As a fish loving Indian, I was totally surprised to see that in Capitalist America the choice of fish was absolutely pathetic. At American fish places you only get "shrimps" may be "large shrimps" and "small shrimps". Salmon, Bass, Red Snapper and just few handful of usual fish. My small village fish market offers at least 20 varieties of fish in India's coastal region. A proper fish market would offer at least 100.
Then I entered 99Ranch and since then my respect of my eastern neighbours has gone up significantly. Not only they had Tiger prawns and King Mackerel, they actually understood the difference between Pampino and Pomphret.
For whatever reason Americans just don't eat a lot of seafood. This is why the choices are so bad in "Capitalist America" -- there's not enough demand. It's literally capitalism at work.
Some theorize that this is due to American's avoiding flavor in general [1].
It's about his experiment of eating fish as his only protein for a whole year, as well as an investigation of where our fish comes from, fish farming practices, sustainability, etc.
Aside, it may be a good thing Americans don't eat as much seafood as the rest of the world. I'm not sure the oceans could keep up with the demand. Allegedly very few fisheries are well managed.
Which we should all rejoice. Because the oceans are already being over fished to the point we're facing a very real likelihood of collapse. If Americans were pulling at the same rate as nations like Japan or India, we'd all be in a very bad place already.
No, this is actually a terrible thing in the long run for one simple reason: fisheries are being destroyed everywhere [1], and the US is the only nation currently with the clout to really push to change this. But since seafood isn't even on most Americans' radar and we live in a democracy, it's very unlikely any politician will ever spend political capital on it.
Fisheries are being destroyed is because blue water fisheries are a commons -- no nations own them, so whoever vacuums up the fish first reap the profits. Not to mention global warming and ocean acidification are stressing fish breeding grounds worldwide.
This model made sense up until WW2, and was in line with how international waters were historically governed, but it is an ecological disaster in the making because technological developments during the war (sonar, deep sea nets, etc.) allowed huge fishing fleets to completely destroy blue water fishing grounds.
The only way to change this is for someone to push at the international level to rewrite the agreements on fisheries (restrict them by quotas, manage them by an international body with an eye towards conservation, etc.), and the only superpower that has the political capital to really get the ball rolling is the US.
But most Americans don't eat much seafood so it's not on anyone's radar. Enjoy your seafood while you still can. Maybe rich nations will have farmed fish or domestic freshwater sources, but cheap seafood from the ocean will basically not exist within a few decades.
I don't really like getting into political arguments, but I'd like to point out that the US is not really that much more forward looking than other nations wrt fishery conservation. They, after all, increased quotas for pacific salmon fishing that decimated the Canadian fisheries for years. Why? In retaliation for the unsustainable Canadian softwood lumber prices (that were shutting down all the US mills). It's politics all the way down, unfortunately.
I do agree that we need international level agreements, but I trust the US exactly the same as I trust most other governments on this issue. I think one of the biggest problems is that it's a bit like global warming. Most people simply deny that there's a problem. In fish-loving Japan, where I live, nobody will listen to me. They sell cod illegally fished from the grand banks in the super market. They even have a big sign "Grand Banks Cod!!!" I think if I brought an east cost Canadian fisherman to Japan, they'd go postal. But, if I try to educate someone, the response is always, "It has to be a lie. Look at all the cheap fish in the super market. If it was really getting scarce, then there would be no fish there. People in other parts of the world just want to complain about the Japanese. That's all it is".
If the US was a fish eating nation, I have very little doubt that the same thing would be happening, unfortunately.
My supervisor at university did fish population simulations as his research. He published a paper, maybe 30 years ago now, where he predicted the collapse of all wild fisheries. Nobody paid any attention to it. It seems to be on track now...
When I read "the US is the only nation currently with the clout to really push to change this", I don't interpret that to mean the US is/would be more sensible about protecting fisheries. It sounds to me like smallnamespace is proposing that there's a coordination problem--tragedy of the commons/prisoners dilemma, I would assume--and you need one big pushy guy to insist we all follow sensible rules.
You don't need an especially socially responsible or forward-thinking entity to solve coordination problems. You just need one that's able to push hard enough to make everyone fall in line.
Something like the UN/WTO would ideally serve that purpose, but seems like no one wants to give them much clout. I assume the big people prefer to keep the clout in their complete control and the small guys know the big guys would still have stuff like permanent seats and veto power.
Because the fish can't be stored very economically once you harvest them, the cheapness of fish now is due to overfishing, and directly contributes to future scarcity.
Strangely, the best place to 'store' fish is right in the ocean, and for an overly harvested fishery, you even get paid interest for it.
But if there is too much fish taken away, then it is harder to catch them, right, so scarcity. But the remaining fish then have much more space and food to reproduce ... so they go ack to the old levels quickly, so where is the problem (unless some species go literally extinct)?
You're right that at carrying capacity, the limiting factor is food and space.
But most of our fisheries are far below that now. Fish can only breed as fast as there are breeding fish available, but we're eating them faster than they are being born.
You can view a fishery basically as a giant fish-making factory. If you eat away half your fishery's biomass, then to a very rough first approximation, your factory will only produce half as many fish.
One reason is that many governments are essentially paying people to take fish out of the ocean [1], to the tune of tens of billions a year. Japan, China, and Taiwan are some of the main players. They do it to keep fishermen employed.
Related to this: because technological change has made it really cheap and easy to catch fish [2], and up to now, that has more than offset the decreased productivity from damaging our fisheries.
They don't go back to "the old levels" because once the numbers recover even a small amount it becomes profitable to knock them right back down. You reach an equilibrium at a much smaller amount of fish in the wild than you could have had with proper management. Fish prices are higher, but fisherman catch fewer per day, so nobody wins.
