OYSTER PERILS, BUFFET LOVE, SWEET TREATS & THE VALENTINE’S DATE

To consider the oyster is to understand why we cannot have nice things. For there is no indignity we won’t lay at the salt-water mollusc’s perfect little shell.

This Valentine’s Day there will be many stories touting the aphrodisiacal properties of oysters. It is nonsense. Nothing connects the consumption of a glorious bivale to an increased sex drive beyond myth – the best of which suggests that oysters were the breakfast of choice for Casanova.

As reported by WIRED last autumn, the “scientific evidence” often stems almost entirely from a misinterpreted study that occurred a decade ago. This, in and of itself, isn’t uncommon. What’s so irksome in the case of the oyster is that the creature’s actual properties are so wondrous that our attempts to exaggerate them cannot be anything other than intolerably crass. It’s like the garish souping up of a Ferrari.

As a “filter feeder,” an oyster mitigates pollutants and has a positive influence on an ecosystem. As a food, an oyster is an excellent source of zinc, iron, calcium and selenium – not to mention vitamins A and B12 – and is both low in calories and high in protein.

There is nothing like an oyster, and yet we try to make it something more than it is. Even worse is our appetite for the oyster itself.

In the late 19th century, New York Harbor’s oyster beds were so plentiful that on any day one could find as many as six million oysters waiting to be shucked along the waterfront. In The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell, Mark Kurlansky suggests that New York’s restaurant scene as we know it wouldn’t exist without this supply. Bravo oyster!

However, as demand for those salty bits of meaty manna increased, cultivation became more efficient and our unhindered greed eventually turned an otherwise sustainable source of affordable protein into an expensive delicacy. By the beginning of the 20th century, we had nearly exhausted the supply. The Gilded Age, indeed. Irish satirist Jonathan Swift is credited with saying, “He was a bold man that first ate an oyster,” seemingly mocking its appearance. But I would submit to you that we are the ugly ones for using and abusing a creature that has never done anything other than provide nourishment, protect our waters and taste delicious.

And for that, we should be the ones imprisoned – if not in an oyster’s shell, then certainly by our own shame.