Why Do We Eat Seafood?

Today, my family drove up to Los Angeles to visit my very pregnant aunt and my grandparents. It was really awesome seeing everyone again, seeing that my aunt is healthy and the baby is doing fine, seeing my grandparents semi-satisfied at least in America again. And of course, I was spoiled rotten with a fresh batch of crazy expensive clothes and compliments of how tall I've gotten (though I haven't grown an inch since junior high). Oh family. Oh beautiful, sunny Californian not-white Christmas (Eves).

So to the point, we went to a favourite restaurant for lunch in Monterey Park's Little Taipei: Seafood Village, and boy do they have ohmygolashes-amazing seafood. I pretty much ate my weight in Dungeness crab legs and Snowfish and eggplant! I DESPISE eggplant (sorry, aubergine fans) but today's dish was absolutely scrumptious and sauceylicious. I have also lost my appetite for seafood throughout the years but the love was renewed upon taste of savory scallops and creamy clams.

Seafood Village's famous House Crab (photo creds to LAlist.com)

But then while I was breaking open crab leg after crab leg voraciously with my bare teeth (I know I'm a baller G), a question formed in my mind.

Why do we eat seafood?

I mean, aside from how awful it smells when it's not cooked right or the hyped up fear of mercury going straight to the brains of our unborn children and rendering them mentally wrong for the rest of their lives (bet your mother didn't think of that as she made your tuna sandwiches in your packed lunches, eh?) ... Seafood takes so much EFFORT to eat. It's almost counterproductive! Think about the calories you burn scraping the tiny little strings of pure-white meat from those exoskeletons.

Eating seafood is highly inefficient. I think that was some of the driving force behind my growing indifference towards seafood throughout the years. I don't particularly love staring into the poor dead eyes of fish or picking out the tiny bones (nature's payback towards us hungry customers) or eating their unborn children (and I'm sure karma will kick in somehow someday). And worse is sashimi ... raw fish. They didn't even merit a quick rinse through the boiler before being chopped up, flayed, and dipped in wasabi D:

I'm not a huge fan of mussels because of the weird sacs of dirt in their bellies, but I do love the scallops in their rainbow shells. The problem is, it's so hard to scrape those persistent little suckers off and when I finally disengage them from their firm grasp on safety, it's but a tiny morsel of chewy chewy food. Ooooh but I can't resist the chewy. It's like variable reinforcement - I keep coming back for more.

Well, the good news is that seafood is supposed to be brain food. Omega-3 fatty acids found in fish oils are supposed to be some miracle worker on development, lowering blood pressure, and high SAT scores and winning the lottery and whatnot (could be joking on the last one .. and a half). You can apparently get omega-3's from walnuts, olive oil, and soybeans all the same. In fact, I'm rooting for soybeans. They are the cure all for people who have food issues with just about anything in the world. Lactose intolerants drink soymilk. Mercury poisoning fearfuls get their omega-3's. Asian people add it to everything to make things yummy. Go soy.

So grab your cracker and pick because you're in for a long, dainty obstacle course through the shell and bones to a few bites of delish. I'm about to go exploit some more of what the Pacific Ocean's got to offer.