Live data from Hacker News

We Should Be Eating More Canned Fish?

heated.medium.com

41–50 of 63 posts

Re: We Should Be Eating More Canned Fish?

#41
post #16

Fish always freaks me out, because I don't know how to handle it. Take oil sardines with the starry eyes. Am I supposed to eat the sardine whole, with head, eyes and tailfin? Am I supposed to bite the head off and spit it out? Cut it off? It's so basic and I feel like an idiot, but I really have no idea.

Ok. You should trust me on this matter because I'm Portuguese. The first thing you need to know is to that in Portugal there is special fish cutlery. There is a special knife. You don’t need it but it helps.

Eating fish takes a lot of skill and practice but the basic procedure is to remove the skin from the grilled fish with ultra care using a fork and knife. This will be very hard at first. It’s a skill.

Then remove whatever is left of the lungs.

You are left with the head, the white meat around the fish bone and the fin.

You will now just pick on the meat and eat it.

In the end you are left with a head, a fish bone and a fin. These 3 should still be connected and intact.

Sardines are the hardest because you will have to do it for 6 to 10 sardines (6 is the minimum acceptable portion).

Start with a big fish like a sea bass or something similar.

Good luck

Re: We Should Be Eating More Canned Fish?

#42
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/fish/

> they calculated that if 100,000 people ate farmed salmon twice a week for 70 years, the extra PCB intake could potentially cause 24 extra deaths from cancer—but would prevent at least 7,000 deaths from heart disease Interesting tidbit from the article.

> twice a week

That's the important part. I was eating tuna it pretty much every day for about a year until I found out that it was dangerous. They don't even have warnings on the can. Tony Robbins fried his brain doing that[0]. Still just hoping that I didn't do any damage to myself.

The fishing industry lobbies have sued the FDA and other health organisations around the world to prevent then from requiring warnings on the label, and to get them to change the maximum PPM levels:

> However, the fishing industry sued FDA, arguing that the economic impacts of the standard were likely to be too severe. A court agreed, and FDA had to revise the Action Level, raising it to 1.0 ppm, the current level.[1]

> Scientists from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimate that as many as 600,000 babies are born each year at risk of neurological and developmental problems because their mothers have high blood mercury levels from fish consumption.[2]

[0] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/are-there-toxic-heavy-metals-...

[1] http://mercuryfactsandfish.org/mercury-facts/the-fda-action-...

[2] https://e360.yale.edu/features/a_call_for_tougher_standards_...

Re: We Should Be Eating More Canned Fish?

#43
post #16

Fish always freaks me out, because I don't know how to handle it. Take oil sardines with the starry eyes. Am I supposed to eat the sardine whole, with head, eyes and tailfin? Am I supposed to bite the head off and spit it out? Cut it off? It's so basic and I feel like an idiot, but I really have no idea.

You eat the whole thing. It all has just about the same texture. Even the backbone has a barely noticeable crunch as it disintegrates in your mouth.

Re: We Should Be Eating More Canned Fish?

#44
Did I miss something or was his only argument why we should eat it is that he likes it? He says its not that bad for you, but it's not really good for you, it's not that expensive, although it's far from cheap. it's not that gross eating bones and eyeballs and shit after you get used to it, but it is until then. None of these at all imply we should eat it.

Re: We Should Be Eating More Canned Fish?

#45
post #19

No, please don't. Commercial fishing is not good. Do some research to find the many reasons. Plastic is not something you want to eat, and fish have increasing amounts of plastic in them. Same goes for Mercury. Sardines (and probably anchovies) don't have much, but other larger fish do. Were it not for these problems, then I too would advocate good canned sardines for health. They have higher calcium per weight than…

So what’s the alternative? Beef? Chicken? Pork? Vegetarian?

Every one of these has significant downsides to them (for you vegetarians out there, the phosphorous that leeches into the runoff is huge, affecting the ecosystem in ways we still don’t understand).

I get every point you make, but honestly, what is the real alternative?

Re: We Should Be Eating More Canned Fish?

#46
post #45
post #19

No, please don't. Commercial fishing is not good. Do some research to find the many reasons. Plastic is not something you want to eat, and fish have increasing amounts of plastic in them. Same goes for Mercury. Sardines (and probably anchovies) don't have much, but other larger fish do. Were it not for these problems, then I too would advocate good canned sardines for health. They have higher calcium per weight than…

So what’s the alternative? Beef? Chicken? Pork? Vegetarian? Every one of these has significant downsides to them (for you vegetarians out there, the phosphorous that leeches into the runoff is huge, affecting the ecosystem in ways we still don’t understand). I get every point you make, but honestly, what is the real alternative?

Most vegetables are grown for lifestock food, so I don't think that's valid concern about vegetarianism.

If you eat a lot of meat, then you have all the vegetarian concerns you can come up with plus all the concerns directly tied to meat plus the rest of the indirect concerns.

Re: We Should Be Eating More Canned Fish?

#47
post #45
post #19

No, please don't. Commercial fishing is not good. Do some research to find the many reasons. Plastic is not something you want to eat, and fish have increasing amounts of plastic in them. Same goes for Mercury. Sardines (and probably anchovies) don't have much, but other larger fish do. Were it not for these problems, then I too would advocate good canned sardines for health. They have higher calcium per weight than…

So what’s the alternative? Beef? Chicken? Pork? Vegetarian? Every one of these has significant downsides to them (for you vegetarians out there, the phosphorous that leeches into the runoff is huge, affecting the ecosystem in ways we still don’t understand). I get every point you make, but honestly, what is the real alternative?

> the phosphorous that leeches into the runoff is huge

Can you please expand on this? Animal agriculture is the primary cause of ocean dead-zones (due to fertilizer + manure run-off).[0] Because you're still eating plants - it's just that you're filtering them through another animal, and thus removing the vast majority of the calories, protein, and other nutrients that you would have got if you'd directly consumed the plants.

I don't think there's any debate on the relative environmental impact of a plant-based diet versus one that includes meat and dairy. It wins in terms of pollution, land usage, water usage, and basically every other metric.[1][2][3]

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/aug/01/meat-ind...

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/31/avoiding...

[2] https://waterfootprint.org/en/water-footprint/product-water-...

[3] https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-49238749

Re: We Should Be Eating More Canned Fish?

#48
post #16

Fish always freaks me out, because I don't know how to handle it. Take oil sardines with the starry eyes. Am I supposed to eat the sardine whole, with head, eyes and tailfin? Am I supposed to bite the head off and spit it out? Cut it off? It's so basic and I feel like an idiot, but I really have no idea.

There are books and YouTube videos that explain how to prepare food. A couple of personal favourites are Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child et al, and the Roux Brothers BBC series (on YouTube). These things have to be learnt just like anything else.

Search seems to indicate that Julia Child, like everyone else, takes it as a given that you already know which parts of the sardine can be eaten. Your condescension is noted but not very helpful.

https://books.google.com/books?id=ukkVAwAAQBAJ&printsec=fron...

Re: We Should Be Eating More Canned Fish?

#50
post #24
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>People get concerned about the toxicity of fish, yet the air they breathe in the polluted city they live it does far more harm than a food can ever do. I could see this being a possibility for many Asian countries, but I'm skeptical that this would be true for the US and Europe. Do you have any sources?

On windy.com they have several realtime graphics for CO2 pollution and it's cousins.

CO2 is not pollution no matter how many times this lie is perpetuated. CO2 is what we breathe out and it’s what plants breathe in.
Post reply on HN