Revealed: Seafood fraud happening on a vast global scale | Hacker News Reader

Revealed: Seafood fraud happening on a vast global scale

theguardian.com

43 pointselorant8 comments

I've also recently (during the COVID-19 outbreak and afterwards) noticed a lot of fish I buy seems to be much more watery than before.

For example I like baking black cod (sablefish) but now baking the same fish causes a huge pool of water to pool underneath the fish and it also makes it hard to fully cook it through in the oven. After some research, it looks like this is due to an additive called sodium tripolyphosphate being added (maybe in greater quantity than before)? This is added to "help retain water" but obviously adding more makes me pay more for the same amount of fish as I'm now buying more water.

For things like this, I don't know who to report it to, as the local supermarket doesn't care and I don't know where in the supply chain this was added (obviously for more profits).

There's nobody to report it to, because it's perfectly legal.

What you can do is seek out a better fish seller who doesn't use it. Sometimes that means looking in the frozen aisle and checking the ingredients list. (Even the non-frozen fish at the counter has nearly always been frozen and defrosted, so it's not as big a difference as it might seem.)

You might need to find a more upscale fish place. Whole Foods actually has a really nice fish counter. (I'm not crazy about Whole Foods in general, but it's a good place to get cheese, meat, and fish.) Wegman's also promises no STPP, as well as a bunch of other positives about sustainability.

You will, of course, pay more. That's the point; they're saving money by selling you a product with more water. But it will taste better: food treated with STPP can't sear because it's so wet.

This is only going to get worse, as the price of first-class animal protein rises.

It doesn't help that a lot of mis-naming of species happens. So, Australian fish and chip shops sell "cod" and chips. It's not northern hemisphere cod.

"Snapper" is almost ubiquitous. Oh, thats "seabream" is that the same as "bream" or "brim" ?

"Flake" -thats shark. What shark!

A lot of this is the up-scaling inside a family. So, Tuna has three or four sub varieties. What's going on is that lower grade tuna is passing for higher.

Or farmed for wild.

Farmed fish is a bit of a disaster in itself. Here in BC, Canada we got absolutely wrecked by Atlantic salmon farms. It was a disaster for wild salmon and the environment around the farms due to detritus and disease. Really disgusting and inefficient.

Same here in some ways. Salmon farms screwing up esturarine water, lots of super-fertilized "run off" in the waste, Prawn farms which went wrong with asian white spot disease from illegally acquired prawn meat as food (for prawns god help us) fishmeal.. now in the cycle so we're no longer disease free.

Fish farming does have good promise but nothing is perfect. Farmed Tuna is a mixed bag too. Have to catch 'em wild I believe, can't yet do the full life cycle in the net. (could be wrong about that)

I'm not a vegan reductionist. I like eating meat, including fishmeat. But I can't pretend it has no downsides, wild caught or farmed, its got issues.

Here's a fun story you can tell a friend next time you order calamari:

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/484/doppelgangers

It just might be "Hog rectum".

Finally, a nail for the blockchain hammer.

One reason I love jumbo shrimp, prawn fraud is probably harder than regular fish fraud, and especially harder than crab fraud and "prawn ball" fraud.

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