Kelp is one of the most common ingredients in our lives, but before the 1930s, kelp was still a luxury that only upper class people could eat, and most people know very little about kelp.
For example, these information: MSG was first extracted from kelp; kelp is no longer a plant; kelp artificial breeding technology comes from Japan; kelp reproduction process is very complicated, etc.
Next, I will introduce you to the knowledge about kelp, so that readers and friends can also tell their companions on the dining table when eating kelp. Perhaps this is a good topic.
1, the story of kelp and MSG
, I believe many friends know that the chemical component of MSG is sodium glutamate , a name that sounds very technological. It is mainly extracted from protein such as wheat or corn gluten. It can also be made from pyroglutamate contained in starch or beet molasses, and can also be synthesized by chemical methods.
No matter what raw material is extracted from or chemically synthesized, MSG is a very healthy seasoning. Even the country does not stipulate the limit on the additive dose. All kinds of statements about the harmfulness of MSG are rumors.
However, the birth of MSG was not extracted from the above raw materials, but was discovered and successfully extracted from kelp by a Japanese chemist. Most of the early MSG were made of kelp as the raw material. Do you remember the name of MSG in the past - phenolic acid, which was invented by the Japanese.
1908, Ikeda Kikunomiya, a professor at the University of Tokyo, sat at the dining table to enjoy the food prepared by his wife. His wife served him a bowl of cucumber soup. After Ikeda took a few sips, he felt that the taste was different from the previous cucumber soup. Today's soup was extremely delicious.
Ikeda asked his wife if she had added any special seasonings to the cucumber soup. My wife said she added kelp to the soup, but because Ikeda usually doesn't eat kelp, his wife took out the kelp after making the soup, so Ikeda couldn't see any kelp in the soup.
Professor Ikeda does rarely eat kelp. When he experienced the umami flavor of kelp for the first time, he immediately became interested in kelp. If this happens to an ordinary person, the most likely result is to eat more kelp.
However, Professor Ikeda is different. He is a chemist who loves literature. Such indescribable deliciousness has unusual special significance for chemists.
He sensitively sensed that behind the umami flavor there might be some special substances that people have not yet understood. He felt it was necessary to separate out the umami substances hidden in the kelp.
The next day, Professor Ikeda brought all the remaining kelp from home back to the laboratory and started his research. After half a year of hard work, Professor Ikeda successfully separated a white crystal substance from the kelp, which tasted extremely delicious.
Professor Ikeda named this taste with the word "fresh" in Japanese. This white substance that can make food delicious is named flavonoid. The chemical name of this substance is sodium glutamate, which is the indispensable seasoning in our kitchen now - MSG.
Professor Ikeda, who is also sensitive to commercial signals, turned the sodium glutamate extracted from kelp into a seasoning for home cooking. He not only produced research results, but also made a big profit with the patent of sodium glutamate.
Professor Ikeda's research quickly attracted people's attention to kelp, and some biologists have also begun to study kelp in depth, trying to find other major discoveries from kelp.
Although these biologists did not make any breakthrough new discoveries in the following years, their research is of great significance to the development of kelp breeding technology, which allowed the raw materials for MSG at that time to be provided with sufficient supply of MSG.
2. Japanese biologists come to China to breed kelp
Although the production of artificially cultivated kelp in Japan has increased significantly, it still cannot meet the demand for raw materials in the MSG market, and there are not many places that can be used for kelp aquaculture along the coast of Japan.
In 1930, Yoshiro Oshiro (guī) from the University of Tokyo, Japan decided to visit the coast of Dalian in our country to see if there is an environment for breeding kelp.
lives up to Yoshiro Okuchi's expectations. He found wild kelp in the Dalian waters, and these wild kelp varieties are the same as the widely cultivated kelp varieties in Japan, which shows that there is an environment for kelp to grow.
After receiving the funding, Yasuo Yang Shiro officially launched kelp breeding in the Dalian waters of our country, and made technical improvements, replacing the original raft breeding with skewers.
Raft farming is to form a floating raft on the shallow sea water surface using floats and ropes, then fix the floating raft to the seabed with cables, and finally fix the kelp on the rope for breeding.
His innovation was very successful. With his efforts, my country's kelp farms quickly surpassed Japan. Kelp became the most common vegetable in Northeast China and many parts of China at that time.
Okuchi Yoshiro stayed in my country since 1930 until 1953. With his efforts, my country's kelp breeding industry has gone from scratch, allowing kelp, a food, to finally come down from the altar.