Can we really stop China and Japan from hoovering up fish and whales? Historically we have not had much success.
Also why should America have to be the fish police, on top of all the other polices we are. What if I would rather spend the fish police money on universal healthcare and free college tuition for fellow Americans?
I'm not making a moral case that America should police the seas, but simply pointing out the practical reality that the US Navy actually does control them, and hence we're the natural party to propose and also enforce any agreement.
The truth is that if the US does nothing, mass fishery collapse is the most probable outcome. It will hurt poor, seafood-consuming nations much more than it hurts the US.
Is this more important than any of our other priorities? That's up for you to decide.
America should be helping fight for a world where we don't need fish police. In other words, we should encourage governments that naturally want to act in a reasonable, secular-based manner.
> Because the oceans are already being over fished to the point we're facing a very real likelihood of collapse.
Evidence please.
Most of the costal area of India uses relatively far more primitive fishing methods compared to Japan or China. Have not seen any ocean fish becoming less available in last 30 years even though population might have doubled and demand for fish gone up by 5 fold. At least there is no evidence on ground !
Beef and pork are significantly worse than seafood in terms of environmental impact. There's nothing to celebrate in the sources of American protein.
If America was as hungry for seafood as East Asia, fisheries would have depleted enough to create frighteningly high prices long ago, and we'd probably have a thriving aquaculture industry today.
I live near the Great Lakes, so there is literally no such thing as a safe fish to eat. Every fish has a limit to how much you can eat and how often -- that is if you are an adult male, if female or child you are far more limited yet.
Especially near me, where the waterways are also toiletways. You'd have to go out into the lake to escape the toilet and dioxin-laden water, where the fish should never be eaten, and even then you have, like I said above, a limit depending on how much toxic fish you feel comfortable ingesting.
I lived in Houston where you cant eat anything near the coast. When I went to Australia it was incredible you can fish and eat almost everywhere/everything near the coast.
Those links appear to warn of fishing around Sydney harbour and Oyster Bay. I still would bet almost anywhere along the proper beach is at least an order of magnitude safer than in comparable regions of the states. Many beaches I consistently saw heaps of guys surf casting.
Many people eat the fish in Sydney Harbour too. Despite being warned not too.
Sydney's ocean beaches are often closed to swimmers because of pollution. Sydney disposes of its sewerage via deep ocean outlets, and this can often make the water quality very bad, depending on ocean currents.
I'm not sure my post warranted a down-vote. Is it because I contradicted you? or do you think I am wrong? I lived on a houseboat on The Georges river/Botany Bay for many years, and have spent some serious time on Sydney's waterways, and offshore. I wouldn't eat anything caught in Sydney's rivers or beaches knowingly.
Hey I am not one of the people who downvoted you. I think while yes there is a point to be made that Sydney/Australia also has water quality issues the problem in general when you compare the US to Australia is quite a big difference.
Sure but Australia has a $22/hr min wage and absurdly good welfare and you can eat potato chips on it all day ig you want. China is rougher. But yes of course just because many do something does not mean its a good idea, but analyzing what others are doing may be food for thought when deciding where a placr is relaticely good to fish or not.
I'm very skeptical of that claim, particularly wrt pork. Once we've completely depleted the oceans of wild fish stock and rely entirely aquaculture, then it'll be a fair comparison.
According to this article, based on CO2 production farmed salmon has the same impact as pork:
I wouldn't trust anything from EWG. They are an agenda driven pseudoscience organization. They actively criticize conventional agriculture (see their "dirty" dozen list) and vehemently oppose genetic engineering.
i think the answer is simply that most of america is very far inland, and seafood is best fresh -- especially if one is especially sensitive to the 'fishy' taste it acquires after about a day or two, even frozen. every coastal community i've ever spent time in has a plethora of seafood restaurants, though i'm not sure if this extends to grocery stores.
Most of the landmass is far from the coasts, true, but the population concentrates at the coasts. So the geography is probably not the reason why fish is less popular in the US. There are probably multiple reasons but one could be that the competition from meat is very strong. Coming from Europe, I was always surprised how cheap meat is in the US.
Yeah all these people talking about Americans not having good taste in food are entirely missing the point. It has nothing to do with that, and everything to do with economics.
There's no reason to eat fish when in almost all cases chicken, pork, and beef provide much cheaper and filling sources of protein. I mean, I love the taste of fish, but even I rarely eat it because it's just that much more efficient to feed myself with chicken and red meat.
The US is a pretty wealthy place. I lived in Italy for something like 15 years, and people there eat a lot of fish too, of varying kinds. By and large, they do not have as much money as people do in the US.
If it were only about efficiency, you'd probably just eat beans and rice, day in and day out, with a bit of this and that thrown in.
Edit: BTW, this book has some interesting ideas about the US and food: http://amzn.to/2oVeaYz
Among other things, he points out that the US does have slow food with a high degree of regional variety: barbecue.
The point is, in the US most seafood at the store is at least $15/lb. Beef (depending on cuts) is as little as $3/lb. Chicken and pork are typically cheaper than beef.
This has a lot to do with the fact that a cow is a whole animal. If you raise one to sell the chuck, you also get T-bones and ribeyes and tri-tips and flank steaks and so on. Most of that goes into the same retail pipeline, so availability is correlated.
On the other hand, expensive fish aren't usually a byproduct of producing cheap fish, nor vice versa.
The US is a pretty wealthy place. I lived in Italy for something like 15 years, and people there eat a lot of fish too, of varying kinds. By and large, they do not have as much money as people do in the US
The US is a wealthy place, but a lot of individual families aren't wealthy at all. Cheap, mass-produced, pre-prepared food (either frozen or in cans/boxes) are the cheapest things to eat. Where I lived - a few hours flight to a coast or many hours of driving - fish was one of the more expensive protein options if one doesn't want to eat fish sticks or the like. Chicken and pork were usually cheaper, followed by beef.
