Lobstah!
mikethemadbiologist | September 4, 2007Over at Shifting Baselines, there's an interesting discussion of a question that economist Steven Levitt asks: why are we eating so much shrimp? Unfortunately, the way the question is phrased--is it supply or demand--ignores the history of another crustacean craze. Lobster.
It's hard to believe, in an era where lobster is a gourmet delicacy, that it was once viewed as equivalent to eating vermin (think 'sea cockroach'). In seventeenth and eighteenth century Maine, enlightened legislators passed laws prohibiting the provision of lobster to slaves, servants, and wards. Consequently,…