently working on a book about urban agriculture in 15 American cities.

As someone who’s been studying organic food marketing and access since her days at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Dimitri says she wasn’t too surprised to hear about the $7 coffee. “Living in Manhattan,” she says, “people would probably pay even more than that for a cup of coffee.” She sees the launch as a way to appeal to a new set of customers who might have seen Starbucks as selling adequate but not speciality coffee, whether it be for taste or for its unique ethical sourcing, which Starbucks is seeking to expand.

Though Starbucks aims to have all of its coffee meet standards for farmer wages and working conditions by 2015, Dimitri says, “My students tend to be a little bit suspicious of the big companies that enter this area,” as when Walmart began carrying organic products. But Dimitri has a hard time criticizing large companies motives if the end result is an improved livelihood for farmers. Ethical sourcing practices, as defined by Conservation International, include provisions for environmental sustainability as well as economic.

But the commitment is hard to measure. Taking Starbucks as an example, Dimitri says, “You can do a good thing but really a better thing would be for no one to buy coffee in a coffee shop in a disposable cup. Does ethically sourcing some of your coffee, is that sufficient to outweigh all of the garbage that’s created?”

The impact of climate change is hard to estimate but the study out of Ethiopia took predictions from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to ask what would happen to Arabica bean crops if the temperature increased within a range of 1.8° C  to 4° C.

The potential losses would not only mean more expensive coffee for consumers, but fewer jobs and less economic stability for producers. According to the report, “total coffee sector employment [is] estimated at about 26 million people in 52 producing countries.” The study also reports that coffee is the second most traded commodity after oil.

In another alarm-sounding report from the World Bank, the development agency writes that though global food prices have fallen from a peak in July, “prices remain at high levels – 7 percent higher than a year ago.” Some specific crop prices are much higher still, including maize, which is 17 percent more expensive than it was in October, 2011.

In the case of coffee, Colombia recently announced a plan to offer insurance to growers to protect them from losses incurred from severe weather, according to South Africa’s Times Live.

This World Bank chart maps the current annual rise in sea level due to land-ice melt only, with red being the greatest (around 1.5 mm/year) and blue actually reflecting a drop in sea level. Compare the regions likely to be hardest hit to those that produce the most coffee.

“More people should be thinking about it and talking about it,” says Dimitri. “I don’t think that our policymakers take it as seriously as the researchers do.”

For the consumers who are concerned and have the means and access to purchase sustainably, ethically produced foods, Dimitri says, “they’re willing to make sacrifices in other areas.”

Through a sheer appeal to quality, Starbucks is hoping consumers will find that reason enough to spend on the newest varietal in its Reserve line. Plus, it’s actually not the most expensive cup of coffee ever sold, if you count add-ons. One customer with a veritable blank-check coupon went wild crafting the priciest drink he could, according to Piper Weiss, and topped out at $23.60. His drink–if you can really still call it that–consisted of, “one Java Chip Frappucino ($4.75), plus 16 shots of espresso ($12), a shot of soy milk (.60), a drop of caramel flavoring (.50), a scoop of banana puree ($1), another scoop of strawberry puree (.60), a few vanilla beans(.50), a dash of Matcha powder (.75), some protein powder (.50) and a caramel and mocha drizzle to cap it off (.60).”

Still, for a straight up cup of Joe, it takes the cake. ”It is the highest price we’ve ever had,” a spokesperson told CNBC, adding, “It raises the bar.”

According to the World Bank, EPA, UN and others, that bar doesn’t need much help.

A male Atlantic salmon. Image courtesy of Flickr user U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service - Northeast Region

Salmon farming has received its share of criticism for being detrimental to the environment. Many salmon are raised in net pens, which allow fish waste, chemicals and farming byproducts to spread into the wild. There’s also the threat of pathogens that could thrive in crowded pens and escape to harm natural fish populations. One disease, infectious salmon anemia, was once thought to be a problem exclusive to farmed Atlantic salmon. A new study by a group of researchers from Simon Fraser University in British Columbia has found that this influenza-like virus is infecting naturally ocurring salmon populations.

Infectious salmon anemia was first observed 1984 and occurs most often in overcrowded, filthy salmon pens. As the name suggests, the virus causes anemia, the condition in which a body doesn’t have enough healthy red blood cells to deliver oxygen to its tissues. Infected fish may exhibit symptoms—such as pale gills and loss of appetite—or they may outwardly seem perfectly fine. While the disease doesn’t pose any risks to humans, it can wipe out upwards of 70 percent of a farmed salmon population.