If it were only about efficiency, you'd probably just eat beans and rice, day in and day out, with a bit of this and that thrown in
This misses part of the equation - the stuff folks are eating are time efficient as well. Plus a good amount of folks wouldn't know what to do with lentils and rice: Cooking isn't a focus of schools. I had 6-9 weeks of cooking instruction, and we only cooked (in groups of 4-5) once every week or two and that included things like baking sweets. It is amazing how many folks don't just look this stuff up.
I can't say how much I learned in the class, but I was taught cooking in a US public school, which included etiquette, dishwashing, and table service.
That class was one semester, and it was paired with another one-semester class that taught silkscreening, drafting, welding, wood joinery, and aluminum casting. This was, I think, in 7th or 8th grade.
WTF are they teaching in schools these days if not how to make pancakes correctly and clean as you go?
I've always viewed that as an excuse not to teach it in school, and I've never quite understood. Same with personal finance.
How are you supposed to learn something from your parents if the parents do not cook or are not responsible with their money or refuse to share financials with the child? We know some kids are in that situation and teaching such things is a preventative measure.
FWIW I live on the coast in a place where people eat a decent amount of seafood (anecdotally), and fish is also one of the most expensive protein options. Significantly more expensive than chicken/pork and often even beef. Up until I got my first post-college dev job, my family could not afford fresh fish and thus didn't eat it. Now I live comfortably and can afford it, but it costs as much as a nice piece of beef (like a ribeye), and since I didn't eat fish growing up, I'm going for that ribeye 9 times out of 10.
Economies of scale, no doubt. While there's only a few nationwide grocers (Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, Walmart), there's many more regional grocery supply chains all over the country, that largely offer the same products in every single one. Given any population center, odds are you're within an hour of at least one of these. Insanely impressive given the size of the US.
French companies often offset the price of the largest meal of the day via restaurant vouchers. The meal is that important to them. I wouldn't cover that under, "disposable income", exactly.
While our population concentrates on the coast, IIRC on balance it still ends up being about a 50-50 split depending on how generously you want to define "coast". Also, the demographic trend is people moving towards coastal cities, so a large portion of current coastal city dwellers established their taste preferences growing up inland.
Geography is certainly a plausible component of the answer. But I personally think cultural norms are pretty arbitrary and self-sustaining; there doesn't need to be a deeper reason why "americans like beef" other than our parents did and that's what we grew up with (recurse N generations).
I don't know: it seems like a lot of America's logistics and infrastructure design choices are made with equal consideration to inland and coastal populations, despite unequal size. For example, coastal US cities are designed for car travel despite their density, presumably because that makes them more accessible to "the average US citizen" who lives inland and goes everywhere by car.
There's nothing inherently dense about American "coastal cities". In the U.S., density is primarily related to age--how large a city was prior to the invention of the automobile. With the exception of the oldest cities in the north east, most U.S. coastal cities are not particularly dense unless they are also quite old. LA is a prime example.
You presume incorrectly. It's a tangled web of federal and state policies, along with the (not exclusively) American fetish for cars and low-density home ownership, which led to the car-centric design. And that's certainly reductive, but helping from landlocked states visit NYC and SF probably never played a role.
>Coming from Europe, I was always surprised how cheap meat is in the US.
Lower quality meat is cheaper. Similar quality meat (for example, in Scotland, all the beef is grass-fed, I don't know about the rest of the EU) seems to cost a similar amount in either area.
Speaking of fresh, its hard enough to eat fresh produce when you only shop once a week.
I have done the "drive to the gourmet food store to get fresh fish supposedly flown in by air that's only a couple hours old" and its expensive, like $15 to $20 per pound and interesting and tasted very fresh and delicious but tonight my kids have baseball practice and my son has scouts and weekly food shopping night is Thursday to avoid the weekend rush so looks like frozen fish tonight.
Farm to table is good signalling but not really practical for perhaps 95% of the population if not more. Something from the freezer aisle that can be cooked in the oven and tastes OK is better than something better that I can't eat because I don't have two hours tonight for special store supply runs and homemade preparations.
Also especially inland we have plenty of lakes and recreational fishermen and they all know about mercury poisoning such that they can only occasionally eat what they catch. Someone who can only safely eat one walleye per month looks at me pretty weird for feeding my kids fish every week "You having the pediatrician test them for mercury?"
Its also extremely bad social signalling, I know its wrong to even say this, but fish is generally pretty boring and bland. Its like trying to obtain artisinal flavored chicken or artisinal flavored sea or mountain salts. There's a reason people put a lot of work into what goes in or nearby the dish in a fish, spices and stuff. I'll blow money and time on something that will taste good. Fish isn't in that list.
That depends entirely on the type and quality of the fish. The most obvious example is salmon, which has a great, unique flavor and texture if cooked properly. White fish tend to be more bland on average, but there are some that are very flavorful; for instance, ling cod is absolutely delicious grilled (or seared) with nothing more than olive oil and salt/pepper. And then you have oily fish like herring and mackerel that are generally not cooked, but rather cured, pickled, or smoked, that are flavorful enough to be eaten on their own (but also make fantastic accompaniments in dishes like dressed herring).
In fact, you could say that a lot of lean cuts of beef are "boring and bland" as well: they don't have a ton of flavor unless you add herbs, spices, and/or fat.
(All that being said, I don't disagree with your other points about convenience and safety.)
A lot of fish need to be frozen for a period of time to kill the parasites to the FDA standards. Some types of fish and some farmed and contained fish doesn't need this treatment though. I don't think proximity to the ocean is a good metric as you can freeze fish for a few months with no noticeable degradation in quality. It can be held indefinitely at 0 degrees F I believe as well.
