One of the more interesting things about exploring climate change and the food system with the fourth and fifth graders right now is how much innovation is happening in the Bay Area in real time. In the classroom we watched a news clip from the spring featuring experiments at UC Davis that showed dairy and beef cows belched significantly less methane when seaweed was added to their diet. We then read an article that was published in the San Francisco Chronicle in late October celebrating the results of one of the first commercial farm trials in Marin County: working dairy cows who ate the seaweed powder added to their feed reduced their methane emissions by over 50% and some by over 85%.
In the kitchen, we made a Japanese-inspired soba noodle salad featuring three types of seaweed: dulse, wakame, and nori. Students rehydrated the dulse and wakame leaves and chopped Japanese cucumbers, watermelon radish, and carrots to add to the salad. They made a dressing with lots of ginger, soy, and acid. Like the cows on the farm, there was a range of reactions to the seaweed. Some chefs loved it, some preferred some types but not others, and some could not get over the way the seaweed smelled or its texture. Some of us noticed a marked boost in energy after eating the seaweed salad. All in all, we agreed seaweed is an exciting addition to the diet-change-for-climate-change toolkit, whether it be for cows or for humans.