This is the first time the disease has been found in wild fish off the coast of North America. After observing a decline in the salmon population off the British Columbia coast, researchers collected 48 specimens for study and discovering two juvenile fish infected with the disease. While there is currently no evidence to definitively link fish farming to the presence of salmon anemia in wild populations, there could be devastating ramifications, not just for the fishing industry, but for the wildlife that depends on salmon for food. “It’s a disease emergency,” James Winton, director of the U.S. Geological Survey’s fish health section, told the Associated Press. “We’re concerned. Should it be introduced, it might be able to adapt to Pacific salmon.”

Braised shark's fin soup with fresh crab meat. Image courtesy of Flickr user Sifu Renka.

California is on the road to becoming the fourth state in the union to ban shark fin soup on account of the ecological impact that rising demand is having on shark populations. A bill nixing the sale, trade or possession of shark fins passed the state senate on September 6 and is awaiting governor Jerry Brown’s signature to be passed into law. The namesake ingredient for this Asian delicacy is harvested by fishermen who catch sharks, remove the fins and dump the carcasses back in the ocean. While other parts of the shark are edible or can be used for other purposes, it makes more financial sense for the fishermen to haul back the fins because they are the most valuable: they can sell (depending on size and the species of shark) for upwards of $880 per pound on the Hong Kong market. (In 2003, a fin from a basking shark sold for $57,000 in Singapore.) It is estimated that between 26 and 73 million sharks are killed worldwide each year for their fins, and with sharks unable to reproduce at such a rate to meet human demand, sustainable shark fishing is a bit unrealistic.

So what’s the big to-do over this dish? It’s certainly not the fin’s flavor—which has been described as being relatively tasteless—but rather it’s unique, rubbery texture. Once dried, processed and incorporated into the soup, the fin looks like fine, translucent noodles whose culinary value is in their mouthfeel—all the flavor has to come from the other soup ingredients. Some chefs have tried using gelatin-based substitutes, but, for those intimately familiar with the dish, imitation shark falls short of capturing the feel of the real deal.

“This is the most stunning aspect of the entire economic empire that has arisen around shark’s fin soup” environmental reporter Juliet Eilperin writes of the soup in her book Demon Fish. “It is, to be blunt, a food product with no culinary value whatsoever. It is all symbol, no substance.” Indeed, with some iterations costing upwards of $100 a bowl, it’s a dish that, if nothing else, displays one’s social status.

The dining tradition that dates back to the Song Dynasty (960 to 1279 A.D.), becoming a mainstay of formal dining during the Ming Dynasty (1368 to 1644 A.D.), and it continues to be a popular dish at Chinese weddings. Opponents see the ban as an act of cultural discrimination, with the language of the bill singling out shark fin soup and giving no mention of other shark-based products, such as steaks or leather goods.

But shark populations are declining. In the 1980s, Hong Kong’s local shark populations were overfished to the point that its fishing market went bust. In the U.S., dusky shark numbers have declined by roughly 80 percent since the 1970s, with conservationists estimating that it would take upwards of 100 years for those populations to rebuild. In western Atlantic waters, hammerhead sharks have declined by up to 89 percent over the past 25 years. And in spite of cultural traditions, the international community—with the exceptions of Japan, Norway and Iceland—has placed bans on whaling because humans put such a strain on those populations. Should the same reasoning be applied to sharks?

Fried frog legs. Image courtesy of Flickr user rockdoggydog.

In the story of Kermit the Frog’s rise to fame recounted in The Muppet Movie, the road to stardom is paved with danger—namely in the form of Doc Hopper, the owner of a fast-food chain specializing in frog legs who wants Kermit for a singing, dancing spokesman. Our amphibian friend is horrified by the prospect. “All I can see are millions of frogs with tiny crutches,” he says in response to Hopper’s initial business proposal. And while things turned out well for Kermit and his talented troupe of friends, in real life, it’s not that easy being green. A worldwide penchant for frogs’ legs results in billions of frogs being snapped up and eaten every year, and according to a new study, it’s a dining habit that is putting considerable strain on frog populations.

In Europe, the mild-flavored meat has been a part of the cuisine for centuries, but demand for frogs’ legs skyrocketed after World War II to the point that local frog populations in Romania went extinct. France had to place a ban on the collection of indigenous frogs in 1992. To meet consumer demands, the European Union has been importing frogs from Asia. The United States is another major frog consumer, importing an average of 2,280 tons of legs per year, most of which come from, ironically, American bullfrogs.

