We have seven billion people. As Bill Gates pointed out on Reddit recently, in 2000, the dry mass of humans was about 125 million metric tons, compared to 10 million ton for all wild vertebrates. There are simply way too many of us. About half of all fertile land on Earth is used to grow plants that are used to feed humans.
I'm not so much interested in arguing for political change, because it's unrealistic to think that individuals can bring about political change. I'm interested in creating an alternative that people can copy in their own lives and spreads like a virus. It's clear that with so much land used to feed humans, we should be very interested in any sort of food that does not depend upon large amounts of land. We have to start eating foods that do not depend upon large amounts of land but can instead be grown in a sustainable manner. The three foods that I love and champion are hemp seed, mushrooms and mussels.
Mussels are grown on ropes to which they attach. The mussels filter the water of nitrates, which are dumped into the oceans through human agriculture. Thus, when humans start growing mussels for human consumption, we're fixing the damage we're now causing through agriculture. The problem we face is that although mussels are very cheap to grow and a great healthy food source, many people are unfamiliar with eating them. Back when food was less affordable, mussel consumption in my country seems to have been far more widespread, as mussels are simply a cheap and very accessible food source. My late grandmother ate plenty of them as a child, my parents seem never to have had one.
What makes them so ideal as a food source? Mussels are ethical food. They don't have a brain. Swathing a fly is less ethical than eating a mussel. People who are vegan or vegetarian because of the environmental impact of meat need to take the next step and move beyond the simplistic animal-plant division. Your diet should include shellfish, starting with mussels. Agriculture does kill animals, as it forces us to use pesticides and destroy previously healthy ecosystems. Eating mussels does not kill animals. It doesn't require the destruction of existing ecosystems, it is capable of creating new ecosystems.
We didn't so much evolve to eat fish, but we did evolve to eat mussels. Neanderthals 150,000 years ago in Europe were found eating mussels. Mussels can simply be grabbed, whereas catching fish requires a level of technology and intelligence we seem to have reached only in more recent eras. It's the seafood our ancestors ate.
As mentioned earlier, it's meat without a brain, it carries the benefits of meat without the detrimental effects. It's healthy food, full of taurine and low in fat. You won't find another food source that is richer in taurine than mussels on the market. Taurine helps regulate blood glucose and diabetics require more taurine in their diet. Studies find that taurine supplementation reduces weight. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that eating mussels will address our diabetes and obesity epidemic. Vegans and vegetarians are found in studies to have reduced taurine in their blood, because taurine is found in meat. In addition, taurine works directly in our brain to have an anxiety reducing effect.
Coping with overpopulation and the prospect of global environmental destruction means changing our lifestyle. Eating mussels instead of meat is a first step. They can be harvested safely most of the year. In an ideal future we would start growing mussels in all our rivers lakes and coastlines and reverse the ongoing eutrophication. We would abandon red meat and start giving back land to nature.
tl;dr
mussels are one of the most paleo seafood
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