Jellyfish Chips Are The Future Of Junk Food

Jellyfish are not exactly the centerpiece of most people’s ideal meals. The umbrella-shaped animals are slimy, tasteless, and can be extremely poisonous. But a population boom and the need to reduce meat — and other foods that require extensive energy to produce — consumption, means humanity has to get creative when it comes to making lunch. It turns out jellyfish are a prime candidate to become a staple food of the future, because there are plenty of them in the ocean.

As overfishing reduces more traditionally available seafood stock, jellyfish reproduce in swarms. And there will be even more jellyfish thanks to climate change making oceans warmer and more acidic. The solution to swarms of jellyfish, Learn to like eating them as they are. Or turn them into something more appetizing than a salty, rubbery gelatin. Like chips, for example.

A team of Danish researchers devised a method to turn the animals into crunchy chips in just a few days. This is in stark contrast to traditional means of preparing jellyfish that many Asian nations use — marinading the tentacled creatures for weeks in salt and potassium. Using two-photon microscopes, the Danish team studied how the filaments that make up a jellyfish change when the animals turn from rubbery and soft to hard and crunchy. The scientists just presented their study at the 62nd Biophysical Society Annual Meeting in San Francisco, California.

Jellyfish chips are not only an acceptable alternative to potato chips taste-wise, but they’re also good for you. These creatures are rich in nutrients, including vitamin B12, magnesium, and iron, and low in calories. And the sooner we learn to co-opt these creatures into acceptable food sources, the better. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization, we could see “a global regime shift from a fish to a jellyfish ocean” within our lifetimes. Fishermen can’t wait to get rid of them either, because jellyfish also endanger fish stocks around the world.

Notice how messy it looks, Try different angles of view when shooting your food items from directly overhead, tilted, shooting into the edge of the plate or table, and so on. Get creative and try to show it in a different way than most people would see it. A little tilt and diagonal lines just adds interest.

Notice the back lighting again, To make vegetables glisten brush them with a bit of olive oil, or mist a salad with water. It will make them look fresher. These veggies were marinated in oil and herbs so notice how they glisten so nicely, Yup I’m one of those people that takes a photo of my food before I eat it, especially if it’s particularly nicely presented.

I feel I owe it to the chef who took such great care in preparing it. Perhaps it my food photography background and I just can’t help myself! I often just use my iPhone but when I do have my camera I will usually set it up before I eat it and take a few shots. Here’s a couple of mine.

I combine about 60 percent of the “wet” ingredients (meat, fish, fresh vegetables) with about 40 percent dry ingredients (dried ground shrimp, paprika, dried ground sea weed), to produce a reasonably dry mixture. To keep from turning the water cloudy, I hold all the above ingredient together with binding agents.



I use three: gelatin, agar, and egg yolk. Gelatin— available dried, in packets. The gelatin powder is added to water and then boiled. As it cools, it will begin to set, or gel, forming a dense rubbery matrix. It’s important to hydrate gelatin before you boil it, or else it will clump together and not dissolve.