India was a major frog exporter starting in the 1950s; however, the wild populations of those animals eventually collapsed, and with fewer predators to feed on insects and other pests, local agriculture started to suffer. It was a problem that prompted India to ban trade in frogs in 1987, and populations have since recovered. But now history may be repeating itself in Indonesia. Using farmed frogs may be a means of taking some pressure off the animals hopping around in the wild, but even that route poses problems: non-native frogs raised on farms can escape and introduce diseases or turn into an invasive species, which is the case with Indian bullfrogs raised in Madagascar. And then there are animal welfare issues (as dramatized on “The Muppet Show“); frogs are sometimes dismembered while still alive.

The study offers a number of ways to make frog leg trade sustainable and to minimize ecological impacts, such as setting export quotas, carefully monitoring wild populations, restricting commercial farming to native species and setting humane standards for the capture and slaughter of the animals. All that said, with so many issues surrounding this food source, would you spring for a plate of frogs’ legs?

Grilled swordish, courtesy of Flickr user ulterior epicure

There’s a hilarious skit in the IFC show Portlandia that pokes fun at the current preoccupation in certain circles with knowing exactly where one’s food comes from. A couple (played by Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein) give their waitress the third degree about not only the diet and living conditions of Colin, the chicken they are considering ordering, but its social life on the farm and the sincerity of the farmer’s motives.

It’s been especially difficult for concerned eaters to get this kind of dossier on their wild-caught seafood. (Imagine: “He enjoyed exploring shipwrecks and the sound of migrating whales. He was on a squid and crustacean diet.”) Short of meeting the fishing boats as they return with their catch, you’re unlikely to know much about who was responsible for bringing your fish to the table. But a step in that direction was recently taken.

In September 2010, Maine-based Hannaford Supermarkets started selling fresh swordfish caught by Linda Greenlaw, captain of the Hannah Boden, and her crew. Greenlaw was featured in Sebastian Junger’s bestselling book The Perfect Storm (and portrayed by Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio in the 2000 film adaptation). She has also written her own bestsellers and appears in the Discovery Channel show Swords: Life on the Line. She might be the most famous American commercial fisherman since Slade Gorton, whose Gloucester, Massachusetts, cod business evolved into the iconic frozen fish stick brand.

I first heard about the Greenlaw-branded fish in a slightly outdated copy of Down East, a regional Maine magazine, that had been passed around my office, so the North Atlantic swordfish season—which runs from roughly September to November—is already over. But the product was reportedly so popular that I imagine it will be back this year.

The fish wasn’t packaged, but a sign by the fish display at the supermarket chain’s 176 outlets advertised, “A fresh catch from Linda Greenlaw, captain of the Hannah Boden.” According to an article in the Portland Press Herald, the chain sold its first 34,000 pounds in just a week, far more quickly than usual. Browne Trading Company also sold and distributed the Hannah Boden fish to restaurants, including Wolfgang Puck’s Spago Beverly Hills. Celebrity chef meets celebrity sea captain.

Wait, I can sense you thinking, aren’t we supposed to avoid swordfish because it’s overfished? Apparently not anymore, at least in the North Atlantic. The Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch currently lists domestic swordfish as a “Best Choice,” although imported swordfish is still a no-no. A campaign to educate the public about the depleted swordfish stocks in the late 1990s was so successful, it seems, that the fisheries have had a chance to fully recover. Part of the point of the Hannaford effort was to get the word out about their rebound.

Of course, mercury is still an issue with swordfish, so it’s not advisable to eat a lot of it—young children and women who are nursing, pregnant, or may someday become pregnant should avoid it altogether because of the danger to developing nervous systems. And if people go crazy eating swordfish again, we’ll be back where we started.

Orange roughy, aka the slimehead, courtesy of Flickr user greg.turner

The National Museum of Natural History’s Sant Ocean Hall last week hosted the “Real Cost Cafe,” an interactive performance about sustainable seafood. The child-friendly program originated at California’s Monterey Bay Aquarium, and was adapted by Smithsonian’s Discovery Theater. Three segments assessed the environmental issues at stake for a different kind of fish, ultimately tallying the fish’s “real cost” to marine ecosystems and to human health.

