[HN Gopher] The Unlikely Success of Fish Sticks
___________________________________________________________________
The Unlikely Success of Fish Sticks
Author : Thevet
Score : 94 points
Date : 2021-05-03 21:31 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.hakaimagazine.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.hakaimagazine.com)
| whitepaint wrote:
| How healthy are the fish sticks?
| cheese_goddess wrote:
| > In 1953, 13 companies produced 3.4 million kilograms of fish
| sticks. A year later, four million kilograms were produced by
| another 55 companies. This surge in popularity was partly due to
| a marketing push that stressed the convenience of the new food:
| "no bones, no waste, no smell, no fuss," as one Birds Eye
| advertisement proclaimed.
|
| A dirty lie, at least when it comes to "no waste", when you
| consider that the skin, head and tail of the fish, or about 1/3
| of its edible tissue, is thrown away as garbage, and lucky if
| it's made into pet food.
|
| This is the convenience and advantage of rearing entire
| generations on food that doesn't look like food: that they never
| wonder what happened to the rest of the animal.
|
| No respect for an other living thing.
| narag wrote:
| Is that what it means? I take that as "you won't need to
| dispose of waste"...
| cheese_goddess wrote:
| Sure, someone else will do the dirty job for "you". Food
| waste as a service.
| narag wrote:
| In 1953 I seriously doubt there was so much concern about
| it, much less in an advertisment directed to consumers.
| cheese_goddess wrote:
| Note the oxymoron in that advert: "Fresh Frozen!".
| jdminhbg wrote:
| That's not an oxymoron. It means they were frozen right
| away after being caught. A similar term today used
| especially for things like shrimp is "Individual Quick
| Frozen" or IQF. Shrimp are frozen on the boat that
| catches them.
| hoopleheaded wrote:
| If those bits were removed in homes they are almost always
| going to be wasted without municipal composting, and even
| that is still wasteful. If they are removed at scale (no
| pun intended) there is a much higher likelihood that they
| will be used as a byproduct in pet food or fertilizer or
| something.
| cheese_goddess wrote:
| I'm talking about the skins, heads and tails of fish that
| have no business being removed because they're edible and
| nutritious. I think you 're talking about the guts, that
| are almost always thrown out anyway.
|
| Food waste starts with cultural norms that make some
| foods taboo, essentially. Like for example "offal" as the
| perfectly edible entrails of ruminants are derogatorily
| known.
| [deleted]
| oblio wrote:
| Well, the upside is that if some time before we make cold
| fusion a reality we are able to make safe, nutritious and cheap
| artificial meat & co., at least it's going to be more easily
| accepted by folks that won't expect to also see the other body
| parts.
| cheese_goddess wrote:
| It might, but only because those people are used to eating
| food made in factories. But making food in factories at
| ridiculous scales is what causes the excesses of consumption
| and waste observed in the Western world, in the first place.
| Vat grown meat is more of the same and I fail to see how it
| solves anythig, rather than making people dependent even more
| on the food industry, the same food industry that wants to
| sell them fish sticks, hot dogs and burgers.
| cm2012 wrote:
| Industry factory farming is many horrible things but its not
| wasteful. They use every part of the animals to increase profit
| margins.
| yissp wrote:
| If people bought whole fish instead, do you think those parts
| wouldn't still go to waste? I guess you could use them for
| stock, but really, how many people would bother. If anything, I
| would guess food processing companies would have an easier time
| finding some use for them (like you said, as pet food or
| whatever).
| matwood wrote:
| Depends on the fish. The tails of many fish are great fried.
| It's just another crunchy item. Salmon skin is also tasty as
| long as you get it crisp when cooking. Mahi skin is kind of
| thick and chewy so I usually throw that away (or into the
| marsh for the local critters to eat). Most of the bass type
| fish skins are also tasty.
|
| Heads are harder to deal with unless you want to make your
| own stock.
|
| I grew up on the coast, catching, cleaning, and cooking my
| own fish all the time. I know not everyone has those
| experiences.
| runawaybottle wrote:
| There's a class of adult baby food that fish sticks fall under.
