How 11 'Cheap Eats' Became Luxury Foods | Business Insider Marathon

0:00 in the 1800s New England lobsters were cheaper than canned beans today just a pound sells for $50 making it one of the priciest Seafoods we traveled the world to see how 11 Foods went from Trash to Treasure our first stop is Maine where we learned how its Lobster became a billion dooll industry and how fishermen are trying to protect it for 7 months of the year Steve and his brother Dan set sail in the dark to pick up bait I'm 57 he's 55 but basically every dollar I've made has come out of the water right here since I was 12 years old as they motor out to their first set

0:46 of traps Dan preps that bait just as Dawn sets in the work takes off and it doesn't stop Steven Dan will empty over 300 lobster traps today six traps are strung along one line or troll colorcoded buoys like Steve's orange and blue ones Mark either end a winch pulls in the line and Steve hauls the 40 lb traps on board we get paid to pull them out of the traps what hurts is what you slam your elbow onto when you're moving your arm out of there the team throws back any by catch or species that aren't lobsters like

1:32 these crabs we don't keep anything we can't sell they also toss back any lobsters that are too big or too small to be legally harvested it has to be at least 3 and 1/4 in from the back of the eye to the back of the shell that's that's legal that's big enough if it's larger than 5 in it has to go back if they come across a female with eggs like this one that's also protected by and has to be thrown back they clip a v-shaped notch into the tail to let other Fishers know this Lobster had eggs but if you don't leave stuff in the water for the future you won't have a fishery Dan fills the empty traps with bait aadi and red fish men haen and pork

2:17 fat what we're giving them is their junk food be like walking by a dut shop and smelling the duts cooking so you go in then they push the first trap back into the water to catch some more they have to be careful not to get caught up in that line as it whips by that rope is one of the most dangerous parts of lobstering it's why these guys carry a knife in case the Rope pulls them overboard they can cut themselves free he could fall off to stir and it be 3 minutes before I realized he went overboard and that's not like I was ignoring him it's just I'm doing other things once the traps are safely back in the water Steve and Dan slide rubber bands around the claws of their latest catch we try to ban the hot shells first sometimes cuz they'll bite the other ones I have to pay for everything except

3:03 for the bands the Dal give us the band Steve drops them into the tank below so they'll stay kicking you want a lobster to stay alive all the way until it's cooked so bacteria doesn't grow because they get paid by the lobster the team keeps a tally from each buoy line two going to be a long day Dan they want to catch at least 10 lobsters from one troll or about 2 lbs a trap anything under a pound is real bad even when we're having a bad day and we're not catching much look where we are I'd much rather be here than stuck in an office somewhere but for the last decade or so rumors have swirled that Maine's Lobster population could be at risk scientists track the East Coast Lobster stock by

3:50 the total weight of the population What's called the biomass if you were to pinpoint a location where you could sort of balance that biom on your fingertip that would be the center of gravity in the 1970s Lobster center of gravity was actually right off Long Island New York because of warming water the population collapsed there the center shifted north towards the stronger population of Southern New England but soon the same thing happened there and that population collapsed by the late 2000s the center had shifted all the way to the Gulf of Maine fishermen here experienced a surge in the Lobster population by 2016 Lobster Landings had hit a record high of 132 million PBS and

4:37 made up almost half of what was caught in Maine before this boom fishermen here caught everything from Herring and muscles to scallops Lobster became such a financially productive activity during the boom of our Landings and most fishermen focused exclusively on Lobster in the 2010s going all in on Lobster seemed like a safe bet for fishermen they could earn more than any other species and Lobster's price stayed High despite soaring Supply I think there's always risk associated with putting all of your eggs in one basket and that's essentially the situation we've created but now the population is Shifting again farther offshore Lobster

5:23 eggs and warming Waters inshore aren't surviving at the rates that ones in cooler waters are because the Gulf of Maine is warming faster than 99% of the world's oceans people have been worried what happened in New York and New England would happen here but scientist Kathy Mill says there's still hope we have conservation measures in place that are buffering some of the effects of warming temperatures measures like maximum size limits introduced in the 1930s and V notching in the 1940s the conservation measure to protect egg bearing females is almost a century old these have helped slow lobsters decline off Maine see how in the last few decades the center of gravity hasn't moved as far as

6:08 it did in the 70s ' 80s and '90s not only does Steve throwback lady lobsters but his traps are also set up so small ones can escape so the kitchen is where the food is you got two doorways in and then this is the Parlor back here where they're all hanging out after they eat every trap has three sometimes more vents these vents are designed to let the lobsters out that aren't legal size while these catch limits in Maine have helped they probably won't stop the population from shifting completely the population will not collapse it will decline but to levels that we've experienced in the past like most scientists here Cathy's team predicts the center of gravity will keep shifting North in the future and as lobsters move

6:54 offshore so too do the lobstermen small boats like Steves that stay close to the coastline are increasingly being replaced with big ones that go lobstering 30 m out for days at a time but big boats are an investment most young lobstermen can't afford even a small rig like this takes a lot of money to operate the traps and the buoys and the Rope probably looking at about $160,000 if everything was brand new am I worried about the the younger generation and I am because we've done everything we can to to keep a fishery for them the stuff that we can't control we can't control yeah I'm inbound

7:40 over just check on small boats lobstermen like Steve and Dan will go out for just the morning and pull into the Portland dock around noon they sell their catch to Luke's Lobster at 650 a pound for hard shell and 550 for soft shell or ones that have recently molted wack runs the tank room his team grades the lobsters based on weight and quality as they come off the boats ones with two full grown claws get a higher grade uh so you can tell this one lost this claw so you wouldn't want to pay $50 for this on your plate they also sort them by the

8:26 hardness of their shells if you squeeze a soft shell you can feel water inside because there's still room for the lobster to grow that also means there's less meat those can only be sold to local markets before they spoil a hard shell though it's like a bullet there's no water in here the higher proportion of meat to Shell in a hard shell lobster hard shell lobsters will fetch a bit more because they survive longer and they can be exported out of the state here's something that you you would pay good money for at a Manhattan Restaurant uh the it has a Crusher claw and has a pincher claw the crusher Claw is bigger pincher Claw is more narrow three lb Lobster I would not want to get my finger uh in in their Crusher claw