I knew little about the subject prior to seeing the performance, but Rachel Crayfish and Bubba (the show’s hosts, who were dressed in chef’s hats and fishing gear) taught me about the sustainability issues at stake for some of the United States’ favorite seafood: orange roughy, shrimp and salmon.

What is “sustainable” seafood? NMNH fish biologist Carole Baldwin—who has written a cookbook titled One Fish, Two Fish, Crawfish, Bluefish—sustainable seafood includes fish and shellfish harvested in a way that doesn’t threaten the future of the particular species. The four primary factors that pose such a threat are “bycatch” (marine life that gets caught in fishing equipment by accident), overfishing, habitat loss and pollution.

Orange Roughy: This white fish, also known as the “slimehead,” matures remarkably late in life, around age 20. These fish can live as long as 100 years, so you might be eating a fish that’s older than your grandmother! Unfortunately, many young orange roughy that are caught have not yet had a chance to reproduce, making the species particularly susceptible to overfishing. According to the handy Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch card Bubba handed out at the performance, orange roughy is on the list of fish to avoid. This is not only due to overfishing, but also the harmful contaminants such as mercury these fish can contain. Pacific halibut is a much safer choice, and has a fairly comparable taste, at least according to our pals Rachel and Bubba.

Shrimp: One shrimp looks just like the next to me, but apparently not all are created equal when it comes to sustainability. The shrimp industry is one big contributor to the bycatch problem, often throwing away two pounds of unwanted marine species for every pound of shrimp caught. Shrimp farms are less affected by bycatch than the wild-caught shrimp industry is, but building shrimp farms often requires the destruction of rich marine ecosystems like mangrove forests. What’s the lesser of the evils? Rachel and Bubba say that the United States and Canada have fairly strict regulations for shrimp farms that limit environmental destruction. U.S. or Canada-farmed shrimp make the “green” list for the best seafood choices on my Seafood Watch card.

Salmon: I was already aware that eating farmed salmon was a no-no, but I wasn’t exactly sure why. As it turns out, farmed salmon can have higher levels of contaminants in their systems due to their diets. Furthermore, to my surprise, several different species are often sold as salmon, and some are better for you than others. Alaska wild salmon seems to be the most sustainable option, with Washington wild salmon coming in second.

Sometimes, says Rachel Crayfish, the “real cost” of seafood can be hard to swallow. Who’s going to pay this “seafood bill,” she and Bubba ask? The next generation, of course, some of whom were sitting, wide-eyed, with me in the Sant Ocean Hall on Saturday.

So when I went to lunch with friends at TenPenh restaurant last week, the “tempura ponzu softshell” winked at me from the menu. Everyone’s always raving about how good soft-shell crabs are, but I’ve always been a tad skeptical that an exoskeleton could really be edible, let alone tasty.

Tempura Ponzu Softshell Crab at TenPenh restaurant in Washington, DC. Photo by Amanda Bensen.

I tried to ignore it and order salmon, which I know I like, but then I asked the waiter where it came from. Farmed, and he didn’t know how or where. Uh oh. Not wanting to risk supporting unsustainable aquaculture practices (see this fact sheet on farmed salmon for an explanation), I pointed to the crab instead.

It arrived whole, the shape of its claws still clear beneath the batter, and appeared to be scuttling toward me—though it was merely sliding a bit on its bed of cucumbers and rice as the waiter set my plate down. I picked up my fork and knife more out of defensive reflex than actual appetite.

I tasted a mixture of salt and buttery sweetness, as well as that flavor that can only be described as “oceany.” A few globs of something light green, like wasabi paste, oozed out as I cut closer to the crab’s head.

“What’s this?” I asked my friend.

“Just eat it,” she said. “It’s like a delicious mustard, and that’s all you need to know.”

Actually, it was probably the crab’s liver and pancreas, often called mustard or tomalley. I pushed it aside, preferring the taste of the sweet chili dipping sauce. Other than that, I ate every last bite on my plate.

I was surprised at how easily I could cut through the shell, it was no tougher than chicken skin. That’s because the creature had just shed its hard shell to grow a larger one, as blue crabs do some 18 to 23 times within their three-year life spans, according to the Maryland Seafood & Aquaculture Program.

If a crab is removed from the water right after molting, its new shell does not have a chance to harden—something fishermen figured out more than 100 years ago.

