Lobster: some OG Prison Food
Yum
Adil, 5–24–17
Let’s say you’re a prisoner at a New England jail in the 1800s. You stroll into the cafeteria to grab lunch and chill with your homies, but everyone groans and your day is ruined when you see the unsurprising entree on the menu: lobster.
Yes indeed, lobster was prison food back in the day. In fact, the “sea cockroach” was considered peasant-level food for centuries. When European settlers first landed in America, lobster would reportedly wash onto shore in piles two feet high. In hard times, these bountiful crustaceans became one of the easier-to-acquire sources of protein, earning them a reputation as a poor man’s food.
Lobster was so plentiful and hated that Native Americans even ground them up and used them as fertilizer. They also used lobster as bait for when they went fishing for… real fish. If they had a really rough day and caught no bass, they would be forced to eat the bait instead. During the Revolutionary War, British POWs even revolted as a response to being fed too much lobster.
Back to the prisoners. Did I mention people really hated lobster? In fact, eating lobster was even recognized as such a cruel punishment that state laws actually instituted a maximum limit of 3x weekly lobster, as any more would be intolerable and unjust. Apparently, it was on par with eating rats.
So what’s the deal with today’s lobster-loving culinary crowd? As you all know, fashion is cyclical — yesterday’s trash becomes tomorrow’s gold. In this case, the process was aided by some wild technological advancements: trains and cans. In the mid-1800s, the clueless Midwesterners who hadn’t gotten the memo about how much they’re supposed to hate lobster started creating a bigger market for it, and it was possible through railroads. Lobster soon became one of the most common canned goods. Additionally, people themselves were able to travel to/between east coast cities. For folks who hadn’t been exposed to the lobster hatred, apparently they started to develop a taste for it and missed it when they went back home. Prices began surging in the 1880s, and by WWII, voila — it was a delicacy.
Today, lobster can easily go for $5/lb, though it can spike as high as $14/lb as it did in 2012. So next time you drop $30 on a lobster dinner, remember than in 1800 someone probably would’ve paid you $30 to pick the scum up off the beach and eat it.
Will people in 2150 finally recognize my genius and start charging exorbitant prices for McChickens and Chicken Fries?? Time will only tell.
Bonus: “The lobster, which has changed little over the last 100 million years, is known for its unusual anatomy. Its brain is located in its throat, its nervous system in its abdomen, its teeth in its stomach and its kidneys in its head. It also hears using its legs and tastes with its feet. One of the few things lobsters have in common with humans: They tend to favor one front limb, meaning they can be right-clawed or left-clawed.”
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