9:12 that's for sure he's seen some pretty lobsters through all his years of grading this guy's more of an albino and this this guy is like the Calico he's albino and spots when they're this color they look prehistoric to me apparently no matter what color they are when they're alive once you boil them they all turn red from here Ward will drop them off at Luke's Lobster's restaurant next door or send them to the company's processing facility about 20 minutes away the first step is running it through a stunner Luke's Lobster wouldn't show us it stunner but the machine could look something like this it's a lethal electric shock marketed as a quicker and more humane way to kill lobsters than boiling them alive at the processing facility we were able to catch up to the lobsters just after

9:58 steaming they go straight into a chiller to stop the cooking and bring them to a food safe temperature of below 40° we then break the lobster down into parts that's Luke Holden a third generation lobsterman and the founder of Luke's Lobster because of rising utilities and PPE costs he says this processing facility actually loses him money it's definitely a really tough industry to make ends meet um there are less and less processors in the state of main every year he offsets the losses with the money he makes from his restaurants I'm a little bit stubborn in nature this is the business that I love I find like so much energy just being in the being a

10:44 seafood processor workers dump out buckets of Claws and Knuckles onto these tables these shellers move at lightning speeds cracking open the claws and swiping out the meat it's amazing how competent those Pickers are and how fast they can go in one shift these Pickers can shell 40,000 lbs of lobsters this machine removes the small legs from the body the company pulverizes the body meat into mints for its lobster bisque but they don't waste those legs they send them through this roller the leg meat is used for a lobster ravioli our Lobster cakes our Lobster Nik and cheese

11:30 all the shells get crushed into a powder that can then be used in fertilizer at the back of the room workers do a quality check of knuckle and Claw meat to make sure that there's no shell or cartilage before It ultimately gets packed up if it passes the check the staff packs them into 2 lb [Music] bags this machine vacuum seals them then they get a slow trip down this flash freezing machine which can take less than 10 minutes to cool them down to -10° the majority of the state's lobsters are processed into Parts like this some of these packs will go to Partners like Whole Foods and Benny Hana the rest head to Luke's Lobster restaurants where they're seeing a surge in demand when there's more demand for

12:15 the finished goods that trickles up to the fisherman and that creates more economic value for the industry but this meat hasn't always been valuable for most of our recorded history there were so many lobsters up and down the east coast of the US they were considered a food of the poor and they held that reputation for centuries a legend goes in the 1900s at a party hosted by the wealthy Rockefeller family a lobster me for the servants was served to the guests and they loved it soon overfishing made Lobster scarce and expensive cementing it as a luxury food in the US the tail meat was especially popular

13:00 Luke's dad Jeff was the first licensed Lobster processor in Maine but in the 2000s he couldn't sell the cooked knuckle and Claw meat he had a freezer full of hundreds of thousands of pounds of cooked lobster me that ultimately there was no strong market for when Luke moved to New York City for a job in banking he couldn't find a good lobster rooll so he called up his dad asking to buy the claw me to start a lobster roll Shop in Manhattan he was like that's great and he even offered us 90day terms to get the the business financing cuz it was just going to sit in his freezer anyways the first Shack was a huge success and they've since expanded to 35 locations worldwide fast forward 15 years the market is completely inversed when we

13:46 started Luke's in 2009 we were paying $14 a pound for cook lobster meat in the last 3 years we've seen as high as $50 a pound and I would say on average it's in the high 30s why more demand the company opened its Portland main restaurant in 2019 I usually pack this cooler with about 120 lb and before lunch is even over they will have gone through all 120 lb Michael Tibbits is the assistant kitchen manager and he says the most popular dish is a lobster roll loaded with knuckle and Claw meat it's become a real iconic thing we will sell over 800 lobster rolls a day it's just a regular New England Split Top roll it's our butter wheel right here we do three

14:32 swipes of butter on both sides put it on the flat top weigh out 4 oz of fresh Lobster meat drizzle of butter little bit of secret seasoning and that is the loops lobster roll as popularity for lobster dishes has jumped Nationwide so has Maine's dependency on this one crustation our over dependence on one fishery is is going to always be scary and it's always tenuous that's why Brie Warner launched Atlantic Sea Farms a company that helps fishermen get into a different kind of business kelp farming not only is seaweed getting more popular stat side its harvest season is the opposite of lobsters we have all of this Coastline it's so protected it's so nutrient-dense it's a perfect place to grow kelp we

15:19 have 4,000 boats that in the winter aren't doing a whole lot kelp thrives in Main's cold water so this is really good healthy kelp right now what you want to see is a nice dark olive color to it you don't see any bare spots you're getting several pounds each foot of line you obviously don't need to water them yeah no herbicides no pesticides Atlantic Sea Farms grows the kelp seeds at this Nursery then we give it to our partner Farmers for free we help them find their lease we help them with site selection we help them with farm setup when Atlantic sea farm started out in 2018 the entire state of Maine harvested 53,000 lb of farm seaweed for the first

16:04 year of Atlantic Sea Farms we had three brave souls take on the risk of doing their own Farms Flash Forward to today its 40 partner Farmers harvested a record-breaking 1.3 million pounds in 2024 just in time to meet booming demand in the global seaweed Market we haven't had to recruit anyone in years the proof is in the pudding the fishermen don't do things that don't make money for them many are lobstermen like Justin papy just looking at things we can do to diversify take a couple eggs out of the lobster basket he considered oyster and muscle farming but found kelp was a cheaper investment because he could use the same boat ropes and buoys as lobstering I had all these buoys just

16:49 stacked up on the shore it's like well they don't need to be on the shore maybe they could be making me money in the water and kelp seem to fit really well with lobstering in our season and our times it took Justin 3 years to get the license for his 8 Acre Farm the way we're set up it kind of looks like an Olympic swimming pool the kelp is on like a lane except it's 7t below the surface debris like trees can tangle in these lines and big waves can move them we're not growing things on land in nice rows we're putting our nice rows in the water and then Mother Nature throws hurricanes at you Justin's biggest expense were these Moorings or anchors that hold down the the kelp lines they can cost a farmer as much as $50,000 for a 4 Acre Site once the kelp starts to