“A dainty succulent soft shell crab, nicely cooked and well browned, tempts the eye of the epicure and makes his mouth water,” one writer enthused in a New York literary journal in 1870. His explanation of the molting process is more poetic than scientific, but I like it:

“Making a great effort to throw off the incubus of babyhood that weighs so heavily upon them, they burst open the back door of their shell and crawl out…they gaze in stupefaction at their old shell, amazed to find out that they have, by their own efforts, unaided and alone, accomplished such a wonderful change. The thought is overwhelming. It fills them with pride; rejoicingly they exult, and swell with gratification…[until] they have increased their bulk to nearly double its former size. They can’t get back into the old shell now, for it won’t fit them…The only thing left for them to do is build another house.

It takes three or four days before they get fairly to work, and during that time they are called soft-shell crabs. This stage is particularly dangerous to the delicate creatures…Tender, helpless, innocent and beautiful, they are almost certain to be victimized and gormandized.”

What’s your favorite way—or favorite place—to eat soft-shell crabs?

Jellyfish, as prepared in a D.C. restaurant. Courtesy of Sarah Zielinski

I’m no Andrew Zimmern, but I like to think I’m a slightly adventurous eater, or at least a curious one. And I’m especially curious about foods whose production or harvesting doesn’t harm—and might even help—our environment. Invasive species like lionfish, for example. So I was intrigued when the latest issue of our magazine suggested another potentially food source that’s in no danger of disappearing: jellyfish.

Staff writer Abigail Tucker wrote a fascinating feature titled “Jellyfish: The Next King of the Sea” (with a slide show on Extreme Jellyfish) for our special 4oth anniversary issue, as part of a “what to expect in terms of science, history, technology and the arts over the next 40 years” theme. Among the issue’s environmental predictions—which also include Rosamond Naylor’s thoughts on the future of global food security, and a few crops that may help in the fight against hunger—is that our definition of seafood may soon have to change.

While the populations of many marine species are wilting due to overfishing, pollution and other environmental changes, jellyfish are “blooming,” often more than humans would prefer. Jellyfish can survive in oceanic “dead zones,” and sadly, there’s no shortage of those on the horizon.

Despite their venomous reputation, Tucker explains, some types of jellyfish are edible:

“About a dozen jellyfish varieties with firm bells are considered desirable food. Stripped of tentacles and scraped of mucous membranes, jellyfish are typically soaked in brine for several days and then dried. In Japan, they are served in strips with soy sauce and (ironically) vinegar. The Chinese have eaten jellies for 1,000 years (jellyfish salad is a wedding banquet favorite). Lately, in an apparent effort to make lemons into lemonade, the Japanese government has encouraged the development of haute jellyfish cuisine—jellyfish caramels, ice cream and cocktails—and adventuresome European chefs are following suit. Some enthusiasts compare the taste of jellyfish to fresh squid. Pauly says he’s reminded of cucumbers. Others think of salty rubber bands.”

Inspired by this, I set out to try some this week. Three colleagues joined me for lunch at a tiny eatery called Jackey Cafe in D.C.’s Chinatown district, agreeing that we would each order things we knew we wanted to eat, but also share some type of jellyfish dish. We debated trying the weekly special posted on the wall, which simply said “Jellyfish Head: $18.95,” but after talking things over with a helpful waiter, decided on a smaller investment ($6.95) in the “Cold Shredded Jellyfish” appetizer.

My expectations were as low as possible—I wanted to not gag.

The waiter set down a dish of what looked like a cross between noodles and stir-fried cabbage, then stood watching with a look that suggested his expectations of us were pretty low, too. He raised his eyebrows as we dug in, and said he’d take it right back to the kitchen if we didn’t like it.

It had much more texture than the word “jelly” evokes, yet I wouldn’t call it chewy—more like wetly crunchy, in the way of those seaweed salads you find at sushi restaurants. It was drenched in a tasty soy-based sauce and sprinkled with sesame seeds, with strips of carrot and daikon beneath.

The waiter seemed relieved and surprised when we kept eating.

“I get a lot of people who say they want to try something new, but it turns out they didn’t really mean it,” he explained. “Next time, try the frog!”

Thanks. I just might do that.

I was surprised by feeling excited at the prospect of chowing down on some creepy crawlies, but the occasion still called for a stiff drink. I sat down at the bar at Oyamel, one of Jose Andres’ hip D.C. restaurants, and promptly ordered a gin and tonic.

With a feeling of mild trepidation, I ordered some Tacos de Chapulines. Grasshopper tacos.

I sat back and awaited my fate.