| It's food that's conceptually shaped for kids but adults have no
| problem eating this stuff with a straight face. Wendy's nuggets
| look like chicken feet.
|
| I think as we figure out how to make protein alternatives that
| taste like meat, we'll see a small rise in adult baby food,
| things shaped like a slim jim, etc.
|
| Then we can finally fulfill our prophecy of being adults that
| wear children's winter jackets and eat food that's shaped like
| toys, and just really come full circle with the aging into
| infancy.
| drewzero1 wrote:
| I think this idea of "adult baby food" is interesting -- just
| finger food in "fun" shapes? Like baby carrots? I think there's
| an element of fun and convenience that makes it attractive
| occasionally, but wouldn't consider fish sticks or chicken
| nuggets suitable for a regular meal in my house.
|
| I'm confused by your remark about children's winter jackets
| though. Do you mean we'll have mittens strung through our
| sleeves so we can't lose them?
| germinalphrase wrote:
| What is a "child's winter jacket"? Is this some kind of meme
| thing I'm not aware of...?
| GavinMcG wrote:
| Why on earth should adults _care_ what shape their food is?
|
| The childish thing is judging adults by completely
| substanceless distinctions like this.
| barbazoo wrote:
| I think this is only a problem in a subset of cultures, not
| one of "adults" in general.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| Asking why this _should_ be the case is not particularly
| useful. The fact is that it is true. If you offer an average
| adult cereal in the shape of little ronald mcdonald faces vs.
| generic flakes even with identical nutritional content they
| will, on average, select the more 'adult appropriate'
| option. Marketing is a thing for a reason.
| [deleted]
| tsatx wrote:
| How the sausage is made:
|
| https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/47/5b/d9/21b5da4...
|
| Bon appetit!
| capableweb wrote:
| I'm unsure of why you shared this? Normal people are unlikely
| to have a plate freezer at home, which this seems to require in
| order to make these at home. And I'm not sure how many people
| keep minced fish meat around at home anyways.
| realct wrote:
| To explain that fish sticks are made from ground fish which
| is beaten into filet shape again?
|
| Which seems to elude many posters in this submission.
| supernova87a wrote:
| Funny that we have certain collective nouns that don't cross meat
| types.
|
| -- Fish _sticks_
|
| -- Chicken _nuggets_ or _fingers_
|
| -- Shrimp _poppers_
|
| And beef / pork don't seem to ever fall into those. (pork
| sticks?? Beef nuggets??)
|
| Maybe because beef, pork seem worthy of preserving identity as a
| piece of a distinguishable reputable whole parent, while fish,
| chicken, are sometimes almost.... um, extruded and need a noun of
| their own after such process?
| justinv wrote:
| Fwiw - in Ireland & UK, they're fish fingers, not fish sticks.
| fl0wenol wrote:
| Interesting -- for the US "fingers" is reserved for breaded
| frozen meat that appears to be hand-formed (that is, not
| rectangular, but still likely machine-made at scale). Chicken
| fingers and fish fingers are commonly available.
| chumich1 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finger_steaks
| nickik wrote:
| 1> So you like fish sticks?
|
| 2> yes!
|
| 1> So you like to put fish sticks in your mouth?
|
| 2> yes!
|
| 1> So you are a gay fish.
|
| 2> I'm not a gay fish, I'm the voice of a generation.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fishsticks_(South_Park)
| davzie wrote:
| Such a great episode
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| I think the secret sauce for fish sticks' success is tartar
| sauce.
|
| By themselves fish sticks are meh, but when dipped in tarter
| sauce, the taste is sublime.
|
| The shape and consistency of fish sticks make it easier to dip in
| tartar sauce.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I like fried battered fish with tartar sauce, but cocktail
| sauce (ketchup and prepared horseradish) is better IMO and malt
| vinegar is several factors better.
| twic wrote:
| Tomato ketchup is also pretty good - even if broadsheet
| journalists might dismiss it as "a bit childish":
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/dec/15/how-to-...