The largest national/ethnic group contributing to the American population is German, followed by the British Isles/Ireland, none of which are known for a heavily seafood based culinary tradition. Could be relevant as well.
Yes that's what people think instinctively but it's incorrect. Part of the issue is that two world wars served to erase tremendous amounts of the visible cultural legacy of the German influence on the US, streets and towns were renamed, biergardens turned into bars, and so on.
The culinary influence is right there in plain sight though if you look for it, from the names of our big mainstream brewing companies to our national favorites, the Frankfurter and the Hamburger.
Interesting. I was just reading about Texas barbecue a couple of days ago (in fact I have a few tabs about cuisines open in my browser right now). They said the influence was from Germans, as you said, also Czech, IIRC (for the barbecue). Apparently East, Central, West and maybe South Texas all have different styles of barbecue.
Maybe I'm slow, but I've sometimes idly wondered why Hamburgers contain no Ham - and your comment finally made be twig: it's Hamburger as in /ˈhambɜːrɡər/ not /ˈhæmbɜːrɡər/ !
Probably the same euphemism that has chicken in the fried chicken / beef in the burger?
Don't bother with it in London, elsewhere go where the locals are. A busy fish and chip shop in a small town is probably best, rather than a pub or a takeaway that also sells pizza/chicken/kebab.
I don't live in the UK any more, but last time I visited the fish and chip shop in Llanfairpwllgwyngyll. Highly recommended :)
Americans have also been scared away from eating a lot of fish over fears of mercury and PCB contamination.
America is also a big place. Fresh fish spoils quickly. So no, you won't see a lot of selection at a midwestern supermarket. If you're near a coast, the selection and number of specialty seafood shops is a lot better.
I'm not directly responding to your comment but some of the best sushi chefs use fish that was frozen. And this says all sushi served in the US has to be freezed to kill any bacteria-
For those that don't click through, the only exception is tuna. It lives deep enough in the ocean and is clean enough to get around the "must be frozen" rule.
In my experience, a minority of people pay attention to where their food comes from. I'd bet the average consumer purchasing fish wouldn't be able to tell you whether it was farmed or wild caught.
Same in the UK btw. The fish choice in the biggest supermarket is smaller than you would expect in local store in the middle of Spain, away from the coast.
Same thing happens with meat. There is a huge reduction of variety, even at the local fishmonger/butcher, compared to continental Europe (I'm sure it is coming though)
A limited choice is available all the time everywhere, but the variety is not anymore.
Yep, I felt like my choice was cut in half after I moved to the UK. Even if you go to a butcher the approach seems to be "here's the 5 cuts I made today, take it or leave it". And don't even try mentioning buying offal - even if I go to an actual butcher, offal is "special order only" and I have to wait a few days to get it. I live in a coastal town, and the choice of fresh fish is limited to just a few. Very disappointed.
Interesting. Due to commercialization? Possible some of the same is happening in India on some fronts, food or other, not studied it, just anecdotal, hence asking.
For example, if you visit a supermarket in the UK or the USA at any time of the year, you can always find, say, fresh strawberries, despite the fruit only being locally in season for a month or two.
There is very little genuinely "seasonal" produce, meat or fish in supermarkets and I think that this is a major factor in the lack of variety.
Out of interest, if you went to an Indian market every three months, would you find all 100 different varieties of fish on offer every time, or does it change?
There are different kinds of markets in India - small mom-and-pop stores (kirana stores), wholesale markets (mandis) - but individual consumers often buy there too, because prices are lower, and malls / supermarkets like in the West (from the last decade or two). India is also big and not homogeneous. So I can't give a general answer, only about what I know:
- first, fish, as has been said about the US in this thread, is not eaten much inland (though some fresh-water fish is), due to distances and heat and spoiling, and while India has a large coast, it has an even larger interior.
- second, I doubt there are even close to 100 varieties of fish available (in markets) at the coasts, maybe 20 to 40; those who know more, feel free to correct me, I don't live near the coast (though did long ago), and don't eat fish.
- third, I don't think that in any of the types of markets, I mentioned, all the same varieties would be available all year round (and kiranas don't sell fish or meat at all, except some may, but only tinned). It is a mix of some staples and some seasonal items.
>I doubt there are even close to 100 varieties of fish available (in markets) at the coasts, maybe 20 to 40
E.g. I've visited Goa (a coastal state) a few times, and at least at the beach restaurants / shacks, where they lay out the fish and other seafood varieties for inspection by customers, I don't remember seeing more than 20 or so items - kingfish, mackerel, red snapper, pomfret, crabs, a couple of types / sizes of prawns, squid, shark, that's almost it. One place that I went to a few times, had seafood special nights (the owner fished as a hobby), where there were a few more kinds, like barracuda, tuna, mussels, etc. These were in general touristy areas though. Local markets and restaurants may have more varieties.
Americans avoid flavor because of capitalism, in my view. There is huge money in feeding people bland crap that's been processed as heavily as possible. Frankly, I'm astonished at people's willingness to consume shitty food that is obviously likely to have a detrimental impact on their health.
I would prefer to go hungry or eat the same boring but nutritious meal day after day than consume bad food, and frankly I think I've avoiding a hell of future medical misery by not stuffing my body with crap.
Perhaps some data to back that up? Some of the best restaurants and chefs in the world are American. Have you been to an American grocery store of any reasonable quality? The cheese selection of many big-city grocery stores rivals even French grocery stores. I shop in France all the time and I am still amazed at the variety at many American grocery stores. Try finding Napa/Chinese cabbage, fresh chiles, daikon radish or any number of ethnic staples in a typical French grocery store -- its very difficult. I love my local grocery store but for sheer variety, American wins big.
