Why are the Japanese so obsessed with killing innocent whales?

I think a South Park episode explained it once.

>>146071781
Because they're tasty.

They taste good

>>146071781
You're a FUCKING WHITE WHALE

>>146071781
Whales are high on mercury content. Litterally double to tripple than what is allowed

Combine that with the nuke radioation and vola. That explains why Japan is such a creepy place

>>146072515
Hoax

#1: Studies of mercury exposure in fish consistently ignore the important role of selenium

We’ve known about the role of selenium in preventing mercury toxicity for at least 45 years, with the first research report on this topic appearing in 1967. (1) Since then several studies have shown that selenium consistently and predictably counteracts the adverse effects of mercury exposure. (2)

How does selenium do this? Exposure to mercury is harmful because it deactivates special selenium-dependent enzymes—called selenoenzymes. Since the brain consumes nearly 25% of the oxygen we breathe, it continuously produces oxygen by-products that can damage the fats and proteins that make up the brain. Selenoenzymes are extremely important in the brain because several of them prevent oxidative damage while others actually reverse it.

In the past, researchers thought selenium was protective because it binds to mercury and prevents mercury from harming other molecules. This led to the mistaken idea that mercury causes harm in the body until selenium binds it. But our current understanding is almost the reverse: it’s not that selenium prevents mercury toxicity by binding to mercury, but that mercury interferes with selenonzyme function by binding to selenium. In fact, mercury cannot cause harm until it occurs in high enough amounts to inhibit a significant percentage of selenoenzyme activities. Mercury is only harmful because it binds to selenium and prevents it from performing its vital roles in the brain.

As long as you are eating fish that contains more selenium than mercury, the amount of selenium in the body will always be in plentiful excess of mercury. That means that these essential selenoenzymes are never inhibited to a meaningful degree. Fortunately, the vast majority of fish most people consume have more selenium than mercury. The exceptions are pilot whale, shark, tilefish, king mackerel and swordfish.

>>146072795
Unfortunately, the well-documented protective effect of selenium is consistently ignored in both the medical community and the media when reporting on potential harms from fish consumption. This is almost certainly causing harm, as it has led to advising pregnant women and young children to eat less fish, when we should instead be telling them to eat more.
#2: The evidence suggesting harm from consuming seafood is weak, and doesn’t apply to the fish most people consume

There’s no question that mercury is a potent neurotoxin, and that significant exposure can lead to problems in both children and adults. For example, catastrophic pollution from a chemical plant in Minamata Bay in Japan caused severe toxic effects in the local population during the 1950s and 1960s. (3)

But does that mean that eating seafood which contains mercury is harmful? This idea comes primarily from a study performed in the Faroe islands, which are located approximately halfway between Norway and Iceland, and another performed in New Zealand. (4, 5)

The Faroes study is problematic for several reasons. First, it examined the neurological and developmental effects of maternal consumption of pilot whale meat, (the source of the bulk of their total mercury exposure), and found that eating ocean fish actually protected against the adverse effects that were noted. Even if the blood levels of mercury observed in this study were associated with harm in developing babies (which is debatable, as I argue below), such low exposures were not expected to be harmful to adults and no harms were observed in adults. This is because adults have plentiful reserves of selenium throughout their bodies and in their brains that help protect their brain selenium levels from being depleted. It is only when these reserves are depleted that oxidative damage can begin to occur. Developing babies are more vulnerable because they have no stockpiles of selenium to protect against mercury.

>>146072795
>pilot whale
>exception
Looks like I'm fucked

>>146071781
Why? Did they kill your mom or something?

>>146071938
>>146071973
Not really. It's pretty gamey unless you process it/smother it in sauce.

Japan doesn't even eat that much of it, it's a fringe food.

>>146072864
Second, the “adverse effects” observed in this study were extremely subtle. The magnitude of the effects noted were on the order of one finger tap slower than an unaffected child in a test which measured how many times the child could tap in ten seconds. (Tap one finger as fast as you can on your computer keyboard or mobile device and you’ll get a clear idea of just how subtle this effect was.) What’s more, the children who had the highest whale meat exposures were primarily from rural areas, whereas the unaffected kids were from urban areas. It is possible that factors other than mercury exposure may have differed between the two groups (e.g. socioeconomic status, home environment, having to wake up earlier and drive a long distance to the test site, etc.), and those factors may have influenced the results instead of their mercury exposures.

