food museum blog

Lettuce-Loving Sirens

O the sirens of Florida, the graceful behemoths that lie like gray logs just under the surface of the water. We recently examined manatees up close at the Tampa Zoo, where those under repair and rest after injury from boat propellers and other human hazards, chomp down barrels-full of lettuces. They and their gizzard-possessing fish friends, the local leaping mullet, are vegetarians of reknown.

From manatees.net--"Manatees eat over 60 different species of aquatic and semi-aquatic plants. Their diet includes manatee grass, turtle grass, various species of algae, mangrove leaves, and water hyacinths. They may consume 10% of their body weight daily in vegetation. Their digestive system allows the bacterial breakdown of cellulose in the hind-gut. To accommodate the great volume of high-fiber food they eat, manatatees have intestines up to 150 feet long."

Traveling Veggie Starves Not in Austria

Vegetarian Son of Foodie is visiting friends in Graz, Austria and has discovered the joys of kasespatzle, --micro-dumplings with cheese topped with grilled onions--and  kaferbohnen ( red kidney bean)salad --along with assorted beers--those thus far singled out are Murauer ( brewed since 1495) and Edelweiss, ( since 1475.)

I imagine by now a potato or two has passed his lips, as well as assorted voluptuous-sounding cakes, and superb coffee.

Fish That Fish Out of My Brew, Will You?

  The Guardian reports that some of our favorite  food and drink,  including Guinness stout, contain unusual animal products. The frothy dark brew, for example, is "clarified" using a form of collagen called isinglass, derived from the swimbladders of fish. ( Remember the "isinglass curtains you can roll right down, in case there's a change in the weather" from the song " Surrey with the Fringe on Top," from the musical Oklahoma!??  Not the same--that isinglass apparently is made of mica, and was a substitute for glass.) Only trace elements of the stuff remain after brewing, but that may be enough for rejection by staunch veggies.

Mars Bars candy, which once used the vegetable version of rennet in its milk chocolates, sometimes made from fig leaves or thistles , or  mold, is back to the animal variety, derived from calves, or "the stomach(s) of slaughtered newly-born calves," as the UK Vegetarian Society so nicely puts it. Rennet allows the calves to digest their mothers' milk.

As for beef gelatine? Evidently it's in Kellogg's Frosted Flakes, at least in UK products, to help the sugar adhere to the flakes.

( Photo from http://www.guinness.com/us_en)