This tired trope about Americans eating so much processed food is often passed around by people that seem to not be very familiar with what grocery stores in the rest of the world sell. The French have entire stores dedicated to pre-packaged, frozen meals. Stereotypes are often based in truth, but that doesn't mean they are true.
Your average American grocery store has the ingredients to make almost any cuisine on earth, yet I have to import tortilla flour from the US because the only thing resembling Mexican food in France is "Old El Paso." Korean ingredients? Good luck with that. There's a tired section of soy sauces that consist of Kikkoman generic crap and that's about it. In a US store, I can find at at least 5 different kinds of soy sauces. Actual Asian noodles as well.
People seem to have a hobby bashing Americans, yet the American grocery store is a temple to the success of capitalism, world trade and diversity.
Ever been to a "non-capitalist" grocery store in China? Once you do that, then perhaps you could opine on how bad capitalism is for food.
Capitalism is the very reason you can find enoki mushrooms in Omaha, habaneros in Minnesota or Serbian rakija in Los Angeles.
I am not saying that Americans always make the best nutritional choices -- but it isn't due to the lack of opportunity to do so.
The stereotype is pass around among restaurant owners as well. It's not a secret that the American palate is picky and easy to understand. Avoid foods that are mushy, gooey, slimy, or "weird" (even though most food is like that), and try to make it crispy, sweet, and/or salty. Sushi is gross, but put the rice on the outside (beacuse eww seaweed) and cover it in sweet sauce, and suddenly it's delicious. Chinese food is gross, so enterprising Chinese-Americans invented some generic salty/sweet deep fried garbage and it sells like crazy. Oh, and here's some deep fried pastry dough with superstitous nonsense thrown in.
Granted, Americans have gotten a lot better at food and culture in general in the past decade ever since the hipster/foodie-ism thing, but it still has a long way to go if it wants to ditch the image of the average American as the child who won't eat their vegetables.
Seconding the proposition that these are two distinctly different words. Then there's crisply which has nothing to do with food but is reserved for describing the manner in which civil servants (British, sizes 4-7) deliver ultimata in trenchcoat spy novels. True fact.
True :) Alistair MacLean novels come to mind. Good entertaining writing, at least some parts of his books. Read them a lot as a kid. The only parts that were a bit tedious were the long descriptions of bad weather conditions in some of the novels set at sea, like Ice Station Zebra, H.M.S. Ulysses, etc. He tended to overdo those parts.
Sorry for the off-topic, but got any good recommendations for such novels? It's been a while since I read any, and would like to read some good ones again. I've read a few - John Le Carre, and MacLean of course. James Bond, but those tend to be better as movies. Can't think of others off-hand.
Len Deighton is in my view the best writer nobody has heard of. Well not nobody, several films have been made (with Michael Caine!!) but all of them were sort of crap and ended up feeling like poor man's James Bond. His work is widely perceived as cheap pulp, the sort of novels people pick up in airports and train stations.
Start with The Ipcress File. There are only a very few books that I read again and again for the sheer literary pleasure of their construction and expression, and I've read that book at least 10 times now, and hope to read it many more.
Deighton's novels have been popular but he has never been accorded the recognition given to other great writers in the espionage and war genres. Perhaps this is a result of too many irons in the fire - he's also a historian and graphic arts - but it has a good deal to do with his being a recluse and his relatively humble social origins, in my view, which perspective is fundamental to his writing. I cannot lavish enough praise upon him, but ask that if you enjoy his work you make an effort to share it with others.
Oh, Len Deighton. I've definitely heard of him, and probably have read at least one of his books. Cannot remember which now, though. I think he was a popular author in India when I was heavily into novel reading, earlier. Will check them. Thanks for the recommendation, and I'll keep your point about sharing in mind.
P.S. For a moment, after seeing you mention Len Deighton, I confused him with Ken Follett, some of whose books I've also read. They were good too.
They've gotten better at culture, as in, trying to understand different cultures and branching out their own interests and experiences beyond what is American.
Are you asking me how to quantify culture? You could go buy services like what WGSN offers, or you can just not be a socially inept corporate econometrics data clown and leave your house once in a while, interact with young people, and use your eyes.
Oh I'm not saying you can't get great food here, sorry for phrasing my original post poorly. I live in the Bay Area and cook a lot and I'm spoiled for choice. What I mean is that the big bucks in agribusiness go towards lowest-common-denominator choices of poor quality.
Simple example, most milk in the US comes from Holstein cows because they produce more than other breeds. But if you get milk from Jersey cows (smaller and browner) it's much fattier and generally more flavorful. Of course it's also a bit more expensive but not that much more...but you'll be hard put to find it outside of a farmer's market or specialty grocer.
I don't think it's fair to put all the blame on consumers for poor nutritional choices. Marketing and other factors shape those choices significantly.
I dunno. Sample size may have something to do with this. I live in a rural section of the US now, but spent a year living in Eastern provincial France and the difference in the cheese case makes me cry when I think about it.
Americans stock their shelves with "swiss" "american" "jack" and "cheddar" with almost all of them being made in about a week in cheese factory somewhere.
Contrast that with having TWO versions of Cantal, one of the blander AOC cheeses, in every cheese case we encountered in France. To say nothing of blues I'd never heard of, and small batch regional cheeses in many supermarchés.
It's all hearsay and conjecture, really, but I think the outsized influence of American chefs is just due to TV culture which is pervasive and consistently unfortunate.
I feel sorry for you, but in my small-town new england co-op, we have easily more than a hundred cheeses available, including many local cheeses that you can't get in Europe at any price, and which compare favorably with the best I've had anywhere outside of the northeast.