Third, over 85% of the seafood consumed by pregnant women in the Faroe Islands study was pilot whale meat. Earlier in the article I mentioned that pilot whale meat is one of the few species of seafood that contains more mercury than selenium, and thus would be expected to cause harm. Pilot whale meat is also much higher in other environmental toxins like cadmium, PCBs, and dioxins. A lot of toxins can accumulate in a 5,000 lb. whale during its 45–60 year life at the top of the oceanic food chain.

>>146072909
The New Zealand study was also problematic. Its results were highly dependent on whether or not a single child was included or excluded. (6) That child had by far the highest blood mercury content, but also was a high achiever. Including that child made the study results insignificant, but excluding the child made the study results significant. When the results of a study depend significantly on a single subject, that throws the findings into doubt. In addition, selenium deficiency was quite common in New Zealand at the time this study was performed—they were one of the most selenium-deficient nations on earth at that time—and the take-out “fish and chips” consumed by New Zealanders in the late 1970s included fish such as sharks—which like pilot whale, are one of the few species of seafood which contain far more mercury than selenium. (7)

What these studies tell us is that consumption of seafood that is high in mercury and low in selenium by pregnant women is potentially harmful for their children, especially if overall selenium intakes are low. They do not indicate that consumption of commonly eaten seafood with more selenium than mercury cause harm to pregnant women, children, or anyone else.
#3: Studies of pregnant women consuming seafood show benefits, not harm—as long as the fish contain more selenium than mercury

There are four major studies that have evaluated the effects of maternal mercury exposure from seafood on subsequent child development. I discussed two of them above, and showed why they do not apply to most people who eat fish. That leaves two studies: one performed in the Seychelles Islands (northeast of Madagascar), and another in the UK. (8, 9)

etc

https://chriskresser.com/5-reasons-why-concerns-about-mercury-in-fish-are-misguided/

>>146071781
The whale was a murderous beast.

What the fuck did the tree ever do? It provided a cool and scenic place for people to rest and form friendships, that's what.

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>>146072971
>>146072909
>>146072864
>>146072795

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>>146072795
>>146072864
>>146072909
]>>146072971
Dude, you could have just posted the source and shut up about it.

Also, no. The blog of a single person is merely a grain of sand when compared to historical findings
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minamata_disease
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_in_fish

>>146071973
>>146071938
They really aren't that good though. They fell out of favor with the Japanese before WWII, and it's only because they got the fuck bombed out of their infrastructure that they started eating it again.

And now it's falling off again. It kinda tastes like moose or something... but eh. It's not a popular food even in Japan.

They killed the faggot whale that is in charge of the Ranceverse, good riddance

>>146071938
>>146071973
What do they taste like

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>>146071781

I'm more pissed about the tree.

Big tree like that must have taken 10000 or maybe even 100000 years to grow. Cut down for what? The insignificant lives of mammals who barely live 100 years.

The tree was the real victim.

>>146073299
Tell it to Brazil and what they do with their rainforests

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Guess what? Japan is an island. If they want to eat sea food it's their right. Plus in their case they've been eating meat from the prehistorical times, so it's part of their culture. And last, whales aren't cute, they are only big . What is cute is Bambi and Thumper, both we eat a lot in Europe, and THEY don't eat so fuck off with your 'don't eat cute animals' bullshit.
And about the dolphins, the Faroe islands kill MUCH MORE of them than Japan, but they are lucky because they're WHITE.

>>146073355
They've been eating *whale* from the prehistorical times

>>146073299
...dude the oldest known tree in the world is only around 5000 years old.

It depends on the tree, but many only take like 30 years to reach maturity.

>>146073355
I wonder what would happen if murica's average meat consumption was suddenly slashed in half, just out of curiosity.

>>146073355
>>146073421
Whales are intelligent (I don't give a damn about cuteness), and slow to recover in population size. They take 10-18 years to reproduce, and 5-10 years to start reproducing themselves after born.