17:35 grow it gets really heavy so it's better to spend a little bit more and get something that won't move Justin can Harvest 10,000 a day on average during the season slowly as we're getting better at it it's become more dependable and now it's a part of our income stream for the past 5 years Steve has also been harvesting kelp in the spring he spent about 22 $2,000 starting up his farm but he says the investment was worth it there's a lot less expense with the kelp once you set the farm up you haven't got nearly as much fuel burn and you haven't got a $600 or $800 a day bait bill I don't find myself nearly as tired at the end of the day of harvesting kelp as I do at the end of a day Hall traps after fisherman like Steve Harvest their kelp Atlantic seaf Farms buys it we design all of the

18:22 products and we turn it into value added products for grocery stores from this Factory the company makes seaweed salad Burgers smoothie cubes and kimchi I got here some skinny KP it was harvested by one of our partner Farmers yesterday these blades clearly are taller than I am it's really good we wash shred it and we'll blanch it and then from there that product will go to our fermentation room and we use that as an ingredient the Keel per mens in goou Jang tamari and goou garu for 10 days and comes out looking like this that's the spicy seaweed salad here they're just trying to make sure everything's mixed really well together some of that liquid would

19:07 have settled while all the product was sitting finally workers scoop the salad into 15 oz jars this machine makes sure the lid is airtight we want to get those Lids on there really secure because it is a live product they're still can be fermentation that's happening and so we want we don't want any air getting into those jars each of these jars is traceable back to the exact Farm it was pulled from and at about $10 a piece they can be more valuable than Rock help the company makes over 75,000 jars of fermented seaweed salad every year and sells them in thousands of stores across the us our food system is so broken it's making Farmers poorer the environment worse and consumers less healthy and

19:52 what we're doing here on the coast of Maine to work with fishermen to diversify in the face of climate change with the most climate friendly food on the planet for me that's very hopeful studies show kelp sucks harmful nutrients like nitrogen out of the water sequesters carbon dioxide from the air and protects against Coastal erosion even at Luke's Lobster they're frying up these kelp Burgers we're shifting all the time shifting doesn't scare me at all if they can sell the product we should be encouraging more fishermen to go out and harvest kelp so will kelp ever replace Lobster probably not so kelp is not a silver bullet Lobster always going to be part of the fabric of

20:38 Maine we're very optimistic about a future that includes Lobster and kelp and oysters and muscles and ways that we can create a future where we can always be working on the water for generations to [Music] come oxtail used to be a throwaway meat for most Americans but after the pandemic forced meat buyers to try new things Ox Tail's price tripled finding oxtail on menus in the United States was rare just a couple decades ago Pat lfa's family's butcher shop in New Jersey has been selling the cut since it opened in 1922 he says that in the past the cut of beef never got much attention from

21:24 restaurants most of his oxtail sales came from Latin American Asian and Caribbean communities who have cooked with it for Generations there are many cultures that focus in on the oxtail because at one time it was an economy cut one big reason oxtail was considered a throwaway is that it has a lot less meat than other cuts of beef that's because it's mostly bone and fat with only about 40% usable meat to get the same amount of meat as one pound of another cut of beef like sirloin steak you'd need 2 and 1 12 lbs of oxtail so when you really calculate how much meat you have for poundage of product it's not

22:11 much still those eating oxtail back then knew it wasn't like any other cut of beef the favor is so distinctive you can close your eyes probably put your blindfold on you will know that it's oxtail oxtail is high in collagen and is more gelatinous than most other cuts of beef the collagen breaks down when it's cooked and gives the meat a buttery melt in your mouth texture I love art cells if they cook correctly not everybody can cook art cells and if you season it right oh my God it the last in the mou of days it really is the pearl of of of the animal but because it's so succulent and and because it's so spoon tender once cooked there's no mistaking that

22:56 for any other cut in the and while oxtail wasn't widely in demand in the US the story was much different in Jamaica where food lovers have long known the value of the Bony beef I don't know if it's a bone I something but most um overseas they come to Jamaica just for the ox O'Shea Williams learned how to cook traditional Jamaican oxtail stew when he was a child it's not to be people like any other way today it's one of the best selling dishes at his Seaside Restaurant oa's 876 Kitchen in Port Antonio Jamaica the dish dates back to the Island's colonial era when enslaved Africans were given unwanted animal parts like oxtail to

23:43 eat using their ancestral cooking techniques and local spices they turned it into a flavorful stew that's now a staple of Jamaican Cuisine the oxtail is typically chopped into 1-in pieces and seasoned with fresh spices first we going to start with the garlic we're going to start the onion next some skeleion we start the pepper SC pepper B is add the spice like hot the meat is then slow cooked over an

24:29 open fire for hours until it falls off the bone really good everything is right look at spice very nice while oxtail was always somewhat of a luxury in Jamaica the prices O'Shea is seeing today are way higher than before that's because there's more demand in the US 41% of meat imported to Jamaica comes from from the us including Oxdale so if prices are up Stateside they're up in Jamaica too I might have topress because the things are really getting high I believe that oxil price will never up it's always been going up and up and up Ox Tales popularity in the US has

25:16 been on the rise since the mid 2010s but it really spiked during and after the covid-19 pandemic as supply chain issues drove up beef prices in America consumer searching for cheaper meat turned to Cuts Like oxtail but oxtail was never meant to have such a high demand oxtail only makes up 4 to six lb of a cow compared to the hundreds of pounds of the other beef cuts this limited Supply combined with growing demand has more than doubled us oxtail prices over the past decade from $6 in 2015 to 14 in 2024 today Pat says oxtail is the most expensive he's ever seen it the demand for it is as high as it's ever been to

26:04 understand just how much the price has jumped we visited Chef Judith Abel at swirl wine beastro in South Florida she makes an oxtail ravioli that costs more than double what it used to when we first opened swirl on the menu it was under $20 for the dish today it costs $48 oxtail was one of Judith's favorite dishes growing up as a child in Jamaica I can remember maybe around maybe 10 AV Oxdale it was so so good oh my goodness it's always an upscales family meal for better holidays you'll get some Oxdale people are coming over to your house on a Sunday you know you'll cook oxil it wasn't until she

26:50 moved to the US in 1986 that she realized just how inexpensive the cut of meat was outside of the island it was like a dollar in change we were cooking oxtail at my sister's uh house because oh my goodness oxtail it's like it's like so cheap here but as the price of oxtail Rises she can barely make a profit from it there was a point where we were like yeah we're not put it on a menu so so we had stopped serving it for for for a while right now we have to cap it because how much can you sell you know ravioli for but for now I'm just making it out of love with a $48 oxtail ravioli dish it's safe to say consumers