Rural America has a great food culture here in many areas; it's not just chefs on the TV.
Every contemporary grocery store I've been to in the Northeast US has an artisanal cheese section... And I don't even live in a big city. It's not mixed in the with the "normal" cheeses though. My grocery store makes mozzarella in house too.
Yeah, most of the grocery stores in my corner of Maine have an artisanal cheese section too. But they wrap them all in plastic wrap and the inventory doesn't turn over so it all tastes like crap.
Plus, if you look at the labels, half of the cheeses that are presented as artisanal are actually made by a cheese factory in southern Wisconsin.
All that said, there are a number of folks making brilliant local cheeses in Vermont and Upstate NY, but I find those at the boutique cheese store on the coast, and even their employees often don't know anything about what they're selling. Not sure who's fault that is though.
Either way, I miss France and not just for the cheese. Gastronomically it was simply easier to find high quality produce and AOC protected regional delicacies. And that's not saying they don't have crap too (oh, I remember Lidl), but there was a sense of cultural pride around certain foods that is simply absent in the US outside of hipsters in Vermont and California (which I am mostly likely a part of).
Eh, there's more to food than cheese. Some of my favorite cuisines don't use it at all. The only times I've appreciated a large cheese selection is when I've lived where it was impossible to get milk with lactose included. Now that I'm back in rural USA real milk is easily available so I really don't miss the dozens of cheeses.
"There is huge money in feeding people bland crap that's been processed as heavily as possible."
The point isn't to process it as heavily as possible, it is to process it and flavor it so that it hits a "sweet spot" between the fat/salt/sugar flavors - according to the food science. This makes folks come back and buy more, especially with it seeming to taste better than their home-cooked food. They seriously design it to make your brain happy to have it. Some of it is bland, for sure, but plenty of it isn't.
I'm not so astonished: This sort of thing has been happening throughout history. Lead in makeup, arsenic in dyes, and so on.
"For whatever reason Americans just don't eat a lot of seafood."
Pretty much every place I've lived on both coasts, you couldn't go the day without hearing about someone wanting a tuna burrito, or fish tacos, or shrimp stew (Frogmore stew specifically) or lobster or crab or flounderor more.
So maybe the inland Americans don't eat as much seafood, but rarely does a day go by here on the West Coast that I don't hear about or personally think about eating some seafood.
That can't be right. I basically don't eat fish because it's too bland. Salmon's a little better than white fish, but it's all just a vehicle for whatever sauce you put on it. Chicken at leasts tastes umami.
At least will be used to it for when fish prices (probably) go up in the future global due to poor environmental conditions in the ocean. Gotta look on the bright side I guess.
I wonder how much this has to do with peoples common initial exposure to bad seafood. Good fish doesn't smell fishy and most the fish you get at a supermarket has a strong fishy smell/flavor. You shouldn't be able to smell the fish until you put it up to your nose.
It's not just fish. A staple of graduate student conversation is "Food X was a favorite of mine at home, but" "I can't find it in Boston" or "the American version is a bad tasteless joke".
One issue is lag - the American general food supply diversifies more slowly than the population.
Another issue is corporate consolidation of the food supply chain. For example, New England used to have a lot of small confectionery manufacturers, from big factories to mom&pops, which over the last three decades have most all been crushed out by Nabisco. Which is much lower quality. So "why doesn't Boston have good confectionery like", err, Castile? Well, we used to be a lot closer, but Nabisco et al.
Mexican food was a favorite of mine in the United States, but in France it tastes like cardboard. I want to find <some product> but France doesn't sell it.
This conversation can be had in literally any country in the world. Can't find a decent cheeseburger in Delhi, can't find decent cheese in Shanghai, nearly impossible to find good tequila in Germany.
Every country has foods they're good at and foods they're not. As far as the death of small producers, why by Boston chocolate when I can buy actual high quality Swiss chocolate at a lower price? Why buy some marginal local beer when I can buy literally the best beers in the world. Globalization certainly has its negatives, but on balance there is more variety than every before.
> Every country has foods they're good at and foods they're not.
I mean... sure.
But I've travelled a whole lot of the world and some places on average have way better food than others. It's sort of impossible to go to Lyon, France, say, and then pretend everywhere else's food is just like different, but no worse.
Sorry, I just don't buy it. I spent a year in Japan and they had lots of great foods that I have only found pale imitations of elsewhere. But they also lacked foods that I love and can find in the allegedly culinarily impoverished United States. And I can say similar things about other places I have traveled (including Puerto Rico), although without the same sort of supreme confidence.
Hmm I remember living in a middle-sized city in The Netherlands that probably most things were available in good quality as long as you knew where to look. Mexican food I can't judge, but Indian or Thai or REAL Chinese food wasn't a problem, with a few options to pick often. Italian and French of course. Good burgers yes.
There's of course a difference in culture. You can't find sesos even at the best butcher shops while in Argentina they're in any medium sized supermarket. That's just stuff that nobody but the very adventurous will eat outside that cultural zone.
I can speak to the lack of real Indian food in the Netherlands, there's about one restaurant in Amsterdam which serves proper food. The rest all serve British Indian Restaurant cuisine, which is the equivalent of Febo representing all Dutch food.
totally surprised to see that in Capitalist America the
choice of fish was absolutely pathetic
followed by
Then I entered 99Ranch and since then my respect of my
eastern neighbours has gone up significantly
Because a supermarket founded in California is not part of America?
Not to mention the fact that the antecedent statement is just factually wrong -- my local grocer offers at least 20 varieties of fish as well (including about 5 or 6 different Salmons) and is a plain-as-day "American" market.
I think what the person you're responding to meant to say was: "I'm disappointed the US isn't exactly like where I'm from. By US I mean the very few places I've been."
