Curious news item

Steve O'Shea said:
Tons of edible fish is discarded daily by these commercial vessels. What really shocked me was Myopsida's statement that 15-17% (I can't recall offhand which) of orange roughy flesh is recoverable!!!

This is absolutely DISGUSTING! :x

I agree. A lot of it I think is cultural conditioning as to what is and is not acceptable as food. If you asked the average Middle American (unless they came from a state such as Minnesota with a large Scandinavian population) whether they would eat eel, their reaction would most likely be, "Yecch!" Never mind that these same people eat fish, and if my limited biology background serves me, eels are basically just elongated fish.

In many indigenous cultures, insects (such as grasshoppers, ants, and grubs of various species) and arachnids (spiders and scorpions) are commonly eaten. In the Old Testament, locusts are listed among the kosher animals, and are therefore permissible for even devout Jews to eat -- as exemplified in the New Testament by John the Baptist who lived on "locusts and honey" in the wilderness.

IMHO, 21st century people -- especially in the western world -- need to be educated about the diverse renewable sources of nutrition, both plant and animal, that are available to them. The more diverse these sources, the less chance there is of one of them being used up or driven to extinction.

People's minds can be changed, as history demonstrates. In America of two centuries ago, crustaceans (shrimp, lobster, crab) were literally considered garbage, to be eaten only in desperate situations when no other food source was available. Now, of course, in most parts of the US, they are far more expensive than fish, poultry, and most red meats.

Also, when I was a child in the 1950s, very few people here ate soy products, and even the local Chinese restaurants rarely carried tofu (called bean curd back then) because Americans just weren't used to it. Soy -- like yogurt and wheat germ -- was considered an unpleasant oddity only eaten by "health nuts" or people whose doctors recommended it for medical reasons. Half a century later, soy-based ingredients are found in a vast array of snack foods and gourmet dishes, wheat germ is often used in cereals and smoothies, and yogurt is available in dozens of delicious flavors and textures.

So I believe that the campaign to popularize more sustainable and diversified food sources should begin at the grass-roots level, i.e., making these sources more palatable and appealing, and then if demand precedes supply, the farms and fisheries will find it profitable to diversify their products.

(I don't know macro-economics lingo so I don't know if I am expressing this correctly, but hopefully you know what I mean.)

Me
 
TaningiaDanae said:
locusts are listed among the kosher animals, and are therefore permissible for even devout Jews to eat -- as exemplified in the New Testament by John the Baptist who lived on "locusts and honey" in the wilderness.

could this play into the fact that during the plagues of egypt, there wouldve been a considerable increase in the amount of food available to slaves?

as for the roughy/eel meat issue.... im surprised someone hasnt come up with a hot dog-ish solution to random meats hanging around kinda like a fish stick....hey! the undesirables could be used for fish stick/nugget/etc for school lunches... offer the companies a slight tax break to make it worth their while fiscally, and increase the food supply....
 
as for the roughy/eel meat issue.... im surprised someone hasnt come up with a hot dog-ish solution to random meats hanging around kinda like a fish stick...

...its called surimi - check the label details next time you buy "crab meat" or "reconstituted squid rings". Orange roughy is popular becuase its one of the few (only?) fish that you can freeze & thaw 2-3 times, keep in the boot of your car for the rest of the day and still serve it (heavily disguised with a white lemon sauce) in a top restuarant. Probably the mercury levels acting as a preservative.....
 
orange roughy is also fun if you can get some that hasn't been frozen too long - place a lump on the cat's plate at room temperature (don't worry, the cat won't eat it because of the wax-esters in the flesh, although rats will die if they eat enough of it), anyway, leave the o-roughy and get out of bed about 2am - the plate will be glowing with a blue luminescence. Nothing to do with Muroroa atol, just commensal bacteria.
 
myopsida said:
check the label details next time you buy "crab meat" or "reconstituted squid rings"

i like reading the labels on mystery meat, but every imitation crab meat is pollock with a few other ingredients...
 
I'm not sure because the scientist names do not seem to intersect, but I believe this is a follow-up to the article that started this thread -- and it would seem the "large red squid" was an octopus -- there's a very interesting two-paragraph description at the bottom of this article:

A Voyage to the Deep - A visit To The Creatures That Live In the Dark

Either that, or Alvin has recently been used off the Atlantic coast by two separate research teams, and both found red cephs -- which I suppose is possible -- anyone know for sure?
 
WhiteKiboko said:
could this play into the fact that during the plagues of egypt, there wouldve been a considerable increase in the amount of food available to slaves?

Wouldn't be at all surprised -- when you're a slave, you take protein from whatever source you can.

Locusts are still eaten in the Mideast, BTW. When I was a kid, one of my Hebrew School teachers was telling us about a summer she spent on a kibbutz. She recounted seeing one of the kibbutzniks catching a locust on the fly and then popping it into his mouth. It grossed her out, until she found out that was a common practice in Israel at the time.

Insects (and arachnids) are eaten in Mexico as well. One of the more interesting out-take clips I've seen involved an episode of X-FILES where a Mexican Indian offered Scully a grasshopper to eat. Of course it was supposed to look like she really ate the insect out of courtesy, but in reality the plan was for Gillian Anderson to grasp it in her hand, then let it go and pretend to eat it while the camera cut to a close-up of her face.

However, Gillian -- unpredictable as she was -- really put the grasshopper in her mouth and ate it. In the out-take, you could hear the camera crew going "Whoa!" and "Yuck!" when the shot was over. She didn't look any the worse for having the snack, which supports the fact that people's ideas of what is edible can change despite a long-ingrained cultural norm.

WhiteKiboko said:
as for the roughy/eel meat issue.... im surprised someone hasnt come up with a hot dog-ish solution to random meats hanging around kinda like a fish stick....hey! the undesirables could be used for fish stick/nugget/etc for school lunches... offer the companies a slight tax break to make it worth their while fiscally, and increase the food supply....

I think that's what Myopsida was referring to when (she? he?) mentioned surimi. As far as I know that's a generic Japanese term for "cooked fake crabmeat", and it can be found in salads and sushi, particularly the popular "California Roll".

Ink-identally, we recently found out that our local Foodtown supermarket carries freshly-made Sushi Ameriko brand sushi, including California Roll and Broiled Eel Roll (una-ju). The latter is a bargain at $5.49 with ten slices of "inside out" sushi (rice, seaweed, una-ju, sauce, and avocado), wasabi and pickled ginger. Great stuff!

8)
 
myopsida said:
orange roughy is also fun if you can get some that hasn't been frozen too long - place a lump on the cat's plate at room temperature (don't worry, the cat won't eat it because of the wax-esters in the flesh, although rats will die if they eat enough of it), anyway, leave the o-roughy and get out of bed about 2am - the plate will be glowing with a blue luminescence. Nothing to do with Muroroa atol, just commensal bacteria.

Hmmmmmmm. Is this an alternative to 10/80 poisoning? Should we lace the bush with orange roughy fillets?
 
1080 is a poison that the NZ Department of Conservation uses to kill non-native mammalian pests, mostly possums. (Not the North American opossum, but the Australian brush-tailed possum, a very cute but very destructive animal imported for its lovely fur and now wreaking absolute havoc on the native vegetation.)
 
i see.... kill foreign things as long as they dont meet the cute and fuzzy standards*....



*standards float as we see fit

:shock:
 

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