27:36 are feeling the impact Oxdale prices are just getting out of hand that's Jamaican comedian Marlin Palmer in 2016 he sparked an online movement bringing awareness to Rising oxtail prices with the hash make oxtail cheap again it all started when he saw the price of an oxtail entree at his local Jamaican restaurant in Toronto start to rise I went to Albert's and uh I looked at the price and I was like this is this is not the normal price and so I made a Instagram story or like a Snapchat or something and I was like you look at this $20 for a large Oxdale in a t what is that and at the time uh Trump

28:22 was running on his make America great again campaign so I was like make Oxdale cheap again again this is this is what we need to be campaigning for the hashtag quickly garnered thousands of mentions all over social media with longtime Oxdale lovers sharing their experiences through doing it I realized how many people felt the same way but just weren't saying anything it's that sense of community we're all in on the joke we all know what's what's at stake here and we're treating it like this dire situation that's not dire but to our community it's dire Business Insider found itself in the middle of the controversy in 2023 our food page reposted a video about oxtail on Twitter garnering over 36 million views and thousands of

29:07 reposts in the replies oxtail lovers like Marlin tried their best to steer people away from their favorite food jokingly claiming that consuming it could cause severe ailments and even death I kept putting like the vomit emoji and telling people yucky anytime someone would bring that up I was like you eat that and like just making it seem grotesque cuz like I at a certain point propaganda is the only thing that's going to save us we got to start lying to these people I'm pretty sure that worked on a couple hundred people any little bit makes a difference man any little bit but behind the jokes there's still some real concern among OG oxtail fans I think there's anger that it got out because we found a way to make what other people think was trash treasure I think that's

29:55 what really connects us to it like we had it inhouse for so long nobody knew how great this was and then the internet just propelled it to new heights but the debate isn't only about price there's also the question of the right way to make oxtail like new stuff like try new but after try the new stuff automatically come back to the old stuff because they not going to have the taste that what what what they going looking for no way like a trend cuz like you see it in like oxil tacos oxel syrup oxil cereal and they have now remixed it 500,000 times into different concoctions that I do not

30:40 approve of I just it's a mess now it's it's gone overboard and that's part of why I think the price has gone up as well this way of thinking puts Judith and her oxtail ravioli in an awkward position because I'm Jamaican Chef they have this expectation oh going to a a restaurant that is a Jamaican Chef oh they have oxil on the menu they're expecting it to be on the bone the traditional way I worked in uh England Wales Switzerland all of these experiences influence how I cook how could I come you know just cook uh Ox the same old way of course I'm going to find another way to cook it to make the dish she starts by trimming excess fat from the oxtail and Browning it on all

31:25 sides the key to making oxtail tender is cooking it slowly at a low temperature in a flavorful stock once it's done the meat is fall off the bone tender due to Ox Tail's long cooking time making a batch of ravioli takes Judith 2 days but Judith says she can't achieve the same flavor with any other cut of beef it had it had to be the oxtail Judith Cooks the oxtail again for another four hours in more wine and beef stock now that's going to cook down and the reduction of this oxtail is what we're going to use as the filling for the ox for the ravioli when Judith first considered adding oxtail to the menu at

32:12 her restaurant ravioli wasn't her first choice her goal was to pay homage to her Jamaican Heritage while also distinguishing herself as a chef I mean there's a lot of Jamaican restaurants that you can go and get traditional Jamaican food we want to set ourselves apart it took years of trial and error to come up with this dish today the oxil ravioli is a customer favorite at Swirl we had to put it on the door home of the oxil ravioli I'm selling out of oxil like every week I can't keep up well she is concerned about the price hikes she says it shouldn't stop her or other chefs from creating Innovative oxtail

32:58 dishes there there will always be a chef who's going to try to take it to the next level I've seen chefs uh smoke it and then brace it um I've seen chefs who slow smoke it for days and so it's fallen off the bone have at it you know be creative today Pat lefa delivers oxtail to all kinds of chefs and restaurants including high-end ones Des despite many people's fears Pat insists there's still plenty of oxtail to go around unless there's some evolutionary issue with cattle it's never going to disappear as long as the demand for oxid is there there people are going to buy

33:44 it and people are buying it at a higher price anyway you know they may not buy as much but they're still buying it because it's like it's in our system at this point high-end fua or fattened Goose liver is a costly and controversial fine dining staple and this faga is six times as expensive here in extremadura Spain Eduardo Sosa is one of the few people in the world making what his supporters call ethical many consider fagar to be unethical

34:30 because it's typically made by force feeding ducks or geese to fatten their livers Eduardo does things differently and it makes his product incredibly pricey a 180 g jar costs over $200 but what exactly makes this fagua ethical and why is it so expensive when the weather turns cold and the bird migration season begins wild geese join

35:17 the tamed geese on Eduardo's Farm here the geese Feast upon grass acorns olives figs and different seeds [Music] instead of force feeding the birds Eduardo simply relies on the Gee's natural behaviors there are no fences here the geese are free to come and go as they please Eduardo says the geese eat more grass when they're free to roam he says this

36:02 is essential because the grass apparently makes the acorns taste sweeter to the geese and the more acorns the geese eat the tastier and yellower their livers will be while Eduardo prefers to let the geese eat what they want he does provide them with Organic corn to make their livers more yellow [Music]

36:49 during this time of year geese stuff themselves full of food to prepare for their winter migration this quickly builds fat and enlarges their livers the perfect conditions for creating faga when it's time for the slaughter Ardo uses a traditional technique to stun the geese hypnosis he says this makes the process as painless as possible it happens only once a year during the coldest part of winter when the geese have the most fat it also has to be a moonless night [Music]

37:38 for Eduardo's Hua is so highly sought after because of how flavorful it is to preserve its unique flavor profile Eduardo prepares his fuagra very simply

38:51 [Music] sa po for [Music] Al

40:00 so despite the high demand Eduardo won't make more than 2,000 batches a year he says he's committed to maintaining the wild geese population and heavily discourages overc consumption unlike most faga produces for

41:03 IND [Music] in recent years climate change has pushed back the Farm's traditional making timeline [Music]