Not only that, Professor Okuchi also trained a large number of aquaculture personnel, which has enabled my country's marine biology to develop well.
3. The breeding process of kelp is very complicated
Okuchi Yoshiro went through inspection and research before formally carrying out kelp breeding. You may say, isn’t it just planting kelp? Is it necessary to be that complicated? You can say nothing, it is really necessary.
At that time, the main method of raising kelp in Japan was to cast stones, that is, to tie the seedlings of kelp to the stones and breed them on the seabed. This method is not only very costly, but also has relatively low output.
If you want to carry out kelp breeding, the number of kelp seedlings is very large, and the investment is also huge. If the environment is not suitable for kelp growth, it is very likely that the particles will be harvested.
In the eyes of most people, kelp is just an ordinary algae , but what they don’t know is that the reproduction process of kelp is very complicated and has high environmental requirements. If it cannot reproduce, then kelp cannot grow.
When kelp reproduces, it releases a large number of spores. There are two flagellas on these spores, and they can swim around by swinging the flagella. When the spores encounter objects such as stones or rafts, they will attach to them and will no longer move.
You may think that after the spores are fixed, can they grow and go to sea to bring them? The answer is no, because these spores do not have the ability to reproduce now, and they will first develop into two types: male and female gametes, bodies.
The male and female gametophytes are equivalent to the pistil and stamen of kelp, which releases eggs and sperm respectively. After the sperm and eggs bind again, a new spore will be produced, and this spore is the "seed" that can develop kelp.
If the temperature of seawater is too high, it will cause the gametophyte to fail to develop, and then the reproduction of kelp cannot be completed, which means that kelp reproduction has very high requirements for seawater temperature. This is why Yoshiro Okuchi must conduct research before applying for breeding funds.
In fact, early artificial kelp breeding was carried out in the colder sea areas in northeastern Asia. If you want to breed kelp, you must find a place with the appropriate growth environment and seawater temperature.
You may say that there are also a large number of kelp farms in the sea area of in the southern part of in our country. How can this be explained? In fact, this is all thanks to a student Yoshiro Okushiro trained in China.
In 1955, a student of Professor Okachi discovered that the gametes produced by kelp spores have high requirements for seawater temperature and cannot adapt to too high temperatures. However, once kelp sprouts seedlings, they are no longer afraid of heat.
Based on this discovery, the student proposed a "summer seedling cultivation method", which means that in summer, the spores of kelp are collected, and then artificially create a low-temperature environment to cultivate kelp seedlings. When the seedlings grow strong enough, they can be transplanted and cultivated in the sea.
After decades of hard work, our country has finally overcome the problem of kelp liking to cold and afraid of heat. Now, kelp breeding can be carried out from Liaoning to Guangdong in the north.
For us today, kelp is no longer the raw material for making MSG. However, as a healthy food with delicious and nutritious taste, kelp is growing in breeding area and output year by year. Now, our country's kelp can not only meet domestic demand, but also be exported to the origin of kelp such as South Korea and Japan.
4. Kelp is not a plant
When you see this title, you may say, who doesn’t know that kelp is not a plant? I have learned it in our middle school textbooks that kelp is an algae. But what you may not know is that the expulsion of kelp in the plant circle only happened in 2005.
In the past, we have always used dichotomy to classify life, believing that a kind of organism is either an animal or a plant. And for granted, it is believed that animals are the ones that can move, and plants are the ones that cannot move.
not only does not move, it can also perform photosynthesis . In traditional classification methods, it is of course a plant. However, with the development of DNA sequencing technology in recent decades, German entomologist Willie Hanningen proposed the taxonomy theory of kinship branches.
This theory believes that a reasonable biological classification must include all descendants under a common ancestor. It is not a reasonable biological classification that does not include all descendants, or does not include common ancestors.
After gene sequencing kelp, biologists found that kelp was classified into the wrong category because they were very far from the kinship of other green plants on land.
Since kelp is not a plant, why can it perform photosynthesis? The reason is very simple, there is chloroplast in kelp. However, the method of obtaining chloroplasts by kelp is different from that of plants. The specific mechanism is relatively complicated, so I will not repeat it here.
In short, kelp is not a plant, it is classified into a category called SAR supergroup . This category includes three major categories: unequal flagella, vesicle insects and foraminifera, and kelp belongs to unequal flagella.
Look, there are so many stories about kelp that you often eat in life. I believe that after reading this article, you will know why it is so fresh when you drink kelp rib soup , because the soup is full of raw materials for extracting MSG.