It's not sustainable to hunt them, their populations can't turn over fast enough to be a reasonable food product.

Tradition is a bullshit reason for anything, and people protest the Faroe whaling (but imagine not talking about them on an anime/manga board)

You want to see people who base their whole economy on whaling, build whale meat restaurants for tourists and traffic whale bones all over the world?
Here. It's a totally different scale comparing to Japan. But hey, after all why not, they're WHITE.

http://www.express.co.uk/comment/columnists/stuart-winter/400086/The-brutal-reality-of-whaling-in-Iceland-Sea-turns-red-to-satisfy-the-lust-of-gourmets

"As few as five per cent of Iceland’s 320,000 native population say they eat whale yet four out of ten of the half million tourists that visited last year are thought to have sampled a taste."

And they pretend they need it to survive. No, they need it to make money from the tourists.

God I hate the Japs

>>146071781
On the internet no one knows that you are a whale.

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>>146073461
The tallest trees in the world don't even hit 500 ft tall, and the widest trunks don't even hit 40 ft in diameter. Meamwhile we're talking about a fantasy Yggdrasil-esque tree in a fantasy world.

>>146073884
It also probably was only able to grow like it was because of magic shenanigans and was unable to reproduce any offspring.

>>146073299
Night Elves are all pussies anyway. 10/10, would genocide Teldrassil to kill World Boss again.

>>146071781
Whales are assholes to be honest. I also heard they have a thing for dying.

>>146073299
That tree is tied to the Sage that helped stop the witch. I'm sure he would be proud to find out his tree was used to kill one of the most troubling Mabeast of the current era.

>>146073721
Woah, you have your blinders on.

Japan is still the number one whaler in the world. I only have data from a few years ago, but Japan harvest more than 3 times the amount that Iceland did (who is number three on the list).

>>146071781
Because Whales and Dolphins bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

>>146073355
>Germany not on the list

>>146074139
He'd probably be fine with what happened, since he and Subaru have the same scent.

>>146074257
Hey now, the 40s were before America's obesity epidemic, so cut them some slack.

>>146074257
Cow and Chicken propaganda.

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>>146072063

>>146072063
Fucking underrated post
Im stealing this one

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>>146073114
>wikipedia

>>146074886

What if the tree was planted specifically to kill the white whale.

>>146071781
Why American people obsessed with shooting innocent animals?

>>146072795
>>146072864
Even if ONE of the neurotoxicological of mercury could be somewhat alleviated by selenium, that ignores the vast array of other biological processes that elevated levels of mercury can interfere with. Seleneium is not a cure-all for mercury the same way lead chelation therapy is not a cure-all for being shot with a lead bullet.

>>146071781
It's so sad that the big fish had to suffer so much. They cut him little by little, bleeds a lot in the process, and die horribly

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>>146079227
>Americans

>>146079227
Nah they only obsessed with mass shooting

>>146074886
Yeah! Because Satella was all over Flugel!

>>146072899
>>146073134
I don't get the people who say it tastes bad. It's pretty good, it's like a cross between rare steak and sashimi.

Of course, I supposed there are heretics who don't like rare steak or sashimi, but they can fuck off and munch on dry chicken breast or something.

>>146073355
>The American diet has been high in protein since it's birth, part of the reason that the colonies wanted to rebel against the British was that they were on average about 4 inches taller than most of the British dignitaries.

What does whale taste like?

>>146079678
bags of sand

>>146079650
When will they learn?

>>146079650
>4 inches

Holy shit.

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>>146072063

kek

>>146071781
lol who cares

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I get it, because Americans = Whales?
Ku Ku ku

>>146073355
The average American eats 275 lbs of meat a year? Or 3/4 lb a day? That sounds ridiculously off.

They are angry about losing to the USA in the war

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>>146071781
From hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee. Ye damned whale.

>>146080604
thats only 3 quarter pounders a day seems a little low if you ask me

>>146080604
I know right? As an American I figure I eat at least a pound to a pound and a half of meat a day, and so does everyone I know.

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>>146078927
>what are citations?

>two episodes of whale torture
Fuck this anime. All the bosses fight in fucking SAO and Danmachi were better than this shit.