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Comment by Klonoar | Hacker News Reader

Sure. I'm comfortable either reading the description on a menu or the packaging it presumably comes in to determine what I'm actually getting.

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I think that example wasn't the best as it's probably so obvious it isn't salmon it wouldn't fool anyone. But would you be comfortable if someone sold Hoki or Puffer Fish as Salmon? And then only in the fine print said it was actually Hoki that tasted like salmon or whatever. What if someone sold actual fish but called it Tofu, and only disclosed in the description that it was fish that tasted like Tofu?

That is a world I don't want to live in.

Almost every sushi restaurant in North America sells “crab” that contains 0% crab. Very few people seem to make a fuss about this.

I must admit I didn't know that. Do you think that is widely known amongst people who eat them? But yes, either way, I find that disturbing.

… and it must be clearly labeled as imitation crab on the menu. They cannot just call it “crab”.

Very few people realize what they’re actually eating, I fear.

You already live in that world and don't seem to know it.

It does seem so.

To be fair I live in Australia which does seem to have much stricter labelling requirements than the US.

"I can't believe it's not butter" product

Or as my brother and I called it, "Ick-bihn-buh" — enunciating the "ICBINB" acronym.

The proof-of-concept marketing name "I Can't Believe It's Not Salmon" illustrates the fundamental problem here. Can lab-grown salmon be labeled as just plain "salmon"? Can it reside in the meat department right next to farm-raised and wild-caught salmon fillets? Does it always have to be prepended with "cultivated"?

So why not just call it "vegetable and lab grown salmon cells"?

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