Why don’t we eat more fish and seafood?

[KhansMambo]

A friend and I were chatting about fish and seafood (it’s Easter, after all), and wondering why the U.K. doesn’t have more of a fish/seafood culture or seafood based cuisine. Apart from the occasional bit of battered and deep fried fish, it doesn’t feature largely in a lot of people’s usual diets. And we consume markedly less than other countries with similar access.

As we’ve had so much access to it, historically, it’s interesting that it’s not the core of our traditional diet. Why don’t we have hundreds of razor clam recipes? Why didn’t everyone grow up eating an array of fish stews? Or using different kinds of seafood and seaweed as seasoning? I’m sure there’s all sorts of interesting anthropological reasons. I was wondering what everyone thought they were.

A quick Google dig up these, which I thought were really interesting.

• www.spectator.co.uk/article/britains-strange-aversion-to-seafood/amp

• www.newstatesman.com/culture/food-drink/2021/09/britain-is-surrounded-by-fish-so-why-do-we-eat-so-little-of-it

@cushioncovers

Price. a family of four adults who want two salmon fillets each works out very expensive for one meal. So we have pasta instead🤷🏻‍♀️

Two each!! - we have one and a huge pile of veg!

I've just halved the cost for you at a stroke!

I do.

@maddiemookins16mum

If you have to ask this then you really don’t realise how expensive fresh fish and seafood is and for a lot of families it is not on the weekly menu because of the price.

Did you actually read the OP? And my subsequent comments? As you don’t appear to understand what’s being asked.

@DazzlePaintedBattlePants

Ireland also doesn’t have a big fish culture- my Mum is convinced the Irish famine was because fish was not seen as food. I have memories of my grandparents being appalled that my Dad wanted some of the salmon my Granda had caught, instead of good Irish beef.

Also I think fishing is a skill - for cod etc you need deep water fishing skills. I don’t know if shallow water fishing in the U.K. is as productive/worthwhile in preindustrial times.

The U.K. has always had reasonable access to lamb, game and red meat, so combined with snobbery towards fish and shellfish, it’s not impossible to see why it’s never been a core foodstuff.

I’m wondering about the reason for the snobbery. There must be one (or, more likely, several).

The Irish thing is really interesting. I was musing about that upthread.

@Excited101

I love salmon, enjoy prawns, tuna, fish and chips, mackerel strips. But I haven’t bought fish for cooking since I watched Seaspiracy (have eaten it still at work though when it’s been available).

I wonder if the aversion to faces, bones, the skin is too much for modern British culture? I love my meat but would never order fish in a restaurant is it often comes ‘whole’ and I wouldn’t trust the bones to be removed- which I can’t abide. Maybe other countries are less fussy?

They definitely are less fussy, in the sense that people from lots of places would be surprised by the things the average Brit finds abhorrent. I wonder how/why that came about? As there’s no intrinsic value that makes certain things better or worse. So, where has the very British sensibility re food come from?

I think it’s fascinating.

YANBU, it’s a good question. I think people probably didn’t know how to cook it as much as they knew how to cook meat.

I’m often pescatarian and get annoyed at the ubiquitous sea bass or cod with potatoes in restaurants.

My DH loves fish and eats lots - we have a very good fish counter in our local supermarket plus a van that sells fresh frozen fish every week.

But I just don't like the taste of fish .. can just about eat white fish or smoked cod, something like that, but I don't enjoy it.

OP: I wonder what sociocultural forces have led the British diet/cuisine to be traditionally less fish/seafood focussed than other island countries? Here are some articles exploring theories. What do you think?

Hundreds of MN posters: I like salmon, but I don’t like fishy fish. DH likes prawns.

I am pretty sure that MN wasn’t always like this. I remember it being an intelligent community that was capable of abstract thought. What happened?

I am pretty sure that MN wasn’t always like this. I remember it being an intelligent community that was capable of abstract thought. What happened?

People are just wrapped up on themselves. Brits are particularly weird about their eating habits, as if people care why we eat certain things and not others.

@KhansMambo

OP: I wonder what sociocultural forces have led the British diet/cuisine to be traditionally less fish/seafood focussed than other island countries? Here are some articles exploring theories. What do you think?

Hundreds of MN posters: I like salmon, but I don’t like fishy fish. DH likes prawns.

I am pretty sure that MN wasn’t always like this. I remember it being an intelligent community that was capable of abstract thought. What happened?

A lot of people respond to thread titles and just post quickly

So if you’d put something about historical factors in title you’d get a different thread I reckon

Some people are just so eager to talk about themselves, in any context. And stopping to read and think would get in the way of that.