Grasshopper taco at Oyamel, courtesy Flickr user stgermh

At 3 Quarks Daily, Quinn O’Neill lauds the power of entomophagy (eating insects) in reducing human consumption of animal products—a practice that many, including O’Neill, see as a drain on our environment and our health. Quinn calls Western aversion to eating insects as “irrational.” Eating insects, entomophagists argue, is a much more sustainable source of nutrition. High in protein, low in fat, what more could you want?

But, of course eating insects is nothing new for humankind. Insects figure into the traditional cuisine of many cultures. The Travel Channel’s Andrew Zimmern eats them, and apparently, so does Salma Hayek. Chapulines are an ingredient in many Oaxacan dishes, and baskets of the crunchy creatures are sold in Oaxacan markets for use in tacos, tlayudas or to be eaten alone as a salted snack.

When my steaming tacos arrived, I thought there had been a mistake. The grasshoppers looked like a mound of finely shredded pork piled atop of a liberal dollop of guacamole. Perplexed, I asked the bartender, “You chop them up?”

He looked at me like I was demented.

“They’re farm-raised,” was his response.

“Yeah, but you chop them up, right?” I persisted.

“No, they’re whole.”

I picked up a single piece from my taco and held it up, examining it carefully.

“They’re baby grasshoppers!” I exclaimed triumphantly.

At this point the bartender decided to leave the crazy intern to his arthropods.

I dutifully tried a bite. Then another. These were tasty. Crispy, spicy, a hint of citrus—it was better than some of the other tacos I had tried. Though the legs do tend to get stuck in your teeth. I downed the entire taco and almost ordered another one, until the look of horror on my companion’s face gave me pause.

However, I didn’t feel I had completed my assignment yet. Amanda had asked me to find out what grasshoppers tasted like, and the ones in the taco had been spiced and sautéed in shallots, tequila and all manner of other delicious things. I needed the real deal. I needed to try these farm-raised little critters in the raw. I asked the bartender if he could provide such a thing. He seemed skeptical, but said he would try.

I waited and waited, and finally, with a furtive glance in either direction, the bartender surreptitiously placed a little bowl in front me and turned away without a word.

I scooped out a cluster of raw grasshoppers and stuck them in my mouth. They were chewy, without the crunch I expected from insects—apparently that came from being sautéed until crispy. They tasted rather sour and grassy (you are what you eat, I guess?), but not bad, reminiscent of a mild citrus fruit. What I had mistaken for a squeeze of lemon on my taco earlier had, in fact, been the natural flavor of the grasshopper.

Throughout the evening I had tried to make my dinner companion taste some of the little creatures. He gave in just before the end of the meal, having had enough of my cajoling. He delicately placed a grasshopper on his tongue, swallowed and washed it down with a deluge of ice water (though perhaps Sauvignon Blanc would have been a natural pairing).

“That was gross,” he declared.

I guess grasshoppers aren’t for everyone.

Guest writer Brandon Springer is spending the summer at Smithsonian Magazine through an American Society of Magazine Editors internship.

Lionfish, courtesy of Flickr user ah zut

Enter the lionfish, stage left. This native of the South Pacific and Indian Oceans showed up in the Atlantic and Caribbean a decade or two ago, probably an escapee from a tropical aquarium. It’s a prickly character, not the type that usually inspires dinner invitations, but sustainability-sensitive chefs like Barton Seaver want to introduce lionfish to the American table.

“This is an invasive species with no natural predator, so let’s turn the most efficient predator of all on it—humans,” says Seaver. “I mean, if Red Lobster would have a lionfish festival, it would be approximately three months before the problem is gone.”

The problem, you see, is that lionfish don’t play well with others. They eat many of their marine neighbors, hog the food supply, and scare off snorkeling tourists with their venomous spines. It’s a particular problem in coral reef ecosystems, where the introduction of a single lionfish can kill off as much as 80 percent of small or juvenile native species within weeks. That’s bad news for biodiversity, but it’s also bad news for human seafood eaters.

As Anika Gupta explained in a Smithsonian article last year:

In the Western Atlantic, samples of lionfish stomach contents show that they consume more than 50 different species, including shrimp and juvenile grouper and parrotfish, species that humans also enjoy. A lionfish’s stomach can expand up to 30 times its normal size after a meal. Their appetite is what makes lionfish such frightening invaders… Lab studies have shown that many native fish would rather starve than attack a lionfish.