42:09 regardless of when it's made Eduardo faga or natural as he calls it has an extremely long waiting list every year there was limited demand for Eduardo's until 2006 when he and his team won the coveted cudak car award at the seal Food Expo in Paris e

43:02 despite challenges and criticism from other F producers Eduardo's product has only continued to become more popular Thea's natural for costs €199 and sells out every

43:48 year despite the Hefty price tag Eduardo says he doesn't see much of a profit from his far geese require more land than other livestock most people in his area prefer to raise Iberian pigs which are very profitable [Music] but it wasn't Eduardo's family who invented the natural F tradition

44:57 and [Music]

45:43 in the 1800s American oysters were cheaper than eggs but over harvesting has driven up the price oysters have been around for a while estimates put the Shelf fish around 300 million years old at least and humans have been enjoying them for centuries oyster cultivation was invented by sergius Arata a Roman engineer also often credited with the invention of underfloor heating and since his invention oyster farming has become big business while you may be seeing oysters on the menu more these days their popularity now is nothing compared to just 200 years ago oyster sales boomed from the early 19th century onwards and the shellfish were sold as street food across London Paris and New York as they

46:30 remained a cheap and accessible snack to many in 1860 the small British Seaside town of witel alone was sending 50 million tons of oysters to London each year and by 1900 New York was eating 1 million oysters every day but as their popularity grew so did the problems industrialization and dredging of the waters in England led to over fishing and as more people moved to the coast more and more sewage ended up dumped in Oyster growing Waters soon there were outbreaks of typhoid and other diseases and many oyster beds had to be closed hard Winters and new diseases killed off many of the remaining native oysters and gave the Shellfish a bad reputation that lasted for years to come there's something else that kept the

47:15 price of oysters down around the turn of the century child labor in the early 20th century American photographer LS Hine captured photographs of many of the children working in the Oyster industry even phot photographing 4-year-old Mary who had apparently shuck two pots of oysters each day things had to change though we soon realized the importance of clean water in the Oyster growing process and outlawed child labor making oysters environmentally safe and ethical to grow came at a cost as the shellfish take a lot of work to produce and now when oysters are raised the environment they're growing in is one of the main considerations here there's no industry there's very little even farming here what you've got out in the lock is just

48:00 everything that is naturally in the lock so they're feeding on the best possible feed that you could want and uh there couldn't be an any more natural product each oyster takes 2 to three years to mature and they start out microscopically small the tiny shellfish are grown in hat trees when they're large enough they're transplanted to their final Growing Place uh well we get the oysters from our Hatchery when they're about your thumbnail size we will grow them in these baskets for approximately 2 to 3 years and then we'll send them to the depuration center uh for depurating and then for packing for dispatch at Lo fine every oyster is depurated a process that

48:46 cleans the oysters and removes any dangerous bacteria every single oyster must be checked by hand making sure that each oyster is shipped live is Paramount uh believe or not we sell roughly about 35,000 oysters every week out of here and every single oyster is individually checked so what we would do is when we're packing the oysters we'd pick up two oysters and we would tap them together now you can obviously see that one's dead but when you're packing thousands at a time you won't necessarily see it and sometimes it's only open just a little tiny bit but when you tap that o you can hear it's Hollow straight away and that is the best way to tell if an oyster's uh going to reach

49:33 its shelf life whether it should be [Music] discarded oysters may only have a 9-day shelf life but that doesn't stop them being shipped all across the globe and their popularity and image as a luxury treat means that their demand is only going to rise harvesting asai is a dangerous job in Brazil workers climb thin palm trees deep in the Amazon

50:19 [Music] rainforest these berries have become one of the most popular so so called superfoods in the US and they aren't cheap One Bowl can cost up to $15 and while the berry has exploded in popularity in recent decades small farms like this haven't really been able to cash in to this day most asai in Brazil is harvested by families on small scale Farms but big plantations are on the ride putting pressure on families like Lucas nogas and a way of life that goes back

51:10 Generations so how did this Amazonian fruit becomes so trendy and what is the true cost for the people who have been harvesting it for Generations [Music] we met Lucas at the end of the 2021 Harvest but there were still some berries left on a few trees his family's Farm is roughly 70 mi from blang the capital of the state of pah which grows more than 90% of the asai produced in Brazil the only tool they use to climb is a single piece of rope called a ponia they used to be made of leaves

52:15 today Lucas's son Luis Fernando will go up the trunks are so thin that climbers have to be lightweight at the top they swing from the tree to reach multiple bunches [Music] going down can be dangerous too especially while carrying a large knife

53:02 and holding an armful of branches dropping them could damage the fragile fruit and the risks don't end at The Climb this is Lucas and his family harvested 53 baskets like these in 2021 earning them

53:47 an income of about $950 that's as little as 20 cents per pound meanwhile a pound of processed assai sorbet can sell for $7 or more in the US part of the issue is that Lucas has to sell his assai as soon as possible because the fruit goes bad fast that leaves farmers who don't have processing machines with little leverage to negotiate Merchants bring the assai to Bay by boat it's a race against the clock to sell the fruit before it spoils so

54:33 markets run over the price of the baskets varies every day depending on the demand most of the asai produced in the states stays in Brazil but exports have skyrocketed growing about 14,000 between 2011 and [Music] 2020 some aai gets transported to

55:20 processing facilities like North assai every day 22 tons of fruit are turned turned into frozen pulp the assai that most people outside of pah are familiar with this is the stage where we see the biggest jump in price about 77% [Music] today More than 70% of Brazil's assai

56:08 exports end up in the states the global market for assai is expected to reach nearly 2.1 billion dollars by the end of 2025 aai's popularity took off in other Brazilian states in the 1980s when it became part of workout culture in Rio and Sal Paulo the Bulls made Regular appearances in this popular '90s soap opera that took place at a gym its high calorie content made it a

56:53 perfect pre or post exercise food and its antioxidants made it easy to Brand a superfood that came with claims that it can solve all sorts of health issues like obesity type 2 diabetes coronary heart disease Strokes hypertension high risk for covid-19 cognitive difficulties sexual difficulties but nutritionists say this narrative has been blown out of proportion wait a minute one food can't do that can it no of course not nonetheless Americans were hooked and made all kinds of assai mixing in Fruit granola honey and more but it's a far cry from the culture of the people who have eaten it for much longer indigenous people living in the

