Could you taste the difference between cod and other whitefish, such as haddock or hake, if you didn't know what you were eating? The answer may have implications for supporting local fisheries and food sustainability in New England, says UMass Amherst environmental conservation graduate student Amanda Davis.
A research fellow at the UMass Amherst-based Northeast Climate Adaptation Science Center, Davis is exploring the reactions of UMass Amherst students and staff, born between 1980 and 2000, in a scientific sensory evaluation of five different whitefish sourced straight from the Boston Fish Pier: cod, dogfish, haddock, hake and pollock.
The study, funded by a seed grant from the UMass Amherst Institute for Social Science Research, is designed to explore "name bias" in seafood choices. Davis will present results in January at the winter science meeting of the American Fisheries Society's Southern New England Chapter in Cambridge.
The whitefish study grew out of Davis's interest in promoting local, sustainable seafood in New England. She is director of Our Wicked Fish, a newly founded, Deerfield-based nonprofit that strives to revitalize New England's fishing industry by educating consumers and connecting them with local seafood options.
It might come as a surprise, Davis notes, that despite the storied tradition of New England's fisheries—Cape Cod was named after the once-abundant fish, after all—most seafood offered in the Northeast U.S. today is imported. "We want to change that," Davis says. "How can we get consumers interested in eating whitefish other than cod? Hake, pollock and haddock taste as good and are not as expensive."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 20 2019, @08:30PM (5 children)
Tastes pretty identical, the fishes even look alike, and they still catch plenty in the north pacific around russia and alaska.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Sunday October 20 2019, @09:07PM (4 children)
Which is the problem. There are no commercial fisheries that are sustainable, and commercial fishers are in the process of making all fish species extinct. Except maybe jellyfish.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday October 20 2019, @09:22PM (1 child)
Yes, there are. Asian carp in TN are unregulated, export quite well to Asia, and it still isn't going to be enough to get rid of them.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Sunday October 20 2019, @09:54PM
I should have qualified my post. I meant ocean fisheries.
You're right, imported pest fish are a huge problem in freshwater fisheries all over the world.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 21 2019, @02:19AM (1 child)
Maybe for some species in some places, but the ones around here are mostly sustainable. It was an expensive and rather painful process, but reducing the limits and buying back boats have ultimately led to most of the fisheries here in WA state being sustainable. Granted, they aren't as large as they used to be and likely never will be, but our fishermen can now continue fishing at the current levels indefinitely. And it's entirely possible that in the future that they will be able to increase the limits again, within limits.
This was only possible because the government stepped in and prevented the industry from completely destroying the fisheries that it depended on.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday October 22 2019, @02:23AM
Are you sure about that?
Where I live, we are told we have "the most sustainable fisheries in the world" due to a very strict catch limit regime.
The reality is that it doesn't matter what rules are put in place, in terms of reduced catches and by-catch limits, the fishing industry continues to cheat, and fish populations are really hard to measure.
It actually turns out that what we hear is mostly propaganda, produced by the fishing industry, with the connivance of the regulators.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Sunday October 20 2019, @08:49PM
"How can we get consumers interested in eating whitefish other than cod? Hake, pollock and haddock taste as good and are not as expensive."
I dunno...sounds fishy to me....
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 3, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday October 20 2019, @09:21PM (7 children)
Place thy money where be thy mouth. If you want to prove something to people who aren't interested in giving you a chance because they don't give a shit if it's true or not, you need to change that. Double the normal contents of a purchase of fish, half and half randomly labeled A and B with a serial number for the box, and tell them if they report it to a third party site and get it right, you'll comp them even more fish. And thoroughly advertise the limited time promotion. If it's not worth the money to do it, then you didn't really care either.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 20 2019, @09:26PM (1 child)
How about some nice Patagonian Toothfish?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday October 20 2019, @10:18PM
I eat catfish and if I could stand the smell long enough to get it on the hook they'd happily eat the asshole of a leprous skunk that's been roadkill for three days.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by legont on Monday October 21 2019, @12:46AM
Once one tries cod she caught herself at high latitude, all the fish from Boston fish market would taste shit to her. Just saying...
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Monday October 21 2019, @04:22PM (3 children)
I doubt many people would be interested in purchasing "mystery white fish", even if you pay a reward for guessing the fish property. Especially if that reward is "more mystery white fish".