Since other methods of controlling or eradicating invasive lionfish populations have largely failed, scientists and U.S. fisheries experts are launching an “Eat Lionfish” campaign, and it’s begun to attract interest from chefs in cities like New York and Chicago.

At the recent Smithsonian event, Seaver served up a tasty lionfish ceviche accented with almonds and endive. He compared the fish’s flavor and firm texture to something “between snapper and grouper,” which happen to be two of the species threatened by lionfish invasions.

You probably won’t find lionfish at your local fish market, says Seaver, but keep asking for it to create a demand. (His supply was donated by the group Sea 2 Table.) And if you do come across a source, check out these recipes on Lionfish Hunter‘s site.

Nourishing the Planet is a project of the Worldwatch Institute, an independent research group that focuses on sustainability issues, particularly in relation to food and agriculture. Danielle, one of their researchers, is currently traveling around sub-Saharan Africa to find and blog about potential solutions to the challenge of feeding a growing population on an increasingly stressed planet. That’s what I find refreshing: She’s reporting from the field (literally) in layman’s terms, and highlighting signs of hope rather than just pointing out the problems.

In Zambia, she met a man whose creative peanut butter project simultaneously protects wildlife and helps farmers earn a living. In Madagascar, she encountered an Italian NGO that hopes to halt slash-and-burn agriculture by teaching farmers how to improve the soil and make a living from organic agriculture. In South Africa, she learned about an innovative group that uses theater to explain agricultural policy to rural women farmers.

Most recently, in Ghana, Danielle met with members of an interfaith initiative called ECASARD, which connects farmers with each other and regional resources. Through ECASARD, a group of women in one village started their own dairy cooperative to produce and sell pasteurized milk and yogurt. (They were having trouble getting access to credit when they worked with men, so “we started our own thing,” as one woman explains in this video.) The organization also helps farmers get into “alternative livelihood” projects that require less land and water than other crops—things like beekeeping, growing mushrooms, raising rabbits or even snails.

The blog also highlights a different innovation each week, including disposable and composting toilets to prevent water contamination in developing areas, fireless cookers that reduce the need for charcoal and lighten women’s workloads, indigenous livestock projects, school gardens and more.

And the blog is just the beginning; it’s all leading up to a comprehensive report to be published next year. I look forward to reading more.

Federal waters closed to fishing along Gulf Coast. Courtesy NOAA.

Making a living from fishing is hard enough already, she explained grimly, so she can’t imagine how commercial fisherman and their families along the Gulf Coast will survive this blow to their main source of income. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration keeps widening the area closed to fishing off the coasts of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, now accounting for some 7 percent of all federal Gulf Coast waters. State waters in Mississippi and Alabama remain open so far, but Louisiana has closed many of its oyster beds and shrimping areas as a precaution.

Although some three-quarters of Louisiana’s fishing areas are still open, the spill is already affecting the state’s economy, adding to the woes inflicted by Hurricane Katrina. Charter fisherman say business has slowed to a “trickle,” and the region’s largest fishery is reeling from a 50 percent decline in its catch. The state has lifted certain eligibility restrictions on food aid programs to make it easier for “recently unemployed fishermen” to qualify.

Despite all this, we’re seeing news reports with headlines like “Spill’s Effect Unlikely to Make Its Way to Grocery Aisles.” Well, that’s good news…right?

Not exactly, from my perspective. This illuminates some statistics I never really noticed before: about 83 percent of the seafood we eat in the United States is imported from overseas, much of it from China. Combined with the recent revelation that the FDA inspects only about 2 percent of seafood imports annually, I find that unsettling, especially since many Chinese seafood imports have been found to be contaminated or fraudulently labeled. (So many, in fact, that the FDA has issued an “import alert” on specific types of seafood from China.)

I don’t know what to do about all of this, other than to pay more attention to where my seafood is coming from, and to buy from reputable domestic sources whenever possible. The Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch guide is a helpful resource for tracking which species are being sustainably caught and managed—issues that will be discussed at the Smithsonian Associates’ upcoming Savoring Sustainable Seafood weekend here in D.C.

And I think I’ll go back to that fish vendor today.

Fresh sardines, courtesy Flickr user FootosVanRobin

I was startled and a little confused by this news, because sardines seem to be so trendy these days, showing up on menus at both fine and casual restaurants in cuisine that ranges from Italian to Vietnamese.