| leoc wrote:
| The extra bite from HP sauce makes it preferable to normal
| tomato ketchup here: the real sophisticate's choice. ;)
| mbg721 wrote:
| I was always a fan of cocktail sauce (ketchup with
| horseradish).
| matwood wrote:
| Agree. Cocktail sauce with extra horseradish is great on
| all types of seafood - oysters, shrimp, fish, etc...
| twic wrote:
| There is a fine line between genius and madness, and i
| regret to report that you crossed it a long time ago.
| mohaine wrote:
| A 50/50 Mix of Tomato ketchup and Sriracha is IMO better than
| straight ketchup
| GloriousKoji wrote:
| New York semi-recently discovered korean ingredients so
| Gochujang and ketchup is the new hotness for the western
| world.
| flakiness wrote:
| As a someone who came from a fish-eating nation (Japan), it's
| great to know that fish sticks are sustainable. The collective
| memory there was that Japan was condemned as fish abuser. People
| felt unfair but also were ashamed at the same time. (Over-fishing
| was/is at least partly true after all.)
|
| However, I don't have any memory around fish sticks associated
| from my childhood in Japan. Fried (frozen) fish fillets are
| popular, but they are more chunky. "Fish sausages" used to be
| popular and felt kind of similar, but it was even more
| artificial. I wonder where it went. It doesn't make sense not
| have it there.
| tashoecraft wrote:
| If Seaspiracy is to be believed, there's no such this as
| sustainable fishing at scale. In order to catch this much fish,
| you're going to kill tons of other animals, discard tons of
| nets and other fishing equipment, saying it's "sustainable" is
| probably a lie in most every sense.
| isleyaardvark wrote:
| If marine biologists are to be believed, Seaspiracy is not a
| reliable source of information.
| stouset wrote:
| The uncomfortable reality is that there is almost no
| "sustainable" _anything_ at our current population scale.
| Certainly not at anything approximating a typical Western
| lifestyle.
| an_opabinia wrote:
| I don't know. If you removed all the worst parts of the
| supply chain of a cell phone - the slave labor, the
| conflict minerals - it would cost like what, four times
| more? Boohoo. But nearly everything else about it, like the
| IAP sold on it, or the music you listen to or the books you
| read, is already essentially sustainable. And people spend
| literally hours on their phone, globally, consuming and
| spending in totally sustainable entertainment, and not just
| in the West.
|
| For the consumer, sustainability in the West really is
| about food, and specifically, it really is about meat.
| There's no amount of equivocation that will change that.
| And affecting it - by simply not buying meat - really is as
| easy and as effective as it appears.
| cheese_goddess wrote:
| Maybe if you only ever bought a single phone and never
| discarded it, creating more e-waste that would not have a
| big impact on the environment. But if everyone buys one
| or two new phones a year then you have a mountain of
| waste. Of course you don't see it because it's a mountain
| that forms in some far away land where people are so poor
| they have to scavenge in the detritus of your electronics
| and can't afford to eat any meat anyway.
| triceratops wrote:
| But if phones cost 4x what they do now, as GP suggests,
| people would replace their phone far less frequently.
| an_opabinia wrote:
| Yes. The _root cause_ of unsustainability is still
| something horrible - the abuse of labor - but not
| literally the same as environmental goals. This is a case
| where intersectionality really shines. You really can
| align goals because ending labor abuse is good for the
| environment.
|
| Likewise, with meat, the _root cause_ of unsustainability
| is the animal abuse that enables cheap meat. I 'm
| definitely not blaming the consumer here. Of course you
| could make sustainable meat, it would just cost 10-400x
| more (Eating Animals is a great, broad take on this you
| could read).
| yissp wrote:
| I think a big part of this is the lack of repairability
| and long-term software support, though. There's no good
| reason we need to be replacing our phones (and a lot of
| other electronics) as often as most of us currently do.
| shkkmo wrote:
| I think this is a cop out that needlessly encourages people
| to not try to find sustainable solutions.
|
| Yes, the road to sustainability is hard and long, but a
| path does exist that achieves sustainability without
| population reduction. Discouraging people from seeking that
| path does nobody any good.
