November 13, 2012 — The Commerce Department released its annual report to Congress last month that tracked how much fish was harvested in U.S. waters, exported, imported, and consumed by Americans. What shocked most reporters was that 91 percent of the seafood we eat is imported. But they missed the real story: Americans don't eat fish. The overall numbers were small. We consumed a paltry 15 pounds of seafood per person in 2011, compared to 195 pounds of eggs, pork, beef, and chicken — according to various government sources.
The USDA suggests we should eat at least two servings of fish per week and make it a fifth of our protein consumption. But we clock in at less than one serving and about seven percent of our protein overall.
How do we increase the percentage of seafood Americans eat? Instead of marketing familiar "safe" products, perhaps we should move somewhat counter-intuitively in the direction of novelty. I hated fish as a kid because my only experience of seafood was breaded flounder for dinner every Friday. Familiarity, it does seem, breeds contempt. Variety is enticing.
Finding variety in seafood isn't as difficult as it may seem. And it doesn't mean we need to look further than our own shores.
An often-heard trope about why we don't eat more domestically harvested seafood is that we don't produce enough to feed ourselves. This claim is simply untrue. We harvested 10.1 billion pounds of wild and farmed seafood and shellfish in 2011. We ate 4.5 million pounds. In other words, we hardly ate anything our fishermen caught. The question isn't whether we can produce enough for our population but what less-familiar species we are willing to eat.
Another issue is whether we can get access to the great stuff from our own coastlines. U.S. fishing interests have cultivated supply lines to Asian markets that buy whole fish and also to processors of health supplements and cat food, rather than to wholesalers catering to the American consumer market. From a U.S. consumer's point of view, the supply chains are broken — but they can be fixed.
Read the full article at The Atlantic