What Fish Is Worth Eating

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Have you enjoyed the pleasures of a camping trip deep in the wilderness? Among the memories, you may recall the sublime enjoyment of eating a yellow pickerel you caught yourself and cooked over a campfire. Today, is there anything close to that perfection? If choosing a final meal on this planet, that might be the one. But dining on the simplicity of that perfect fish in today’s urban food scene is a fading dream.

Eating fish isn’t like it used to be. The quality of the fish we now purchase in supermarkets is suspect. Like most things in life, when buying fish, you get what you pay for. The cheaper options are processed, frozen, and don’t resemble anything like a fish. Even if paying a lot more for fish at the counter where they are laid out in whole or fileted, most don’t realize that what you’re getting may not be as it appears.

What is it about today’s fish that consumers don’t know? Where it comes from is the first thing. A huge proportion of fish in North American stores is caught, processed, and imported from Asia. Often the fish are frozen during transport, unfrozen for processing, then re-frozen for shipment to markets. In the process, water may be added to make the fish heavier. In some fish, like salmon and trout, colour additives may be present. Some farmed fish are treated with antibiotics and growth hormones to increase the yield. Small wonder these fish lose taste.