| k__ wrote:
| Or it's simply eco-facism.
|
| I think, we should move to sustainable solutions, but I
| don't believe in over population
| shkkmo wrote:
| What do you mean by "I don't believe in overpopulation?"
|
| Overpopulation is definitely a real thing in ecological
| systems, so I assume you mean either:
|
| 1) We are not currently in an overpopulated state.
|
| 2) We are extremely unlikely to reach an overpopulated
| state in the nearish future.
|
| One important thing to note is that overpopulation is not
| a fixed threshold, but one that is dependant on a number
| of ecological, environmental and technological factors
| that makes it extremely hard to completely accept 2).
| k__ wrote:
| I mean, I believe in the concept, but I think humanity is
| far from reaching that state.
|
| Which doesn't mean that I think we can't live above our
| means with the population we already have. I just think
| it's a question of optimizing production and not
| restricting population growth.
| stouset wrote:
| Can we improve things? Sure. Should we invest in
| improving things? Absolutely.
|
| Neither of those permits the kind of pervasive magical
| thinking people have where we can somehow raise even a
| fraction of our 7 billion people to anything
| approximating a typical Western lifestyle without further
| accelerating environmental collapse. Or even maintaining
| the number of people with such a lifestyle that we
| currently do.
|
| Our planet fundamentally lacks the resources for
| sustained consumption anywhere near the scale we're
| operating at, no matter how green we try to make things.
| Even just on a purely thermodynamic level we're running
| out of energy budget without overheating the planet[1].
| And that's _completely ignoring greenhouse gases_.
|
| [1]: https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/07/galactic-scale-
| energy/
| at_a_remove wrote:
| _Does_ that path exist? I am not entirely convinced that
| you can have our current population living with our
| current standards -- especially if the standards spread
| from say that USA to the poorest nations, sustainably.
| shkkmo wrote:
| I think that there is some confusion as to what you are
| trying to say.
|
| 1) There is no way to catch the amount of fish we catch in a
| sustainable manner. (No sustainability at our current scale.)
|
| 2) There is no way to catch any amount of fish sustainably.
| (No sustainability at any scale.)
|
| I think people are intrepreting you as saying #2 when you are
| really saying #1.
|
| The answer would appear to be that if that we need to reduce
| the scale at which fiahing operates. This means
| sustainability requirents that increase the costs to
| fishermen so that overall demand cam be curbed to a
| sustainable level.
| cheese_goddess wrote:
| As far as I understand it, Seaspiracy claims that 2) is the
| case and we should all stop eating fish entirely.
| shkkmo wrote:
| I think Seaspiracies argument is that current
| "sustainable fishing" efforts are not actually
| sustainable and are designed to appear to solve the
| problem while avoiding regulations that would actually
| enforce sustainable fishing (and hence massively disrupt
| the industry.)
|
| If that is their argument, the push to stop eating fish
| would be justified only in the current environment where
| there is no ecologically sustainable source.
|
| Maybe I being too generous, but "fishing can never be
| sustainable" appears to be blatantly false so I feel we
| have to look for the "strongest plausible
| interpretation".
| tashoecraft wrote:
| I interpreted it as unless the fishing are doing is
| entirely local (the example in the movie being the
| African fisherman) it can be sustainable, but really and
| type of fish most of us buy is definitely not sustainable
| no matter what organization says. That sustainable
| fishiers fudge the numbers to work and farming produces
| it's own set of problems
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| >If Seaspiracy is to be believed, there's no such this as
| sustainable fishing at scale
|
| This statement is silly. There is _A_ scale at which fishing
| is sustainable. The issue is that we are likely well over
| that.
| whoisburbansky wrote:
| This is like saying your amazing lock-free architecture is
| scalable, as long as you define scalable to mean "at most
| one thread."
| shkkmo wrote:
| Huh? Just because something is scalable, doesn't mean it
| is scalable indefinitely.
|
| There very clearly exists a scale at which fishing is
| sustainable and a scale at which it is not. You can argue
| what the tipping point is, but you can't argue with that
| fundemental premise.
