130-Year-Old Menus Show How Climate Change Affects What We Eat

The story was first published in Hakai Magazine.

It's a seafood paradise in British Columbia. The city is located at the mouth of the Fraser River, which used to be home to salmon. The Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples depend on its waters for cultural and spiritual sustenance as much as for food. Tourists come from all over the world to taste local favorites. Things are changing underneath the waves.

Climate change is having an effect on the marine species that live in the area. A team from the University of British Columbia shows how the effects of climate change can be seen in our daily lives. They looked at the restaurant menu for it.

William Cheung, one of the study's authors, said that a menu has a physical and digital record that can be compared over time. Climate change and its effects on the ocean have been studied by Cheung. He has contributed to several of the landmark reports of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, but he wanted to find a different way of studying and communicating those changes.

Cheung wants to know if climate change has affected the seafood that the restaurants serve.

Menus from hundreds of restaurants in the city were gathered by the team. The current menu was easy to find, but digging into the history of seafood in the city proved difficult. It took help from local museums, historical societies, and even city hall, which they were surprised to learn has records of restaurant menus dating back over a century. They were able to source menus from the early 20th century.

The scientists used their records to create an index called the Mean Temperature of Restaurant Seafood. The MTRS of Los Angeles was higher than that of Alaska. By analyzing how the MTRS has changed over time, they found that warmer water species are more common on restaurant menus. In the late 19th century, the MTRS for the city was close to 10 C.

The historic HotelVancouver and its restaurant Notch8 are a 10-minute walk from the harbor's edge in the city's financial district. The research team was able to find examples of the hotel's menu from the past.