Fish Food

I am a vegetarian.  (*wince* no stones? Ok…here I go…)

Actually I am technically a pescetarian.  When all by my lonesome, I never eat fish, usually stick to tofu, veggies, soymilk, the whole nine yards.  When I do eat fish, it is either because I am back home and my parents are worried about my diet (though this is starting to change) or I have gone out to dinner with friends and there is nothing on the menu for me except fish (this amounts to probably 1 or 2 times a month).

 

I find fish to (generally) be a suitable option because fishing practices and techniques are more transparent than the land-meats industry.  Although over-fishing is a HUGE problem, I’ve found it’s pretty easy to find out which fish are safe and environmentally stable to eat, where the fish are from, and (sometimes) how it has been caught (Obviously this does not apply to fast-food fish, but on social, political, and environmentally conscious principles I try and stay away from that). The Monterey Bay Aquarium even publishes a “Pocket Guide” for fish-eaters to help guide them in their choices (updated for every season), and even gets as detailed as what is OK where –  eating one thing in California might be different from eating that same thing in New York. 

But the way most Americans look at and eat fish is just plain weird.  Take Tuna.  Tuna is one of the most popular and highly consumed foods in the country.  Over 88% of American households eat canned tuna, and about 23% serve it more than once a week.  That is a ton of fish.  Actually, it’s more like 500,000 short tons (or 1 BILLION pounds). Per year.  Whoa. 

So why is this weird? Because tuna are predators.  They are carnivores, i.e. they eat other fishes.  Yeah yeah, but what is the problem with eating carnivores on such a large scale?  Think of it this way: eating tuna is a bit like eating lions (rawr!).  Lions, like tuna, hunt in packs.  It takes huge amounts of land to support just a few lions, because they eat other animals in their territory.  Therefore, when you eat a lion, you are also using up all that space that is needed to support them, in addition to all those resources that make it possible for the prey animals the lions eat to be available for the lions to eat.  So it’s much more energy intensive, and hence more destructive to the environment, to eat higher up on the food chain.  Same is true with tuna.  We are eating 1 billion pounds of sea “lions” and most people take it as normal. 

Weird? Yes. Ethically aware? No. Should we be aware of the environmental impacts of our strange eating habits? Definitely.   

Food for thought.