| whoisburbansky wrote:
| I phrased this quite poorly; my quibble isn't with the
| concept of scaling or that it's possible to fish
| sustainably at some defined scale. I was getting at the
| idea that most people's definition of doing something _at
| scale_ is going to be well above the tipping point, in
| the same way that processing data _at scale_ usually
| invokes rows of server racks, and not a single thread on
| a dinky laptop.
| diggan wrote:
| > The collective memory there was that Japan was condemned as
| fish abuser
|
| I don't know about the over-fishing, but I do remember reading
| a lot about whaling in Japan and some incidents about fishermen
| hunting whales in sanctuaries. Guess that could also be folded
| into "condemned as fish abuser".
| nostromo wrote:
| I think The Cove
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cove_(film)) had a lot to
| do with raising (negative) awareness of dolphin fishing in
| Japan.
| cheese_goddess wrote:
| Also see: epicanthic folds.
|
| You've heard of the killing of dolphins by Japanese
| fishermen, but not of the similar practice of killing of
| pilot whales in the Faroe islands where people are
| distinctly not of Asian descent:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whaling_in_the_Faroe_Islands
| tofof wrote:
| Maybe that's got more to do with the fact that the Faroe
| Islands have a population of 52,000 while Japan's
| population is 125,410,000? Surely the fishing practices
| of the nation 2400x larger are going to be more impactful
| by at least an order of magnitude or two.
|
| Edit: We don't have to guess. Using 1986 numbers since
| this is when I remember the world being peak-Save-The-
| Whales (Star Trek IV's release year).
|
| Faroe - 355,000 metric tons fished in 1986
|
| Japan - 12,750,000 metric tons fished in 1986
|
| Source: https://tradingeconomics.com/faroe-islands/total-
| fisheries-p... and corresponding Japan page.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| I suspect the stuff that went into "fish sausages" is used to
| make surimi nowadays.
| screye wrote:
| > Each kilogram of fish sticks produces about 1.3 kilograms of
| carbon dioxide, which "rivals the climate impact of tofu," she
| says. Beef, by comparison, produces over 100 times that amount of
| carbon dioxide per kilogram
|
| That's an unfair comparison. (apparently they did consider some
| of my complaints)
|
| Does it take into account the additional co2 that fishing boats
| emit? Esp. given that they usually use far more harmful fuels
| than the gas used on roads.
|
| Comparing a dish to the raw. material is unfair. Fish sticks
| should be compared to the environmental. impact of beef stir fry
| or sukiyaki or at the very least, an order of burger and fries
| (per kg)
|
| Then there is the fact that caloric densities vary. comparisons
| should be made per portion, not unit weight.
|
| co2 is also a complex topic. There is carbon that is recaptured
| in replanting crops. Beef also primarily produces methane, so I'm
| not sure if the co2 impact of beef is the proportional impact in
| methane or actual co2. Methane has a much shorter term. impact vs
| co2.
|
| Lastly, trawling has massive ecosystem destroying impacts that
| don't show up on co2 counters. We must also consider that in
| sustainability calculations.
|
| All in all, fish sticks might be sustainable, but these back of
| the napkin numbers are rarely representative of the complex
| systems that drive climate change.
|
| ____
|
| to be fair, I love fish. They are healthier, easier to do
| sustainably than red meat, you need less of it to flavor food and
| it is easier to use 100% of it vs red meat animals. Lastly, salt
| water fish have straight up more flavor. (too much for some)
|
| If seafloor trawling is banned and ships are moved over to better
| refined petroleum products, then fishing can be quite
| sustainable.
| revax wrote:
| >Beef also primarily produces methane, so I'm not sure if the
| co2 impact of beef is the proportional impact in methane or
| actual co2. Methane has a much shorter term. impact vs co2.
|
| It is most certainly accounted for. The correct unit is
| CO2-equivalent and the time horizon commonly used is 100 years.
|
| See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_potential
| sampo wrote:
| > Does it take into account the additional co2 that fishing
| boats emit? Esp. given that they usually use far more harmful
| fuels than the gas used on roads.