> As a fish loving Indian, I was totally surprised to see that in Capitalist America the choice of fish was absolutely pathetic
As explained below, the issue is one of demand. For whatever reason, people in the US don't like fish.
I'm Bengali, which means our cuisine includes a lot of fish. But in the US, I almost never eat fish in restaurants - only when we're cooking it at home. And that's because the way it's cooked is absolutely terrible. People in the US tend to prefer fish that's already bland to begin with (cod, haddock, tilapia, and sometimes tuna or salmon), and the ways they like it cooked don't add very much flavor to the process.
So, for people like me who actually enjoy tasty fish, there are very few options in the US (short of cooking it ourselves) because there are very few others (like me) in the US who actually enjoy tasty fish.
> People in the US tend to prefer fish that's already bland to begin with (cod, haddock, tilapia, and sometimes tuna or salmon)
To be fair, in the Midwest this is often because there used to be a diet of much more flavorful freshwater fish from local lakes, but overfishing destroyed their populations and pushed prices way up, forcing cuisine to adapt to cheap saltwater fish.
Fresh water fish strikes me as likely very labor intensive, and labor is searched for and destroyed in this country, in favor of industrial sized processes and yields.
I see big fillets of salmon and other large fish in Krogers, from the large industrial supply chain, next to the occasional little trouts and whatevers, and I often wonder "where do those little guys come from? How is it possible for them to get into this case?"
I'm not at all aware of any fresh water/river fishing companies, it strikes me as unsustainable except on a semi-recreational basis.
Someone in USA Midwest who doesn't just go fishing for himself in any of the many lakes and streams that are open to the public, has very little basis for complaint about selection of fresh fish to eat. The reason we have a variety of sport fish in our inland waters, is because commercial fishing is not allowed.
An aside: I visited Mongolia a few years ago and learned that Mongolians almost universally dislike fish. And given that the vast majority of Mongolians were pastoral and nomadic until about 10 years ago, the many pristine lakes and streams of Mongolia are filled with ridiculously large fish. The waters are very accessible, too, because the vast majority of the land in the country is open to allow the population to freely roam and graze their livestock.
I'm not an avid fisherman, but anybody who is should seriously consider visiting Mongolia before it's too late. An exceptionally brutal winter in 2009 killed many livestock and drove millions of people to the capital city. And in the past 10 years the mining industry has exploded. The population is rapidly moving away from nomadic pastoralism and toward industrialization and private property. While I'm sure most of the country will remain undeveloped for quite some time given its size, with the mining operations the waterways are likely to become increasingly suspect.
FWIW, it's not that Mongolians are like some isolated tribe in the Amazon. They're fully aware of the world and enjoy a decent literacy rate. But the Soviets kept the Mongolian economy relatively undeveloped, perhaps because the pastoral culture fit the communist ideal. With the collapse of the USSR the country stayed on the same course until about 10-15 years ago when outsiders (especially South Koreans) poured in to develop the resource extraction industries.
Sheep (mutton) and horse meat. I also ate camel meat, though I'm not sure how common that still is. The whole country smells like mutton, though, and you will too. It's by far the most common meat and is basically the staple food.
The principle grain is (I think) wheat, often as Russian-style dumplings. Filled with mutton, of course.
The food is pretty simple. Nothing flashy. Not many ingredients. The steppe is a pretty desolate place. Not necessarily bland, either, though. The homemade camel soup was made from dried camel meat seasoned with a wild herb (maybe some kind of allium-related weed?) the host collected while tending his livestock and packed into jars with salt. (Perhaps it pickled a little?) Another dish at a small restaurant was stir-fried horse meat with garlic shoots.
I did eat sheep brains, scooped out of a whole cooked sheep's head sawed in half. That was at a restaurant in Ulaanbaatar. Memorable but definitely the most bland dish I ate there.
I had many other dishes but my memory fails me. Oh, I did have tea with camel's milk on a couple of occasions. Never got to try the famous fermented (alcoholic) horse milk, though.
Wow, interesting. I suppose mutton is the staple food because of their huge area of steppe / grasslands.
About the dumplings, I was just recently reading about manti [1], a Turkish dumpling (which is basically steamed or fried balls of dough filled with ground meat or other fillings).
The Wikipedia article said it may be of Central Asian or Turkic / Mongol origin, and had spread to many countries, including Central Asian ones, the Caucasus, Russia, etc. I'm guessing the Russian-style dumplings you mention are a form of manti.
Edit: Just looked it up again, the manti article links to buuz, the Mongolian name for it:
Not many vegetables and definitely not many fruits, although on a tour we did pass through an isolated little town in the Gobi that our driver said was known for its vegetables. As far as I could tell, they only seemed to have a few large gardens. Which I think proves the rule. But as you've pointed out there are plenty of other resources that discuss that, likely more accurate than my anecdotes.
Mongolia is pretty large. IIRC the south is mostly desert, the east more grassy plains, and the west very mountainous. I'm sure the cuisine varies. Nonetheless, AFAIU steppe cultures have very similar diets--heavy meat consumption, particularly sheep, goat, camel, etc.
My wife and I went in 2012 for about a week. Most of that time was spent with expat family working in Ulaanbaatar, where we took a few excursions to parks and monuments not too far from the city.
We took a 3-day trip to the Gobi Desert on a very typical itinerary where you hire a driver and translator and stay with a few host families. Because of tourism and the mining industry, the Gobi families were settling down more. Our host families, while still remote and dispersed, lived in Gurs that hadn't been moved in years. (Whereas traditionally you moved roughly once a year, cycling through grazing areas.) At the time travel books recommended the Southeast for a more "traditional" experience. But you really shouldn't miss the Gobi if you're doing a family trip or a short tour.
