"An era of seaweed eating can start to seem inevitable—penance for the golden days of corn and cars and cows."

"Paul Greenberg, who has written extensively about the collapse of fish stocks, told Business Insider last year, 'If I could buy kelp futures, I would.' Given the exigencies of feeding the planet, it might be preferable to other available alternatives. 'It’s not worms and it’s not bugs, so that’s positive, right?' he said to me. 'I don’t think anyone is going to stick their finger down their throat and say, "Blech, kelp—I don’t want to eat it."' Cheryl Dahle, the founder of Future of Fish, says, 'We eat things now we never would have imagined eating twenty years ago. We eat dogfish. It’s called dogfish, for crying out loud! If we can develop a market for snakehead fish—an exotic, invasive aquarium species—out of the Chesapeake, we can create a market for kelp.'"

I was reading — listening to the podcast of — this New Yorker article — "A New Leaf/Seaweed could be a miracle food—if we can figure out how to make it taste good" — as I was walking into the kitchen this morning, reencountering my exotic, invasive husband Meade.

ME: "What do you know about kelp?"

MEADE: "Does any Bob Dylan song have the word 'kelp'?"

ME: "Does any Jerry Lewis movie have him named 'Kelp'?"

Meade says he doesn't follow Jerry Lewis, but I don't think you need to follow Jerry Lewis to know this one. "Professor Kelp?" I say, stalling for time, because I don't know the answer to the Bob Dylan question. I say that "kelp" is good if you need a rhyme for "help," and then, doing my search at bobdylan.com, I see I'm right. It's "Sara":

Now the beach is deserted except for some kelp
And a piece of an old ship that lies on the shore
You always responded when I needed your help
You gimme a map and a key to your door

Jerry played Professor Julius Kelp in more movies than just "The Nutty Professor." Here's a compilation: