Seaweed: A lesson in Violence

BREAKFAST: Granola with 1% milk, 1/2 grapefruit
LUNCH: cheese, lettuce, tomato sandwich. sesame snax, pop
DINNER: seaweed salad. Arizona diet Green Tea

ORIGIN OF ONE ITEM: seaweed. ewwwwwhhh.

Wakame seaweed, which is the main ingredient of this seaweed salad, is a very good source of iron, calcium, vitamins (A, C, E, K) It's native to cold temperate coastal areas of Japan, Korea and China, in recent decades it has become established in New Zealand, the United States, etc[10] It was nominated one of the 100 worst invasive species in the world.[1]

THEOLOGICAL REFLECTION: 
"Poor little innocent creatures, if you were reasoning beings and could speak, you would curse us. For we are the cause of your death, and what you done to deserve it?"  Isaac the Syrian late 7th cent.

Seaweed. Now no way, no how, could I have any sort of sympathy with this food or think of it as poor and innocent. This seaweed in my salad is an invasive. I't's like, bad right? It's hard to not justify eating something that's eating up other nice native CA seaweed.  What if my salad came from eradication efforts? Now that'd be good, right? But then, maybe it came from Japan, and was grown by some nice farmers.

I always want this food and faith blog to be all lovey dovey earthy. But I guess seaweed, despite lacking a brain or heart, prophesies to the truth of life as really gross and messy. Full of violence and instability.

So are we to remain neutral on this one?  How are we to honor both lives that went into our food, even when we may not be so okay with the violence (read: invasives  taking over) that goes on between them? It's all part of the food chain, true. But we inevitably value one species over another. So then we suffer some losses more than others.

Violence happens, and we accept its benefits. And yet we do not want to become immune to its ability to stir us, to name the pain it causes. Where's the balance?