57:40 Amazon have harvested and consumed asai for centuries maybe even Millennia and it's still a staple food in the daily diet of people in pah who eat it fresh with Savory meals Lucas was 12 when he started climbing assai trees and he still does 36 years later in recent years assai has also made headlines in American and Brazilian media for reports of children children

58:26 working in the industry but Farmers like Lucas say it's always been this way and that it's normal for everyone in the family to help out and learn the trade nowadays Lucas owns this land along with 55 other families these kinds of settlements are called kilos or a kumola community and many go back centuries they were established by enslaved Africans and afrodescendants who ran away into the jungle and started communities like this to survive many learned from indigenous people how to harvest and process Native Foods including assai the Brazilian government estimates

59:12 there are nearly 6,000 kilum Bola communities in the country in a 2013 study found roughly 75% still lived in extreme poverty Lucas's oai trees grow alongside different native trees and plants but larger monoculture plantations that produce more fruit are on the rise the amount of land used for these plantations has more than tripled since 2006 these plantations are often located far away from flood Plaines where asai

59:57 trees naturally Thrive that means big producers have to irrigate their asai trees while Farmers like Lucas rely on natural seasonal flooding from the nearby River some small producers have also been favoring asai trees over others which could become an issue in the long run and experts worry that as aai's popularity continues to grow the cultural traditions of pah and the Amazon could be [Music]

1:00:43 lost is something Lucas and many people here take pride in [Music] [Music] foree foree fore spee

1:01:29 [Music] for for centuries caviar was a cheap food eaten by the lower class because the fish it came from the sturgeon was so plentiful but as it spread from the Caspian Sea to fancy European restaurants in the 19th century and went up today all sturgeon fish are endangered making it expensive and difficult to harvest caviar we learned how one entrepreneur started Africa's first caviar Farm traditional caviar can only come from Sturgeon they're native to the Northern Hemisphere many of the most

1:02:16 popular species come from the Caspian Sea where Waters can be much colder than Madagascar that's why the founders raised their fish in Lake monua about, 1400 m above sea level the team spent months Crossing thousands of miles in search of temper Waters like this the lake rarely tops 25° C and it gave this Farm an advantage while sturgeon in the Caspian Sea might grow slower during cold Winters and hot summers The somean says fish here mature year round thanks to these moderate

1:03:11 temperatures the whole process starts in the Hatchery where they care for thousands of baby fish until they're mature enough for the lake sturgeon are notoriously tricky and expensive to raise compared to other f fish like salmon sturgeon need a long time to grow they can take a decade to mature while a salmon only needs 3 years so operating a sturgeon Farm could cost five times more than a salmon one but the team's first hurdle was keeping the fertilized sturgeon eggs alive along thousands of miles to Madagascar they failed four times trying to import them from France and Russia but the fifth time was the charm the company imported 35,000 healthy virgin eggs back in

1:03:59 [Music] 2013 that's deline one of asen's founders nearly a decade later they've grown their fish population to over 60,000 and they raised six different species one of which was thought to be extinct only female sturgeon produced caviar so once they're big enough the team separates them by

1:04:53 sex the females head to the farm with 16 hectares of pens the fish have room to move that's B he's the Farm's breeding manager they use three Nets to contain the fish in the pen one where the fish live an extra net in case they escape and a net on top to hold back Birds 10 full-time Weavers make and mend the Nets on site it takes 31 Mi of rope

1:05:40 and a month of weaving to make just one net ASAP penser has hired and trained 300 MOSI workers the company says it pays three times the minimum wage [Music] a team heads out to feed the fish 5 days a week first cruise test the water when there's enough oxygen they can start adding feed

1:06:42 but he fell one that's so the food will sink to the bottom where the sturgeon eat the company produces about 60 tons of feed a month made from a base of fish meal and vegetable meal like soybean or rice brand yeast and water if the fish aren't fed the right thing GI holes says they could take twice as long to grow

1:07:28 [Music] for the company spends over $130,000 a month on feet alone ASP penser makes the food on site and sources about 80% of its ingredients from farms nearby [Music] Aranda manages the feed mill his team grinds all the raw materials into powder machines then cook and shape the feed into

1:08:14 granules the recipe and size of the pellets change based on the age of the fish feed is such a big expense for ASP penser because the fish eat so much of it while the sturgeon feed there's always a dive watching below the surface to see how quickly the fish eat and how

1:08:59 deep they go every few months jol's team pulls fish out of the water he checks for Row in the sturgeon using this ultrasound machine these fish were born in 2017 [Music] he measures the row to help determine which fish need more time to develop their eggs they isolate the fish that need a few more years to mature these females are Persian

1:09:46 sturgeon they'll spend the last few weeks of their lives in cold pools [Music] these species can be harvested young and only 7 years old [Music] this sturgeon weighs 16 kilos but they can go up to

1:10:41 [Music] [Music] 20 the valuable row makes up about a fourth of it body weight Mand Salama worked as a cook before joining ASP penser am but the row isn't finished caviar just yet workers run the eggs over a SI to separate them from the fish's inerts then they wash the eggs to remove any leftover

1:11:30 bits these workers spread the row out so they can see any misshapen or discolored eggs that need to be removed now they race against the clock to Salt the row in a minute any less time and the eggs won't have a consistent salty taste the salt along with 4 months of Aging in these fridges helps develop the caviar's Nutty [Music] [Applause]

1:12:21 flavor a kiloa caviar can go for over five ,000 the cost is on par with European Brands asaper exports 90% of its caviar to Europe but it's up against stiff competition China is Europe's biggest supplier it raises surgeon on massive Farms like this one 3500 times larger than ASAP penser since 2014 China has been selling the most expensive caviar the kind harvested from Beluga sturgeons seen here at a farm in Florida but Aspens is still years away from harvesting its first Beluga row because it takes nearly double the amount of time to raise the high price Fish compared to other

1:13:06 sturgeon species until then ASAP penser is trying to sell the caviar types that are ready the company has opened offices in Paris Brussels and New York City in hopes of hooking Western markets on African [Music] caviar the team has already managed to convince chefs at some of Europe's top restaurants foris compella is the