There’s even a group called the Sardinistas in California, who hope to overcome the little fishes’ rather stinky reputation by touting their tastiness, sustainability and health benefits. As Washington Post food writer Jane Black explains, the group’s basic message is: “These are not your grandfather’s sardines.”

Ah, yes, my grandparents’ sardines—I can picture those: Slick, gray-skinned, nearly-whole creatures plopped into pop-top tins, often carted back in suitcases from vacations in Norway. I don’t recall if I ever even tasted one; the smell alone made my squeamish. My family liked to tease me about this, saying there must not be any “real” Scandinavian blood in me if I wasn’t born loving sardines. (Then again, they allowed, I sure did love potatoes—so maybe I could pass the test after all.) And at a picnic with the other side of the family, I had a male cousin who decided he loved sardines after realizing that the sight of their soft spines made me run away squealing. My brother soon discovered this neat trick, too.

But I realize that I’m an adult now, and a silly little fish shouldn’t scare me. In fact, I’ve been trying to convince myself that I should like sardines. They’re considered a highly sustainable seafood choice because they’re low on the food chain and reproduce rapidly. Nutritionists like oily fish like sardines and herrings because they’re packed with omega-3 fatty acids which help your brain and heart, along with calcium and vitamins B-12 and D. They also tend to contain less mercury and other accumulated toxins than larger fish species like tuna.

So, on a friend’s recommendation, I ordered the salt-cured sardines at 2 Amys, my favorite pizza place in D.C. I was surprised to see what the waiter brought me: thin pink strips of flesh, almost like lox, laid out on a plate with a drizzle of olive oil. Not what I remembered from childhood! The smell, however, was still something of a challenge. At first I draped a sardine over a hunk of bread and lifted it toward my mouth, but put it back down when the olfactory signals to my brain screamed “cat food!” Using a fork worked better, since it minimized the under-nose time. The taste was very salty—in the way of good, strong olives—and the texture was tender. I didn’t hate it. (Faint praise, but hey, it’s progress.)

Now that I’ve gathered some courage, I’ll move onto tinned sardines, but I think I’ll still need to disguise them a bit. I like Alton Brown’s idea of smashing them on toast under a layer of avocado.

Coho salmon spawning in Issaquah Creek, WA, courtesy Flickr user "Soggydan" Dan Bennett

I have avoided eating salmon since the spring of 2008, when I reported on a die-off of West Coast chinooks that shut down much of the California fishery. Unfortunately for me, salmon was the only fish I knew how to cook (in my toaster oven, with teriyaki sauce. Mmmm.) But I felt guilty after learning about the wild fish’s plight–problems range from dams to pollution to ravenous sea lions–and whenever I spotted wild salmon on a menu, I envisioned shimmering chinooks valiantly flinging themselves up rapids with no thought of landing on my dinner plate.

The less photogenic alternative, of course, is farmed salmon, the source of most of our fresh salmon meat. The farmed fish, while typically less expensive than wild varieties, are reportedly bad for the environment, may contain more contaminants and look a bit scary to boot – the flesh is naturally gray, due to a lack of krill in the fishes’ diet, so the meat is dyed pink. Not too appetizing.

But this month, the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch–whose guidelines are gospel to the sustainable seafood crowd–announced its support for a new salmon-farming technique, the first it has ever endorsed. Most fish farms raise salmon in vast ocean net pens; the fish can escape and spread disease to wild populations. But at AquaSeed Corp., an aquaculture company based in Rochester, Washington, salmon are bred to be kept in freshwater tanks on land, which reduces pollution and the spread of sea lice and other maladies. The fish receive special feed, requiring less wild-caught fishmeal than the salmon at traditional farms. Furthermore, their meat contains plentiful omega-3 fatty acids and low enough levels of PCBs to land it squarely–cue the heavenly chorus!—on the Seafood Watch’s “Best Choices” and “Super Green” lists.

AquaSeed raises Pacific coho (silver) salmon, which is said to be a bit milder in flavor than sockeye or chinook but, with an artful slathering of teriyaki sauce and a steady hand at the toaster oven, still very tasty. Though production is relatively modest and you won’t find it in stores yet, AquaSeed is reportedly working with big chains like Whole Foods and is selling salmon eggs to Asian fish farms.

“This is extremely exciting,” Geoffrey Shester, senior science manager for Seafood Watch, told Scientific American. “It’s not an experimental science project. It is mature to the point where there is real potential to scale it up.” (We like that pun.)