|
| Those more harmful fuels don't produce extra CO2, though.
| Marine diesel engines burn less clean oils, and thus produce
| other pollutants (such as sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide,
| particulate emission), but the energy content and CO2 emissions
| are same as with e.g. gasoline.
| dfan wrote:
| "Does it take into account the additional co2 that fishing
| boats emit?"
|
| Yes.
|
| "Unlike previous studies that have largely overlooked the
| downstream processing activities associated with Alaskan
| pollock, this study examined all the components of the supply
| chain, from fishing through the retail display case."
| [https://news.ucsc.edu/2020/01/mckuin-fish.html]
| screye wrote:
| Thanks for adding that, will edit it into my post.
| SeanFerree wrote:
| Great article! Love Fish Sticks!
| oblak wrote:
| I used to like putting fish sticks in my mouth
|
| It's the only animal seafood that doesn't smell like sea silt to
| me.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| What are you, a gay fish?
| dweekly wrote:
| This made me curious about how it was that Clarence Birdseye came
| to discover the fast-freeze approach that preserves flavor. The
| answer is surprisingly straightforward - he was a fur trader in
| Labrador (northern Canada) and noticed when he pulled fish out
| they froze immediately and were still delicious months later. So
| if only you could make fish as cold as northern Canada, you could
| make frozen fish tasty! It was from there that he designed a -45F
| calcium chloride based belt technique and then a -25F ammonia
| evaporation driven technique.
|
| https://www.loc.gov/everyday-mysteries/technology/item/who-i...
| s0rce wrote:
| I like that you can still buy Birdseye brand frozen foods in
| the Grocery store.
| jfengel wrote:
| Nitpick: the brand is Birds Eye. After a series of mergers
| it's owned by Conagra, which also owns a dizzying array of
| brands, including Chef Boyardee and PF Chang's.
| switch007 wrote:
| It's a pretty big, well known brand in the UK :)
| _Microft wrote:
| Above all I find fish sticks _convenient_.
|
| I can take only as many as needed out of the box and put the rest
| back into the freezer for next time. They only take a few minutes
| to fry and go well with a variety of side dishes which gives
| flexibility. I do not even mind putting them on burgers instead
| of patties when I am not willing to make some (I usually cook
| freshly and do not like pre-made patties at all) (-> flexibility
| again).
| GavinMcG wrote:
| _Such_ an improvement over fishbricks:
|
| > Birdseye developed a novel freezing technique...but when used
| on fish, the method created large blocks of intermingled
| fillets that, when pried apart, tore into "mangled,
| unappetizing chunks" .... The fishing industry tried selling
| the blocks whole, as fishbricks. These were packaged like
| blocks of ice cream, with the idea that a housewife could chop
| off however much fish she wanted that day.
|
| What a world.
| nostromo wrote:
| > Each kilogram of fish sticks produces about 1.3 kilograms of
| carbon dioxide, which "rivals the climate impact of tofu," she
| says. Beef, by comparison, produces over 100 times that amount of
| carbon dioxide per kilogram.
|
| That's fascinating. I wish they'd explain why.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| That beef number is going to vary widely. The low end might be
| grass-fed beef on rotational grazing regenerative grassland fed
| a methane suppressing supplement versus beef raised on factory
| farmed corn grown on land created by burning down the rain
| forest.
| asdff wrote:
| I thought the methane from decomposing grass was net
| generated whether it passed through the cow or not?
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Most beef aren't fed grass, they're fed corn or barley or
| other grains.
| eldenbishop wrote:
| You are correct. It's one of many sleight of hand tricks
| used to exaggerate the impact of beef. For some reason,
| certain parties don't want harm reduction policies on these
| issues, they want you to stop eating Beef altogether.
| barbazoo wrote:
| Sure you can argue about the specifics and how bad eating
| beef is for the environment and whether it's 10x worse or
| 100x worse than something else. But it's hard to argue
| that it's not causing an environmental problem that other
| foods simply wouldn't create. Monoculture, water
| poisoning, carbon footprint, animal cruelty, health and
| we haven't even considered the ethics of it yet. I get
| that it's part of our lifestyle but why is it so
| difficult to move on?
