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Comment by schwartzworld | Hacker News Reader

Sardines are a household favorite for us. My kids love them.

The secret is, don't buy cheap ones. Look for brisling or any other small fish packed in olive oil. $3-5/can is a good sweet spot, although you can pay $9 for a can of imported Portuguese sardines no problem.

Speaking of Portugal, they do grilled fresh sardines. My 3 year old insisted on eating them daily when we were in Lisbon

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> Speaking of Portugal, they do grilled fresh sardines

One of my Portuguese guilty pleasures, along with (ethically questionable, I know) octopus salad. Highly recommend trying this if you can get your hands on some fresh sardines.

Edit: grilled sardines are also a Japanese thing, so you might have luck finding them at an Asian market if your fishmonger doesn't have them.

Haven't sardines, like most other fish, been overfished, making them ethically questionable too?

As a portuguese I can tell you that sardine stocks are heavily controlled and regulated and there are years where the catchable tonnage is severely reduced. As the fish markets are centralized, meaning fishermen need to sell their catch in a government auction house, you cannot really do industrial fishing out of allowed stock quotas. Sardines quotas are the target of heavy diplomatic negotiations with EU.

South Africa has a pretty strong S. sagax stock, but it all gets canned or ground into fish meal. Eating fresh sardines just isn’t part of the culture — so sad.

I rely on SeafoodWatch.org to advise on fish sustainability, and it doesn't look good for sardines: https://www.seafoodwatch.org/recommendations/search?query=%3...

Yes, kind of. That said, as far as I know anything that is more complex to digest like dark bread helps prevent type 2 diabetes. (But maybe it's anyway better to talk to a real doctor or at least a food expert if that is any concern...)

Overfishing of sardines happen because most of it is ground up and used as feed in aquaculture (which is very inefficient). Instead, if you consume sardines directly, it will be a more sustainable enterprise.

Aside from eating animals in general, what is ethically questionable of octopus salad?

Quite possibly the poster is referring to the intelligence of octopuses. Have a look at My Octopus Teacher (On Netflix) and you will see.

They're incredibly intelligent, and there's a healthy debate around whether they're actually conscious[1]. I tend to question whether I should be eating something that might reasonably be aware, were it alive, that it's about to die.

1. see e.g. https://qz.com/1045782/an-octopus-is-the-closest-thing-to-an...

I’m pretty certain the mammals we eat are conscious, and that doesn’t seem to bother most of us.

Prevailing attitudes aren’t a good barometer for judging the ethics of our individual choices.

I've had a growing suspicion that even plants have more 'awareness' than we give them credit for. You still gotta eat, though.

They are certainly aware. At the simplest level, we know for a fact they respond to their environment. On accelerated time scales, it is also fairly obvious to see them compete with other plants and branches of themselves. We also know they communicate with other plants, warning them of the danger of insect predators, to which they respond by increasing the production of natural insecticides.

Though I can't prove it, I'm edging toward the belief they share resources with each other, including water and nutrients through the root system.

All these facts and ideas are easily undone by particularly defining "awareness" and so this is largely a terminological problem.

The discussion quickly becomes, "Define awareness." or ... more generally ... "Define consciousness," which we see with machines, insects, plants, even single celled organisms.

Here's what science does tell us repeatedly: Those things which humans as a species are convinced have no consciousness is decreasing. Most, even today, would not believe an octopus is conscious, but we now think they are. Dolphins. Birds, even fish now have scientific studies indicating they are self-aware.

So, yeah, justifying the eating of plants because they lack self-awareness isn't a valid argument in my book.

That doesn't absolve us of a mission to reduce suffering for the things we eat.

Plants can certainly suffer and it's trivial to identify.

Do really people not consider mammals--even mammals they have regular exposure to such as dogs and cats--to be conscious? I know people tend to have a superiority complex when it comes to other animals but I have a hard time believing that they don't consider them to be conscious.

Yes, there are vast numbers of them. I know doctors who do not believe the dog at the door wagging its tail when the person arrives to be experiencing emotions.

I believe the dog is happy and excited and eager to greet its friend of another species, but many, many people believe that dog is exhibiting purely mechanical behavior driven by instinct alone.

The existence of consciousness in other species doesn't mean we have a mission to reduce suffering. That's an illogical non sequitur.

I wasn't including you when I said us.

Plus sometimes an animal eats another animal with a higher degree of consciousness than himself. A tiger eating a monkey for example.

I've rationalized eating the very intelligent octopus with the fact that they live for a maximum of like 2 years.

Octopuses are also cannibals, so your tentacled hero has questionable ethics sense also. If you eat an octopus you will probably be saving the live to dozens of baby octopuses (those score higher because cuteness card)

As usual when we apply "random ideology" we fall in an end road. From this point all are exceptions and excuses to fill the plot-holes, so the new guardians of the moral can keep asking for donations

In Spain is very easy to get them in to beach or in restaurants nearby.

You can also made them in the oven wrapped in aluminium paper if you don't have a proper grill.

So I wonder what the diabetes rate is in Portugal, then

FWIW, According to 2019 data from the International Diabetes Federation, Portugal is ranked 53rd (9.8%) out of 195 countries for prevalence of both type 1 and type 2 diabetes. Kiribati ranked 1st at 22.5% of the population between the ages of 20 and 79 having either type of diabetes and Benin ranked 195th at 1%.

https://www.indexmundi.com/facts/indicators/SH.STA.DIAB.ZS/r...

UK has pretty low prevalence at 3.90% and Ireland at 3.20%? What is their secret?

Fish and chips and the finest ales in all the land.

I stopped eating them because my roommate can’t stand the smell. Same for smoked oysters. I miss them both a lot

Yeah they smell strong, that's why I had to stop bringing them to my job's kitchen office.

Fresh grilled sardines on the beach in Malaga is one of my absolute favorite vacation memories. Baking sun, ice cold beer and fresh seafood is a powerful combination.

Have you considered the risk of mercury accumulation?

Sardines are fairly low in mercury. You might not want to eat them every day, but a few times a week shouldn't be a problem as long as you're not also eating other fish that are higher in mercury.

Sardines seem to have the lowest mercury concentration of any fish: https://www.fda.gov/food/metals-and-your-food/mercury-levels...

Are there specific brands you'd recommend?

I’m no connoisseur but Trader Joe’s lightly smoked sardines are quite good, and the price is right.

Except that brisling sardines are not sardines.

Really? What's the distinction?

From Wikipedia [0]: "Canned sardines in supermarkets may actually be sprat (such as the brisling sardine) or round herrings.", and sprat [1] is a different fish, not a sardine [2]. Nobody in Russia or Nordic countries calls "sprat" "sardines" - this is one of the typical misnomers. Sprats are rich in omega-3s, but sardines are not.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sardines_as_food

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprat

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sardine

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