1:13:53 executive chef of Lee creen a Michelin starred restaurant he was one of the first chefs in Paris to put Roa on the menu back in [Music] 2019 he top dishes of torch shrimp lamb Tartar and Ceviche with Roa caviar like this dish of Abalone with brown butter

1:14:41 [Music] [Music] and Boris isn't the only Chef who stocked these tins about 15 restaurants across Europe now serve Roa the company's success abroad has allowed it to invest back into Madagascar ASAP penser started by training locals like and menka

1:15:38 [Music] the company provides rentree housing for its workers the housing site also has a grocery store a mini theater and a gy [Music]

1:16:31 that includes three meals a day most of the employees food is grown on site sea urchin was once a filler ingredient in Japanese sushi rolls today its unique flavor has caused Global demand to rise and made it more expensive than Lobster sea urant or oi is a prized delicacy in several parts of the world today the yellow orange gonad are often served in sushi and even right out of

1:17:16 the shell hundreds of urchin species exist but only a select few are coveted food including the Red Sea Urchin here in Santa Barbara known as California gold these gonads are prized because they're large buttery and sweet from the Kelp they eat to find gonads like this divers need to collect individual Sea urants by hand Michael Robertson has been diving for urants for 15 years he starts his days early sailing out before the sun rises it takes him and his crew about 2 and 1/2 hours to reach a a good diving spot see that that little island up there that's called bck that's where

1:18:03 we're going so all this green right here on top of this red it's reef is vegetation that's a good thing that lets us know it's not sand and it's just not bar Rock if there's vegetation maybe there's urchins Michael looks for abundant kelp forest to help him decide where to dive more kelp typically means better quality urchins 2010 on a good day a diver could Harvest maybe up to 2,000 lbs a day of good quality seins now the divers are typically coming in with about 3 to 500 lb a day so a quarter of the amount but surprisingly parts of California's seabeds are full of

1:18:50 urchins if they wanted to they could still bring in 2,000 lb a day there's a lot lot of sein out there but there's a lack of kelp so even if you bring in 2,000 lb if they're not marketable then we don't Harvest them if you want to compare how it was to how it is this was solid kelp from here all the way in all the way down and now you have just little pockets here here and there that lack of kelp impacts the value of Red Sea Urchins it also strains the ocean's ecosystem and the species that rely on kelp forests for Habitat along with warming Waters and pollution in recent decades a certain sea urant is

1:19:35 to blame sea urchins can survive for years without eating even without gonads and after the decline of sea stars one of its predators in 2013 the purple sea urchin population exploded consuming more than 95% of California's kelp forest as it grew purple urchins are smaller and produce fewer gonads so there's little commercial demand for them and as purple urchins multiply and eat more kelp red urchins with good gonads become harder for divers to find finding the right spot to dive is just the first challenge getting your hands on these spiky creatures is the main one some people wonder if SE and Diving

1:20:21 is a dangerous occupation can be as dangerous as you you allow it if you don't keep really tight tabs on your gear and the mechanics of your boat it could easily kill you to make the job easier Michael and his partner Fred need specific tools so this is the one essential piece of equipment everybody has to have it's called a rake uh it's custommade everybody's has their own take on how they like to have it done I've got all these fancy colors on mine because uh if if I ever drop it I'll be able to see it on the bottom and my daughter loves putting the tape [Laughter]

1:21:10 on once they're suited up Michael and Fred head to the bottom and begin collecting urchins one by one all right even with the proper gear a good dive is never a guarantee typically there are only about five gonads inside each urchin and without enough kelp for the urchins to feed on the gonads start to shrivel up in some cases an urchin will be totally empty inside we do crack urchins on the bottom so that we can see what we're picking if there's enough product inside and what the color's like inside to make things more challenging Michael can only Harvest urchins at least 3 and 1/4 in in size you can't

1:21:56 just go out and pick empty urchins so there's a lot more empty urchins than there is beautiful packed urchins that you want to sell depending on what they're eating depends on the grade of the urchin we got lucky on that one all right on sounds good okay cool man see you on the inside there that after a 12-hour day to the islands and back back Michael returns with 750 to 900 lb of urchins the shelf life of fresh urchins is short so they need to be delivered to processors that same night by 4:00 a.m. gan dei's team is

1:22:41 already cracking and cleaning each one by [Music] hand and today we probably have about 10,000 seins to go through the goads are extremely fragile and they only stay fresh for about a week workers crack each urchin down the middle to avoid breaking any of the gonads inside then it's time for one of the most crucial parts of this process cleaning the gonads this stage requires sharp attention to detail if workers don't totally remove the intestines inside the urchin the gonads degrade faster and if any of the gonads rip during this process they immediately drop in value the gonad breaks then it drops a grade

1:23:26 or two and when it goes from a A++ grade and we have to drop it down to B grade the value is maybe about a quarter of what it could have been workers then sort the gonads by color making sure each tray has a uniform shade of yellow or orange after they've packed each wooden tray they use tweezers to inspect each goet again and gently remove any remaining kelp shells or spines the most valuable gonads make make up the A++ grade Jean sells a 200 g premium tray like this for $100 these oi are bright yellow or orange and come only from the sweeter male urchins they're primarily sent to restaurants but jean doesn't come by this quality of gonad often he typically

1:24:13 only finds One Premium gonad out of every 100 urants sea choads weren't always valuable food in the US particularly in the 70s just before Jean's father opened Tradewind the government used to ask the divers the the local divers to smash them kill them at the time until a Japanese person came along and said no this is this is actually a delicacy in Japan and after many trials and errors you know we also found out that Santa Barbara cirin is actually really really good like one of the best in the world Santa Barbara urant was traditionally shipped to Japan until economic collapse stalled things in the mid90s fortunately for Jean's family and other us producers a sushi boom took off in

1:24:59 the US around the same time those of us that was able to make the transition from the Japanese Market into the US domestic Market survived at the time today Jean ships his product across the US oi is one of the few Seafood out there that they really haven't perfected farming yet until somebody figures that out uni is probably going to be a limited High highly sought after item this ultimately raises the price of rare premium gonads this year we're actually seeing a good quality high quality uni that we haven't seen in in about a decade we're seeing a lot more colder Waters we're starting to seeing kelp grow back where it hasn't grown back in the last 10 years just 50 years ago blue Fint tuna

