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Gastropod

Dining at the Top of the World: Arctic Adaptation, Abundance, and...Ice Cream

Gastropod

Cynthia Graber and Nicola Twilley

Science, Food, History, Arts

4.73.5K Ratings

🗓️ 6 February 2024

⏱️ 55 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

You may feel like it's cold where you live, but in the Arctic, the average temperature is well below freezing all year round. In winter, it's also pitch black for weeks on end—not an ideal environment for growing food. Still, for thousands of years, people in the Arctic have thrived in a landscape that most outsiders would find fatally inhospitable. This episode, we point our compasses north on a journey to discover how traditional knowledge, ingenuity, and a lot of hard work—combined with genetics and microbes—have allowed the indigenous populations of the far North to not only successfully feed themselves, but also develop a distinctive and remarkable cuisine. Tune in now for the secrets of a dish that feels like Fourth of July fireworks in your mouth, the story of Iceland's second-most famous celebrity (after Björk), and the science behind how to avoid scurvy on an almost vegetable-free diet. Just don't forget your long underwear! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

You know, millions are waking up this morning facing potentially life-threatening cold, the

0:08.6

Arctic chill hitting the plains to the Midwest, even parts of the South, saying wind chills below zero.

0:16.0

So it's winter in North America and we've even been experiencing a bit of a polar vortex lately

0:21.2

that's icy cold air blasting down at us from the Arctic.

0:24.3

When it's chilly in these latitudes we tend to think about stews and soups, maybe some hot chocolate.

0:31.1

But what about the place where all that cold air is coming from, the icy

0:35.0

tundra and freezing ice flows of the Arctic itself? What's on the menu to stay warm there?

0:41.0

In order to survive up here to where we had no stores, no place to buy the Western

0:47.4

Diet, which we're really not accustomed to. Our food is really off the lands, the

0:52.0

water, the sea, the sky.

0:54.1

When you picture the Arctic, you might not think there's all that much food there,

0:57.5

but there are people who've been living in the region for thousands of years,

1:00.2

like the ancestors of Cyrus Harris, you just just heard and they did have to eat.

1:04.3

So we decided this was the season to explore the cuisines of the poles.

1:08.3

First up, the northern polar region, the Arctic.

1:10.9

We of course are gastropodod the podcast that looks at food through

1:13.9

the lens of science and history. I'm Nicola Twilly.

1:16.4

And I'm Cynthia Graber and we've got a lot of questions for Cyrus and his friends

1:20.1

up north. They don't have fields of wheat and rows of kale, so what's on the menu?

1:24.4

And how does it change with the seasons?

1:26.2

Also, without those whole grains and leafy greens that are supposed to be the stuff we eat most of to stay

1:31.3

healthy, how does everyone not get sick? I mean it's not just

...

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