3 hours ago
5
Name: Oysters.
Age: Triassic – so about 250m years old.
Appearance: Grey and snotty.
Oysters, eh? What pearls of wisdom (see what I did there) do you have for me on the noxious bivalve? You’re not a fan, then?
Absolutely not. What desperation drove early humans to think, “Time to smash open this forbidding, rock-like blob and eat whatever godforsaken, gelatinous mess it disgorges”? Well, younger diners don’t agree – they’ve gone mad for oysters. They’re “cool” now, according to the Times: one vendor says sales are up 10% on last year, and oyster bars and market stalls are generating the kind of queues normally seen at Chappell Roan gigs and matcha pop-ups.
How can they afford it? Oysters cost the earth, don’t they? Historically, oysters were cheap as chips – a working-class staple of the 18th and 19th centuries. They are dearer now, but bars’ oyster “happy hours”, at which you can get them for £1 apiece, are very popular.
I still don’t get it – you can get tastier, more filling and Instagrammable food for less than that. Well, it’s a trend, perhaps partially attributable to influencer and oyster obsessive Georgiana Davies – she boggles young minds by eating vast numbers, including 70 for breakfast at one happy hour.
Seventy! That’s a medieval monarch amount of molluscs! Davies is a lightweight compared to competitive oyster-eaters: Sonya “the Black Widow” Thomas ate 46 dozen in 2005. That’s 552 oysters. In about 10 minutes.
That cannot be good for a person. Oysters are a great source of protein, omega-3s and minerals, especially zinc. But when things go wrong, they go extremely wrong. “You can get very sick from eating raw oysters,” the US Center for Disease Control warns. There’s a risk of infection, from the likes of norovirus, or worse – the potentially deadly vibrio bacteria.
Deadly? I thought they just gave you a dodgy tummy. A vibrio vulnificus infection can lead to limb amputation and even death: two people in Louisiana died this summer after eating contaminated oysters.
This confirms all my prejudices about oysters. And yet people keep coming back. As chef Richard Corrigan said to the Times, “It’s a brave person indeed, the person who puts an oyster in their mouth, but after that really, the passion hits you.”
“Passion”, eh? They’re said to be an aphrodisiac – maybe the youth are hoping to revive their notoriously flagging sex lives? Oysters do contain lots of zinc, which is important for male sexual function especially, but it’s probably a stretch to say they boost libido.
Pfff. So why bother queueing to eat them? They’re an eco-friendly way to hit your #proteingoals. Oysters don’t need feeding – they get nourishment from nutrients in seawater – and production emits very little carbon; French marine researcher Fabrice Pernet told New Scientist magazine that farmed bivalves are “one of the greenest foods”. And there’s nothing sexier than sustainability.
Do say: “What’s grey, quivering and clammy?”
Don’t say: “A Gen-Zer after a dodgy £1 oyster.”