1:25:46 was mostly used to make cat food but its popularity on the Japanese sushi market led to the massive fish selling for up to $3 million this blue fin tuna is 363 lb it's known as the king of sushi in Japan for its color and texture some of the highest quality blue fin are auctioned for millions of dollars at the toyosu market in Tokyo at almost 4 million sare ft the market is a One-Stop shop for fish from all over the world here tuna is sliced packaged and sold to high-end clientele and grocery stores alike but before it's sold experts must first bid on the top tier tuna which can go for millions in 2019 a Japanese

1:26:33 restaurant chain paid over $3 million for a 612 lb tuna and at the center of this action are expert tuna scouters like takayuki Shinoda he's a Naka aroshi or intermediate wholesaler his job is to select the best tuna from around the world for his customers [Music] but the future of takayuki's job is in Jeopardy the population of blue fin tuna is down 97% over the last decade which means there will be less of a need for Naka oosi like

1:27:20 Taki taka Yuki has been a Naka aroshi for 30 years for him work starts at 4:30 a.m. at toyosu Market there's no such thing as a normal business day octopus and squid arrive a day earlier fresh fish like horse mackerel and sardines come in before midnight and truckloads of tuna are dropped off every hour that's almost $13 million and tuna is

1:28:07 the Market's most popular product each day the fish make their way from the boat decks to the auction floor but it's more than just the type of tuna you find in a can there's big eye tuna ideal for sushi and shashimi yellow fin tuna perfect for grilling at restaurants due to its high fat content but most biders are here for the blue fin between 3:00 and 5:00 a.m. wholesale employees layout tuna one by one biders like takayuki have about 15 minutes to evaluate dozens of fresh tuna before the auction begins sushi restaurants supermarkets and apartment stores all depend on Naka roshi like him takayuki looks at the Quality and cost

1:29:03 [Music] any sort of Nick or flesh wound can lower the price by thousands of dollars when tuna is reeled in it can wriggle and ride causing a chemical reaction in the muscles the movement speeds up decomposition and makes tuna sour soggy and less

1:29:53 tasty when the bell rings the bidding [Music] begins a range of hand signals known as Teti are used to place bids an index finger for one and two fingers for two but whether that's 1100 Yen a pound or 12,000 depends on the type of fish being auctioned in just 10 minutes the auction's over and winning biders claim their prizes

1:30:38 the tuna then makes its way from the auction floor to the intermediate wholesale building for filing toyosu keeps the temperature between 50.9 and 77° F to slow decomposition wholesalers also rely on a fleet of small trucks known as T they zip through winding corridors to minimize how long the fish are exposed to air the Shi team works as a unit to move the heavy tuna onto the cutting table to prepare the tuna for cutting first they wash it then remove the ice e

1:31:56 most of takayuki's high-end customers care about two things when it comes to Raw blue fin tuna color and [Music] taste for it's then brought inside the shop where it's divided and F customers show up early to get the first pick

1:32:43 [Music] not a single part of the tuna is wasted even its size customers have relied on the Market's high quality fish products for decades before the market moved to its new location and was rename toyosu it was known as the sui Market

1:33:45 sui was the epicenter of seafood its success for demand for all types of fish fishing for bluefin tuna in the western Atlantic Rose by over 2,000% in 1970 but it was difficult for the market to keep up meanwhile Japanese tuna consumption was growing significantly

1:35:03 [Music] Japan has since placed a quota on the number of blue fin tuna caught but it's a double-edged sword for wholesalers like takayuki [Music] Texas barbecue began in the 19th century as a way for butchers to use up cheap unsold cuts of meat but Barbec's

1:35:49 commercialization in the late 20th century along with the inflation of meat price prices led to barbecued cuts of brisket costing over $30 a [Music] pound Welcome to Austin we're going to four of the best barbecue spots in Austin Texas now what do you think we will be doing to measure the bestness of said Barbecue on this trip we're looking at three main things when we're talking about barbecue all right we're looking for bark y we're looking for tenderness and we looking for juiciness yo so you know there are a lot of things that go into barbecue but those are the three main things we're looking at and we're going to be trying brisket obviously we're trying the ribs ooh ribs and the sausage which is my favorite all right maybe get a little uh KLA or potato salad or beans in the mix please mac and

1:36:35 cheese maybe all right we're going to Louis Miller first so let's go let's do it I thought you should go this way Louis Miller has been smoking some of the best barbecue in Texas since 1949 located in Taylor Texas many people refer to it as the Cathedral of smoke [Music] Central Texas barbecue is very unique we use offset smokers we use a lot of post oak wood but we're really beef Centric it's that combination utilizing convection heat rather than radiant heat that creates a cooked meat that doesn't have to be chopped Sauced and bunned but can actually be sliced out similar to

1:37:21 say prime rib it's sort of that engineering and technology that has allowed brisket to become sort of the calling card of Central Texas barbecue it's the best barbecue in Texas the first time I ate here I had a sausage first time I ever had barbecue I bit the sausage squirted all over me best sausage I ever ate best brisket I ever ate I'm going to come here until I hit the dirt you get all that what makes great barbecue great food great atmosphere great service soon as you walk in not only are the there but your sense of smell is being overwhelmed by smoke different types of fats that are being cooked rendered and emanating from our pits for our small Central Texas meat

1:38:06 market tradition it's really about the beef it's about the smoke it's about the simple seasoning and it's about the love that goes into it everyone says it's like their dad's favorite it's like old school plasic Texas style barbecue I just want to get in the meat when he's talking with the interview all this meat just salt and pepper right yep I'll go I'll go pre- sauce yeah I'm going to go no sauce cuz that's just the way it should be mhm it's amazing how much flavor just the salt and the pepper can bring out of this uh bring out of this meat it's like brisy candy almost yeah the sausage I am so excited for I love beef sausage wa sausage is the sleeper of barbecue people need to realize it's not grocery store sausage

1:38:52 it's far from it it's amazing amazing the casing has this really nice snack to it yeah and that's like what I look for in sausage specifically like you're going to get scood all over your shirt very yes you are no I'm not one thing we discovered is that Louis Miller is one of the few places that serves beef ribs every single day yeah most places only serve them on the weekends look at this how beautiful is that look that looks so tender it's so soft and like I know I'm not supposed to play with my food but how can you resist it's too big of a piece H well do you see the Beauty and the

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