The I MUST TALK ABOUT MYSELF AT ONCE crew drown everyone else out.

@MarshaBradyo I might try that, one day. Not today, though. I’m not sure I have the stamina to do this again.

What sort of thing do you do with it? I haven't really enjoyed frozen fish when I've had it

Even “fresh” fish is frozen as soon as it it gets dragged on to the fishing boats.

In answer to your question, it’s usually Asian inspired… Malaysian or Thai.

@Member869894

I often wonder this. I lived in Madrid in my hirties which is miles from the sea and seafood was available.everywhere. if I pass a fishmonger here I know all the names.of the fish in Spanish but have no idea of th English word for it. Fish here always seems to be prohibitively expensive

Gosh, Madrid has fabulous fish…least ways did 30 years ago when I worked there for a year! I could never figure out why such a lan locked capital had the best fish and seafood I’d ever had. I have great memories of some of the fishy dishes I had there

The 'famine' in Ireland wasn't a famine as you might think of one.

There was plenty of food, but the Irish were not permitted to eat it.

Maybe the Irish were not permitted to eat the fish.
Salmon was one of the things the British exported from Ireland during the potato famine.
I expect the govt were equally 'kind' to the poor in all parts of Britain.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5468053/

The description of the attitude towards the poor then strongly reminds me of the Tory governments actions today.

"the British goal was bizarre: they wanted to make poverty so unendurable that we (its victims) would embrace the virtue of the “saved,” namely to be more industrious, self-reliant, and disciplined. Hard to do, I'd say, when one is starving and out of work."

My guess would be much more recent than mentions upthread of Saxon diets - the influence of the first and second world wars and rationing. Yes, costal places may have had access to fish, but national food infrastructure was impacted for a very long time. Books like Mrs Beaton's indicate there had previously been a lot more of an appetite for fish and shellfish, but for a lot of the country the menu was enormously reduced during and after the wars.
This might also relate to the question of - when did we become so squeamish? Yes, there's a bit of a resurgence around nose to tail eating, but offal is something else that's fallen out of favour.

Getting curious on this, I've found the following from Felicity Cloake -
www.newstatesman.com/culture/food-drink/2021/09/britain-is-surrounded-by-fish-so-why-do-we-eat-so-little-of-it

I used to eat lots of fish but I read a post on here where a woman found worms in her basa fillet . Haven't had any since.

I eat loads of fish, I don’t eat meat though. My partner eats a lot of fish too and he eats meat also
There are also a couple of fish restaurants near me and we’re not by the coast or anything.
Come to think of it my family/friends eat fish too
So from my experience I assumed people did eat quite a bit of fish 🤷🏼‍♀️

KhansMambo sorry, totally misread your post 🤦🏻‍♀️☺️

I don’t like it or the environmental impact of it. My kids would eat it but I hate the smell of it in my house- it’s absolutely horrible.

Very interesting question OP, I'm not really sure why fish is not more consumed here past and present.
Perhaps the colder climate or the population spread in inland areas as opposed to coastal communities plays a role?
I believe in medieval times in Scotland the fishing rights of rivers awarded by nobility were limited to monasteries, which excluded the general population from accessing salmon etc.

I grew up in a fishing port and my dad was a trawler fisherman, so I was exposed to plenty growing up.

Still eat a lot now.

Most of the fish caught locally is sent elsewhere though. Either city restaurants or to the content.

I remember an Ed Balls to prog about all our catch being sent elsewhere. In this example, lobsters were being sent to New York in the cargo section of jumbo jets.

So those heading to New York and dined on lobster that night could have shared the flight over.

Sorry posted too soon-Other than my own experiences I think the key thing is time. Fish takes time to prep and cook usually- more so than meat other than fillets of fish which I think are still quite popular. I grew up on a fishing village snd remember my step dad prepping crab and it took hours. We used to also get prawns you needed to shell etc.
I think the clean up from fish is also more than meat- especially clearing your house of the smell. We are all vety concerned with having nice smelling homes now aren’t we?
I read somewhere that big oranges have plummeted in popularity because people don’t have time to peel them. I suspect it’s a similar issue with fish

Because it's horrible quality or insanely expensive.

My dad is a serious cook. We were brought up eating fish and shellfish. He moved to France where the selection in any supermarket is joyful - and a lot of it brought from British waters.

In our supermarkets it is all limp gills, clouded eyes and iridescent tuna. There is a good fishmonger in a local city but it's £15 for a decent meal and we just can't afford it.