On the Hook: Part 2
on tinned seafood in American culture, a brief history of preserving fish in jars, sustainability, and what the rest of our the grocery aisles can learn from all this.
In one of my earliest food memories, I remember my dad digging into a can of sardines, squeezing some lemon on top, and placing the fish on top of a cracker for me to munch on. I remember thinking - WOW. I just ate a WHOLE FREAKING fish.
Because of this early education (and maybe because I was catching and cleaning mackerel with my dad by the time I hit double digits), I’ve never had the squeamish reaction that a lot of Americans have to tinned and preserved seafood. I’ve always enjoyed the briny, salty, oily quality of tinned fish - anchovies on pizza, sardines on toast, and even your run-of-the-mill StarKist tuna packets.
Unfortunately, tinned seafood has an image issue in America. Consumers are not only turned off by their ideas of how tinned fish smells and tastes, but also think of it as an option for when you can’t afford “better,” “nicer” seafood. These perceptions, combined with health concerns like fears of mercury poisoning, had, until very recently, turned Americans away from tinned and canned seafood to “fresher” pastures at the seafood counter.
We see an entirely different story on the other side of the Atlantic, where tinned seafood began. Conservas, ranging from sardines to Cantabrian anchovies, Bonito del Norte tuna, octopus in olive oil, and mussels in escabeche are considered delicacies across the Iberian peninsula. People passionate about conservas understand that tinned seafood is often fresher than what you can find at your seafood counter since tins can be packed only hours after fish are caught.
If you do one good thing today, I ask you to listen to José Andrés speak about the beauty of canned sardines.
However, to the chagrin of the Spaniards and Portuguese, the tinned fish tradition actually starts north of the Iberian peninsula in France in the late 1700s. In 1795, Nicolas Appert was experimenting with different means of preservation by placing glass jars of fish into boiling water (men and their hobbies, lol).
As the Napoleonic Wars began in the early 1800s, the French government offered prize money to anyone who developed a cost-effective way to preserve an army’s worth of food. Appert shared his methods and won the prize, kicking off the modern history of tinned fish. Shortly after, Peter Durand (a Brit) patented a similar method, using tin cans instead of glass jars, which had the benefit of holding up better in transport.
To me, what's shocking is not just how recently tinned fish first appeared in the span of history (if you asked me before researching this, I would have guessed people were canning fish in the 1500s) - but also that people at the time of its invention didn't even understand why canning worked. Germ theory wouldn't be proposed until the 1860s when Louis Pasteur discovered that bacteria were causing food spoilage.
Back to the modern day – many environmentally-minded consumers are recognizing the benefits of tinned fish beyond preservation and easy transport. Tinned fish, particularly those sourced from species lower on the food chain (“prey” or “forage” species), are often more sustainable due to the shorter lifespans and rapid reproductive rates of these species, reducing the risk of overfishing.
Smaller fish at lower trophic levels also tend to be used as feed for “higher” level proteins like chicken and farmed salmon, so it’s more sustainable for us to instead eat the source of this feed itself. Plus, for those people worried about mercury poisoning, smaller fish accumulate fewer toxins than fish at higher trophic levels (shorter lifespans, plus eating less stuff).
There is, however, the inevitable caveat: just because fish are smaller doesn’t mean they are always more sustainable.1 For instance, Portuguese sardines are now, sadly, both wildly overfished and moving to cooler waters due to climate change, a huge cultural hit to the country.2 So, there is, as with everything, nuance here. But as a general rule of thumb, it’s likely more sustainable to eat sardines than larger, predatory fish.
We as consumers can indirectly influence fishing practices towards more sustainable methods by shifting demand to these species in the food world. And luckily, a new wave of tinned fish popularity has been doing just that.
From Fishwife to Patagonia Provisions, Tin-Tok to “girl dinner,” tasting and reviewing tinned fish has, in the past two years, become something close to a hobby for many. What’s interesting about this wild increase in tinned fish popularity, though, is that I think it’s less of a short-term trend and more of an exercise in consumer education. While many have been eating and enjoying tinned seafood since childhood, for others this is a brave new world of delicious, (relatively) affordable, and healthy shelf-stable products that can be prepared and eaten within minutes of opening.
As brands like Fishwife have moved the American tinned seafood market away from stuffy, Depression-era package design (and in turn, negative perceptions), it’s not surprising to me that we see new interest sparked among younger consumers. I actually think that other canned goods in the sadder parts of our grocery aisles (SOUPS!), have a lot to learn from the rise of tinned seafood – people are willing to try and enjoy high-quality, well-marketed, shelf-stable goods.
Thanks for reading this installment of On the Hook! Leave your thoughts, hopes, and dreams below. My next post will be back to my regularly scheduled programming.
Seafood Watch is a good, regularly updated resource on which fish populations are sustainable.
Read more about the loss of the Portuguese sardine fishery in Reuters’ Ocean Shock Series.
I am headed out to buy sardines!
Jose Andres should run for president!