| sokoloff wrote:
| It's difficult to move away from _because_ it 's part of
| our lifestyle.
| drewzero1 wrote:
| I've mostly seen statistics about water usage for dairy milk
| production, but it takes a _lot_ of water and food to raise a
| cow to maturity. Fish (if harvested sustainably) care for
| themselves until caught, so it makes some sense to me that
| planting, growing, harvesting, and processing soybeans into
| tofu would have similar impact to fleets of ships traveling the
| ocean catching fish.
|
| A few years ago I read and enjoyed the book "The Omnivore's
| Dilemma" by Michael Pollan. The author follows three different
| meals from farm to table as completely as possible given the
| nature of modern food production. It's a great read for someone
| who wants to know more about where food comes from and how it
| gets here, and it's definitely made me think about what I'm
| eating.
| Nullabillity wrote:
| But presumably the fish still does need to eat, which you'd
| need to keep in mind for the calculation?
| barbazoo wrote:
| Not for the purpose of making a carbon footprint
| calculation I believe.
| sampo wrote:
| > Each kilogram of fish sticks produces about 1.3 kilograms of
| carbon dioxide, which "rivals the climate impact of tofu," she
| says. Beef, by comparison, produces over 100 times that amount of
| carbon dioxide per kilogram.
|
| These estimates vary a lot from one source to another, but even
| then 130 kgCO2/kg is an unusually high estimate for beef. Common
| range, I think, is from 20 to 60. For example this estimate is 26
| [1] and this is 21 for beef from dairy herd and 60 from beef herd
| [2].
|
| [1] http://css.umich.edu/factsheets/carbon-footprint-factsheet
|
| [2] https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local
| xyzzyz wrote:
| This also depends on what you count as carbon dioxide
| production. For example, cattle produce methane through gut
| fermentation, which is a strong greenhouse gas. However, it
| contributes to warming only to the extent the cattle stocks are
| growing. If cattle numbers are stable for some amount of time,
| than the methane produced by them does not contribute to new
| warming, as it forms closed cycle: methane decomposes to CO2 in
| atmosphere in a decade or two, which is then captured by grass,
| which is eaten by cattle. The result is a steady state of
| stable fraction of CO2 and CH4 in atmosphere, and no warming.
|
| What really does contribute to climate change though is
| emissions that come from fossils, like fuel for machines,
| electricity for processing and storage, and gas for artificial
| fertilizer. The variation in reported numbers is caused by
| agenda, ie whether one wants to accurately assess impact of
| beef production, or whether they want to paint beef as worst
| thing ever.
| lostlogin wrote:
| Can't you apply this logic to other things too though? We
| have two ICE cars for the household, and as long as that
| remains stable the CO2 produced will be used by the plants in
| our garden.
| himinlomax wrote:
| The CO2 produced by cars is proportional to their use. You
| could have 100 cars sitting in your massive garage and they
| wouldn't emit CO2 beyond what was used for their
| manufacturing.
| jsight wrote:
| I think that would only be the case if the plants in your
| garden eventually turn into biofuel.
| klipt wrote:
| No, because cows run on biofuel that is recently captured
| carbon, while your car is burning fossil fuel that is long
| ago captured carbon. Your houseplants aren't recapturing
| anywhere near that much.
| kadoban wrote:
| No, because almost all of the CO2 that comes out of your
| tailpipe used to be buried underground in stable forms. The
| plants in your garden both won't absorb enough, and even if
| it did it would never end up in any long-term storage
| separate from the atmosphere.
| robocat wrote:
| Firstly you are presuming cattle are grass fed with no
| fertilizer used. Nitrogen fertilizer and stock feeds use
| petrochemicals directly or indirectly.
|
| > If cattle numbers are stable for some amount of time
|
| Cattle numbers _are_ mostly static. The amount of methane
| produced is not trivial, although as you point out not the
| same class of problem as CO2 since CO2 is cumulative. Was
| your 40 year figure the half-life?
|
| For comparison, CFCs break down over many decades (I couldn't
| find reliable figures) but the ozone hole is still a serious
| problem (it seriously affects us in New Zealand where I
| live).
| barbazoo wrote:
| > as it forms closed cycle
|
| Wouldn't that require the grass to grow more to compensate
| for the increase in CO2?
| sampo wrote:
| There's been some debate on the ways to account short-lived
| greenhouse gases vs. CO2:
|
| https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/news/2018-news-Climate-
| Pol...