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday October 21 2019, @04:57PM (2 children)
No mystery. Say exactly which two kinds of fish are in the box.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Monday October 21 2019, @07:14PM (1 child)
Logically speaking that is correct, I guess.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday October 22 2019, @04:44AM
You wouldn't get everyone or even most people to try it but you'd get a lot of parents on a budget being eager as hell to initially get two-for-one meat for the table. And they'd be convinced. And they'd talk about it to other people. It's mid-to-long game strategy rather than instant gratification but it'd work.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 20 2019, @09:31PM (31 children)
Just call the hake, pollock and dogfish by the name "cod". If consumers can't tell the difference, who cares? Consumers are happy, you make extra money, and real cod gets break. No one complains when they sell pig bungholes as calamari.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 20 2019, @10:00PM (20 children)
If I order cod, I expect cod. Anything else would be fraud. Do you want to go back to the days of "The Jungle", when they could mix you up grape juice and used engine oil and call it cocoa?
How much is this university funding this story of deception? Gotta earmark my donations so they don't get spent on this kind of nonsense.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 21 2019, @12:01AM (13 children)
Don't worry about your donations. If a university is involved, these days they are more likely than not studying whether male cod can self-identify as female haddock..
(Score: 4, Informative) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday October 21 2019, @01:37AM (12 children)
A bunch of fish actually do change sex over their lifecycle. Probably not the cod and allies, IIRC it's mostly tropical species like reef-living fish, but there's a hell of a lot more transsexuality in nature than just humans. Nice backfire, though!
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 21 2019, @03:24AM (6 children)
Except the Fish actually change their sex and biological function, in humans its just a mental illness.
(Score: 2, Troll) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday October 21 2019, @04:04AM (5 children)
Did you have a date that turned out to be a pre-op transwoman or something? I'll never understand why this stuff squicks men out so much.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 21 2019, @06:30AM
Understanding is not required. Now, it rubs the lotion on, or it gets the belt again.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Tuesday October 22 2019, @04:35PM (3 children)
I'll offer a few guesses:
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday October 23 2019, @06:38AM (2 children)
Reasons 2-4 are valid, but I imagine they must be vanishingly small. I'm coming at this from the outside, as a cisgender but very very gay woman, and can only really go by experience and research.
What is "fluid, not clearly trans?" I've heard people call themselves genderfluid and my own girlfriend refers to herself as nonbinary, but I don't quite understand what that means. And what is "transabled?" The closest I came to seeing something like that was a glitch like alien hand syndrome or Cotard's; a brain glitch which caused distorted perception of bodily integrity. This sounds like a specious comparison, and my thinking is that even if trans* people are suffering something similar, if the treatment turns out to be transition, that's the best way to go. Certainly those three FtMs are doing worlds better as men...
Regarding position #2 specifically, this sounds like the greedheads are distracting all and sundry from the larger problem, that being, the US healthcare system is a festering swamp of rent-seeking sociopathy. I would be very surprised if hormones and surgery for transition amount to even a fraction of what things like phosphodiesterase inhibitors (boner pills) do in the total insurance money outlay. And don't some people run that exact argument against hormonal birth control? I don't take it because yuri babies aren't a thing (yet!) but I fill lots and lots of BC scripts and most are $0.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Wednesday October 23 2019, @12:35PM (1 child)
A genderfluid [miraheze.org] person feels a need to switch between gender identities for anywhere from hours to months.
"Transabled" describes people with body integrity dysphoria [wikipedia.org], an umbrella term that hasn't been studied enough. BID variants including desire for amputation may be related to somatoparaphrenia [wikipedia.org] (in which the brain denies ownership of a body part). BID variants including desire to lose sensation, such as to become blind, may be related to sensory processing disorder [wikipedia.org] (in which the brain fails to integrate sensations from different body parts) and sensory processing sensitivity [wikipedia.org]. People tend to deny transition in cases like this because of the cost to society of accommodating a person with a disability as severe as blindness or loss of use of a limb.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday October 23 2019, @11:22PM
"Intelligent design" my little blue sailor-skirted ass...ye gods, that's some freaky stuff.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday October 21 2019, @01:42PM (4 children)
The difference being, those animals actually change their sex while humans play organic dress-up.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday October 21 2019, @11:23PM (3 children)
Remember those 3 FtMs I knew from high school? I seriously cannot tell them from cisgender men-born-men. If that's "organic dress-up" they're doing an incredible job of it. The one I got to work with post-transition even began smelling more like a man, sharper BO and everything. The more biology I learn the more it seems there's less biological difference between the sexes than we're taught.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday October 22 2019, @04:52AM (2 children)
The fish's bodies actually change sex. Everything in their body goes from being in male gear to being in female gear. Surgery does not change sex, it's only cosmetic. Taking the wrong hormones likewise may confuse the shit out of the body but it doesn't change what sex the body is.
