My grandfather, who was on board Marine ships from 1928 through the Korean War, used to suggest eating pickles for seasickness. During my recent cruise in the Sargasso Sea, I finally had a chance to test his theory and it worked. Was it just a placebo effect, was it the vitamin C, or something else in this mysterious remedy?
In 1939, an article in the British Medical Journal suggested corned beef and pickles as a comfort food for those on the edge of seasickness. Maybe pickles are a World War II remedy, because I found this quote in a book called Tales from a Tin Can: the USS Dale from Pearl Harbor to Tokyo Bay:
“My Amish mom wrote me a letter about my seasickness and said I needed something to sour my stomach. So I made up sandwiches from dill pickles and bread, and lived on them for a few days. It worked. I no longer had any seasickness! My dill pickle sandwiches cured thirty-five other guys on the Dale of their seasickness too!”
~Bluegrass Blue Crab