I'm hardly particularly knowledgable about the country or culture. But what was most striking was how the land was open and accessible--so very little private property, with the legal right for natives and (IIUC) visitors to roam and camp where ever they please so long as they're not disturbing anyone else.[1] It's basically a dream for anyone who loves the outdoors. I'd hardly classify myself as a world traveler, nor an avid outdoorsman. But I have hiked and camped rural Ecuador and visited rural parts of Borneo. The sense of openness, freedom, remoteness, and safety in Mongolia just seemed incomparable to anywhere else. But who knows how long that will last.
[1] There's an imaginary boundary (if not a fence) around a Gur or collection of Gurs that demarcates de facto private from public land. And Mongolians traditionally keep a native breed of guard dog for protection, so you're encouraged to get vaccinated for rabies. But outside the cities families are so dispersed (on the order of miles) that you're unlikely to accidentally intrude upon anyone's space.
I think this has to do with the type of fish typically used in western cuisine, which is heavily biased to larger fish that can be cooked as filets or have less bones.
Asian cuisine makes much greater use of smaller fish that are oftentimes cooked whole, so the range of options tends to be larger as well.
Western cuisine is far from homogeneous. We use plenty of small fish in Southern Europe (and we eat a lot of fish) - sardines, blackbelly rosefish, atlantic horse mackerel, blackspot seabream, etc.
My local grocery store probably has 150 ft of cooler space devoted to beer. About half is Budweiser, Miller, and other huge brands, the rest is from smaller brewers, many of which are local. How does the selection compare at the local Lulu Hypermart?
It depends on where you live. The fish selection in Seattle is pretty good, with lots of genuinely fresh options (i.e. the boat comes in from Alaska and the king crab or whatever comes off and is sold within an hour)
The lobster in Maine is similarly good and fresh, as is the crawfish in Louisiana. If you want to get good fresh fish a thousand miles away from the coast then, yes, the selection will be poor and likely limited to a small number of varieties.
Most of what you see in a US grocery store is farm raised, because the market has grown too big for the oceans and rivers to sustain it. Since it is farm raised you see mostly fish that are easy to farm.
America has a lot of land, and infrastructure to feed, raise and transport animals. Meat prices in America are so cheap relative to cost of living it's staggering.
But yes, this means our seafood market choice is pretty bad.
Meat prices are also heavily subsidized to the tune of billions of dollars a year. It is probably the US's most subsidized "crop", even compared to the infamous corn.
The real price of most grocery store meat is in the ballpark of twice the sale price. The difference just comes out in taxes.
It is also what drives a lot of the unhealthy eating habits in the states.
Are those 100 fish in the market all local and fresh? I live on the coast in 'Capitalist America', and usually only eat fish that is fresh (thus typically local). Most of the markets only stock said types of fish/shrimp/oysters because I have always assumed it is what people want. I have noticed more non-local fish show up as mid-westerners have moved to my coastal city though.
Capitalist America balances supply and demand. However your experience must be limited. I know of several fish markets, in my area in the US and other places I've lived, with a variety of fish and knowledgeable staff.
Mr. Pizza has you covered. A Korean chain in Beijing, who believe corn mayonnaise pizza is a good thing. At least Chinese pizzerias don't use ketchup as tomatoes sauce anymore....those were the days!
That used to be harder than it is today. The one thing I could never get in china, however, was western style sausage. They just don't make it anywhere in china, so overly frozen imports are the only option.
You need to visit more of the US than just the Bay Area, CA. Bay Area seafood is pretty weak overall as there's not that much left locally. It's mostly imported. In fact, most of the stuff in CA isn't that great; you need to go up to Oregon and Washington to get really good seafood at regular, non-exorbitant pricing.
If you go to the East Coast or Gulf Coast (especially), you'll find a very different seafood culture. It's cheap, plentiful, varied, and part of the local food culture.
Yup, as a Chinese I find seafood selection in your typical US supermarket borderline offensive if not so pathetic.
In China even a small city with 400000 population (that is small in China, don't argue.) located 1000 miles from sea would at least have fresh clams and a few live sea fish in watertanks at walmart.
In America all you average consumers buy are vacuum-sealed squares of bland fillet.
I bet if I went to India and complained about how pathetic the local hamburger places were, you might wonder about my maturity/worldliness/naivete/etc. You might also rightfully wonder why I was so intent on looking for hamburgers (or Chinese-American food, or Texas barbecue, or whatever) in India, when there are so many other food choices to explore. Every place you go in the world is going to be lacking in some things you took for granted at home, replaced by many other things that are new to you. This is a good thing, not something to complain about, and certainly not something to insult another country over.
Ok, but we're not talking about a specific dish, we're talking about ingredients, so to speak. It's surprising because the US has huge coasts that span climates. I was surprised by it too, and I'm from Spain, whose cuisine is unrelated to India's.
I understand, but it's just a function of what sells and what doesn't. Americans in general aren't nearly as into fish as some other countries, therefore the big supermarket chains don't offer as much variety as some other countries. It's just not a staple in most households.
People who do want more variety go to more specialized stores like Ranch 99 (which is just as American as Safeway, not sure why the poster suggested otherwise), which aren't hard to find.
The poster seemed to blame it on capitalism, but if so I don't see the point in defying capitalism by having the government require the big supermarket chains to stock 100 types of fish that are going to go mostly unsold and get thrown away. That sort of wastefulness sounds a lot worse than requiring the poster to spend 5 minutes Googling for more specialized stores nearby that sells what he wants.
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Then I entered 99Ranch and since then my respect of my eastern neighbours has gone up significantly. Not only they had Tiger prawns and King Mackerel, they actually understood the difference between Pampino and Pomphret.