Now I don't actually give a damn if someone wants to play surgical, chemical, or ordinary dress-up. Just don't tell me I have to pretend they're what their costume appears to be.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Tuesday October 22 2019, @04:47PM (1 child)
Many human boys with 5-alpha-reductase deficiency [wikipedia.org] get misassigned as girls at birth and raised as girls because they don't start developing outward masculine traits until puberty. Is this transition? Or is it more like what happens in some fish species?
5ARD is an intersex condition that clearly affects outward appearance. But other intersex conditions [wikipedia.org] aren't so easy to see, such as a man whose brain behaves in the way that the surrounding culture expects a woman's brain to behave. If not transition/dress-up, then what treatment would you recommend for someone with the "clinically significant distress or impairment" associated with gender dysphoria [wikipedia.org]? Or would it be easier to change the culture not to assign certain behaviors to one gender or the other?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday October 22 2019, @10:02PM
First answer: It's the doctors fucking up. It has nothing to do with the child's sex.
Second answer: Do whatever they like, just don't tell me I have to pretend pink is blue to spare their feelings.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday October 21 2019, @06:31AM (4 children)
Simple solution. Advertise as "White Fish". All bases are covered.
(Score: 2) by EETech1 on Monday October 21 2019, @08:04AM (1 child)
You can't do that either anymore, it's considered racist!
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday October 21 2019, @08:51AM
Well - yeah - probably. Or, maybe not. No one objects when we eat blue fish.
(Score: 2) by SunTzuWarmaster on Monday October 21 2019, @12:23PM
This is the real answer - there aren't connoisseurs buying cod and thinking themselves better than the hake-buying mouth-breathers. Its the cheapest fish - pan-fry with lemon.
Honestly guys - we turn those fish into stew over here. Cheapest fish is best fish for fish stew.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 21 2019, @10:09PM
"Whitefish" doesn't get you even good alternative fish species.
It will get you tilapia, tank raised in China and fed illegal antibiotics and pig shit, every time.
I think consumers are better off without your proposed "solution."
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Tuesday October 22 2019, @04:13PM
Tell that to Activision's fans, who'll lap up anything with the CoD name on it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 20 2019, @10:07PM (6 children)
They already do. A lot of the fishes you buy at market and eat at restaurants are mislabeled.
McFish used to be made with cod, but when that became scarce, they simply switched pollock.
(Score: 3, Informative) by HiThere on Sunday October 20 2019, @10:42PM (1 child)
Once you bread it and deep fry it, it isn't the fish you're tasting.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday October 21 2019, @06:26AM
Exactly. Getting anything deep fried, the first taste of the food tells you whether the oil has been changed recently. You may not positively identify the oil, but you taste the oil over and above everything. The secondary flavor, is the breading itself. Whatever is wrapped up inside of that breading will remain a mystery forever.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 20 2019, @11:49PM (3 children)
I don't think McDonalds ever promised you what kind of fish you were going to get.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 20 2019, @11:59PM (1 child)
But what the heck is this mcrib? What's that meat-like thing in it?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 21 2019, @12:03AM
"Calamari"
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday October 21 2019, @06:28AM
I do remember looking at small print at various restaurants. I believe, can't prove, that Mickey D used to specify cod in their fish sandwiches. Of course, I'm talking decades ago.
(Score: 4, Funny) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday October 20 2019, @10:22PM (1 child)
Oddly, I heard someone make that exact complaint just this morning. It was a tangent from informing The Roomie's masculine child of what goes into hotdogs. We ended up allowing that he just disliked all assholes in the same way all north magnetic poles dislike each other.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday October 21 2019, @12:12PM
The ones I had in Nice, not knowing what they were when I ordered them, as I like ordering stuff I've never had before, were pretty OK, and not shitty at all.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 21 2019, @01:30AM
In the mid-1970s, an older friend in Boston, MA told me that hake (which he knew from his childhood in Spain) and cod were the same fish -- sounds like he was on to something...
(Score: 1, Troll) by Coward, Anonymous on Monday October 21 2019, @07:10AM
So now we are getting teasers for papers, with the results to be released in January?