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41612-018-0026-8
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate2998
| aqme28 wrote:
| > methane decomposes to CO2 in atmosphere in a decade or two,
| which is then captured by grass
|
| But methane is a worse greenhouse gas than CO2, so it's not
| neutral at all.
|
| You're also assuming that cattle are fed naturally occurring
| grass rather than industrial livestock feed, which I don't
| have numbers for but I assume is not carbon-neutral.
| odiroot wrote:
| > These estimates vary a lot from one source to another, but
| even then 130 kgCO2/kg is an unusually high estimate for beef.
| Common range, I think, is from 20 to 60
|
| Still, we'd be much better off, had we stopped eating beef (and
| other ruminants) and instead switched to pork, poultry and
| fish.
| jonas21 wrote:
| And here I am amazed that British schoolchildren in the 70s
| apparently ate on proper plates with cutlery.
| wnevets wrote:
| I'm convinced having to eat fish sticks as a child has caused me
| to hate the taste of fish as an adult.
| ojhughes wrote:
| Another thing British and Americans have a different name for. We
| call them fish fingers. If you ask for fish sticks in the UK you
| will probably get the pinkish crab sticks that don't have
| breadcrumbs
| ryanianian wrote:
| Fish fingers sounds funny to me as an American, but actually
| it's more consistent. Chicken fingers in the US are the same
| product but with chicken instead of fish.
| mr_cyborg wrote:
| As an aside, I grew up with "chicken fingers" everywhere, on
| restaurant menus, etc. but now I can't think of the last time
| I didn't see them called "chicken tenders" outside of one
| regional fast food chain where I am now. I live in a
| different region now so I wonder if that's a regional thing
| or just an overall trend
| Steltek wrote:
| Northeast? I see "chicken tenders" on a lot of menus. I can
| see the difference being that "chicken fingers" having a
| childish connotation. And it goes without saying, "boneless
| buffalo wings" is a complete fabrication of reality.
| jdkenney wrote:
| I believe the chicken tender is a specific cut/part of the
| breast. I would guess it's being used inaccurately for
| marketing/trendiness purposes, but originally it was
| probably not just a regional variation of "chicken finger".
| See related: Chilean Sea Bass as a renaming of the less
| glamorous "toothfish".
| sweettea wrote:
| Indeed, I had never heard of a chicken tender until I
| started reading r/WSB; they've always been chicken fingers
| or buffalo wings.
| twic wrote:
| If you go somewhere upmarket in the UK, they will be cod
| goujons, and will be an artfully irregular shape.
| _puk wrote:
| Had a chuckle that the local Asda (owned by Walmart until
| late last year) might be considered upmarket!
|
| They have cod goujons, and they are indeed respectably artful
| in their irregular shape.
| Mordisquitos wrote:
| Indeed. Although I'm mostly aware of the American equivalents
| of British terms, in this case it caught me off guard. Seeing
| the headline I had no idea what it was talking about, and I
| thought it might mean _" fish sticks"_ as in fishing using
| spears! I wonder what my American counterpart might have
| thought if the headline used _" fish fingers"_ instead... maybe
| that the article was about the unlikely evolutionary success of
| vertebrate fingers!?
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| Chicken prepared in a similar manner is called chicken
| fingers in the US, and at least in Canada, "fish fingers"
| sounds entirely natural and is not something I would even
| blink at. I don't even know what they're labelled as on
| packages; probably a mixture of both.
| m_mueller wrote:
| > pinkish crab stick
|
| interesting, these are Japanese Surimi, no?
| ZiiS wrote:
| Yes
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