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WHY EAT OYSTERS?

There are several compelling reasons to eat oysters. How about because they give us pleasure? That’s one reason. Why eat oysters? Because they are nutritional powerhouses that are good for us. Oysters are not only delicious, they’re also one of the most nutritionally well-balanced of foods, containing protein, carbohydrates, and lipids.

It’s strange that oysters are not recommended more often as being good for one’s health, as they are rich sources of antioxidants and omega-3 fatty acids, which have been the high-impact nutrition darlings of the press and physicians for a while. So, eating oysters twice a week is part of a good cardiac diet.

Oysters are filled with vitamins and minerals and specifically an excellent source of vitamins A, B₁, B₂, B₁₂, C, and D. Four to five oysters provide the daily recommended amounts of iron, copper, iodine, magnesium, calcium, zinc, manganese, selenium, and phosphorus. How is that for charging your immune system and maintaining good health? The iron helps against anemia; the phosphorus and minerals are good for your teeth and bones; the B vitamins are useful for red cell formation, blood coagulation, and energy; and I could go on. And four or five oysters add up to far fewer calories than a glass of milk—more like that of a fresh peach. I am not sure why, but oysters are generally ordered in multiples of three, as in a half dozen, a dozen, or perhaps just three of one kind (or three of this kind and three of that kind). At ten to fifteen calories per oyster, you can do the math. Minimal calories and maximum nutritional value. Naturally, the type, size, and origin of an oyster add some variation to the values, but overall, the benefits and values are sound. And, surprising to me, oysters are not high in sodium, even though they are raised in salt water and taste salty, but that salty taste comes mostly from the seawater liquid one consumes from the shell with the oyster’s fleshy body. You’d have to eat and drink a lot of oysters to raise your blood pressure.

Before I go on with nutrition, let me interject one important observation about oysters and pleasure. Do you know what pairs exceedingly well with oysters? Friends. So, combined with being an excellent meal in themselves, oysters are an exceptional anti-aging food—one of the foods that you can eat more and not less of as you age.

For a long time, oysters were thought to contain high amounts of (bad) cholesterol, but now that the distinction has been made between bad cholesterol and good cholesterol, and new methods of calculating cholesterol levels are more accurate, oysters no longer make the watch list. Just the opposite. Chromatography has enabled us to identify the different kinds of sterols found in shellfish. What was thought of as cholesterol turned out to be other sterols, the types that keep us healthy. Oysters, it turns out, can help lower triglycerides and LDL and VLDL cholesterols (the bad ones); moreover, they can help increase HDL, the good cholesterol. Now, if a pharmaceutical company had such a pill, wouldn’t you buy it (and add to the company’s profits)? And we all know that pills from the pharmacy cost more than oysters and they aren’t as fun to eat.

Oysters contain mostly lean protein; just a bit of carbohydrate in the form of glycogen (the starch that makes them a tad sweet), and a bit of fat, mostly unsaturated, for flavor… so a complete food. The National Heart, Blood, and Lung Institute suggests oysters as an ideal food for inclusion in a low cholesterol diet. Many diets rightly recommend high protein intake to stay slim, energized, and keep muscles toned, but the best sources of protein are animal foods, which means lots of the bad fat, the saturated kind that fills our arteries and results in strokes and heart attacks. Sea creatures, on the other hand, don’t have much saturated fat but are rich in the good kind of fat, the unsaturated fat found also in plant foods like olive oil, which reduces blood pressure and cholesterol. In addition, unsaturated fats keep us feeling full on less food, as fat triggers the small intestine to send the “I am full” message to the brain.

One more word on omega-3, the fat that does so much good for us, including regulating hormones, reducing inflammation, lubricating joints, and building a strong brain and eyes. There are many claims and studies asserting that the intake of one gram per day of omega-3 (which means eating a dozen oysters) can greatly improve function of the immune system and cut the risk of heart attack as much as in half. Wow.

THE CASANOVA EFFECT

I wrote above of two reasons (pleasure and nutrition) to eat oysters. Throughout history there has been a third reason: sex. I suppose, though, that sex can be considered both a source of pleasure and nutrition of sorts. The notion that oysters are an aphrodisiac is legendary. In Greek mythology, when Aphrodite, the goddess of love, emerged from the sea, she emerged on an oyster shell. And then she gave birth to Eros, the god of intimate, erotic, romantic love. Thus the aphrodisiac connotation.

The Roman emperors believed in it. Why do you think they paid a fortune for oysters, including having some shipped to Rome from Cancale, France?! Those Greeks and Romans got a lot right, so few have questioned their belief in oysters. Certainly not Giacomo Casanova, the paragon of promiscuous lovers, who reportedly ate fifty to sixty raw oysters a day, with a dozen for breakfast being a restorative. (By the way, some people believe raw oysters are a great hangover remedy, providing lots of B₁₂, zinc, dopamine. and electrolytes, as well as protein, to quickly recharge oneself.)

Casanova was something else. In his memoirs he confessed to seducing a total of 122 women in his native Italy, in Paris where he lived, and in Europe where he traveled. He had one novel suggestion for how to eat an oyster: “I placed the shell on the edge of her lips and after a good deal of laughing, she sucked in the oyster, which she held between her lips. I instantly recovered it by placing my lips on hers.”

There is not yet compelling scientific proof of oysters’ aphrodisiac powers, but there is an often-cited 2005 American-Italian scientific study that discovered that oysters are rich in two kinds of amino acids associated with increased levels of sex hormones. In addition, oysters are especially rich in zinc, which aids in the production of testosterone. So, who knows? But what I do know is that an idea is a powerful stimulant. So if you believe raw oysters are an aphrodisiac, then that thought, accompanied by a few juicy raw oysters, may well stimulate the libido. Amen.