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How marketers convinced America to eat fish sticks
- markdown 6y agoFish fingers in my part of the world. Great story.
- lacker 6y agoFrom the article, Americans eat 55 million pounds of fish sticks per year, so Americans eat on average 1/6 of a pound of fish sticks per year, which is like... on average half of Americans have fish sticks once a year? That hardly sounds like a staple. Compare to, the average American eats 222 pounds of red meat and poultry in a year. https://www.seattletimes.com/business/americans-meat-consumption-set-to-hit-a-record-in-2018/ https://www.seattletimes.com/business/americans-meat-consump... Edit: for another random entertaining comparison, Americans consume about 2 pounds of asparagus each, every year. So about an order of magnitude more than fish sticks. https://www.agmrc.org/commodities-products/vegetables/asparagus#:~:text=It%20is%20an%20early%20season,to%201.9%20pounds%20in%202018 https://www.agmrc.org/commodities-products/vegetables/aspara....
- throwaway5752 6y agoIf you go by the net weight and box dimensions on https://www.walmart.com/ip/Gorton-s-Crunchy-Breaded-Fish-Sticks-18-count/12166675 https://www.walmart.com/ip/Gorton-s-Crunchy-Breaded-Fish-Sti... that's equivalent to a cube 160 feet on each side (packaged volume of annual US fish stick consumption). Not disagreeing with your point, but interesting to visualize the scale of consumption.
- cgriswald 6y agoAs a cube it would sit on roughly half or an American football field. On an everybody-else-football pitch it would cover the whole thing about 32 m deep. It’s both a tremendous amount and also absolutely nothing depending on your point of reference.
- samatman 6y agoThere are around 24,000 high schools in the US. I'll take that number as a proxy for the number of football fields, because, while some high schools don't have one, there are also quite a few which are affiliated with college/universities or municipalities. So that's about six cubic yards per football field, or about enough to fill a couple of standard freezer sections at a supermarket. We can conclude from this that football players don't eat fish sticks very often, or there wouldn't be any left for anyone else!
- thaumasiotes 6y ago> on average half of Americans have fish sticks once a year? It's probably a lot less spread out than that. Some people might like fish sticks. But in my mind, they're something that people give to kids. I haven't had one in decades. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that a large majority of purchased fish sticks are not purchased by someone who intends to eat them.
- qppo 6y agoAverages aren't really good metrics for statistics that don't fall on a bell curve, like with a lot of consumables. Take alchohol [0] consumption, if you look at raw numbers the "average" American drinks quite a lot per day, but it turns out the average American probably doesn't drink much at all. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/09/25/think-you-drink-a-lot-this-chart-will-tell-you/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/09/25/think...
- singron 6y agoIt's like they say: the average American is half male, half female, and has 1.9 children.
- bryanrasmussen 6y agoIt actually varies by year and region with a slightly higher than half percentage being male https://ourworldindata.org/gender-ratio https://ourworldindata.org/gender-ratio
- Simon_says 6y agoNo, not in the US. Most Americans are women. China and India skew the global percentages.
- thaumasiotes 6y agoI think my parent comment's point, that the premise "marketers convinced America to eat fish sticks" hasn't actually been shown, stands. Sure, the average doesn't tell us much, but it does tell us that consumption is really, really low. The more you push consumption levels up to realistic amounts for some people, the more other people you have to admit will never touch a fish stick in their lives.
- mywittyname 6y agoThis is literally the same thought that I had upon reading that statement. I figure, if they come in boxes of roughly a pound each, two for a "family size" bag, and a "regular consumer" would eat it once a week (or 52 times a year). So that leaves 1 million "regular consumers", or 250,000 families who consume it regularly. That's not very many at all. I wouldn't be surprised if scrapple or some other obscure regional food sold more annually than fish sticks. I bet that most fish sticks are sold to fast food joints, and I would not be surprised if most of that consumption occurs during lint.
- plorkyeran 6y agoThe article also says that 64.4 million pounds of fish sticks were sold in in 1955, which means it's dropped quite a bit since then (and that was still under half a pound per person per year).
- bildung 6y agoUS population in 1955 was half the present population, though, so the average US person actually ate fish sticks at least once a year in 1955.
- plorkyeran 6y agoUnder half a pound is adjusting for the lower population. 65m pounds of fish sticks and 156m people.
- craftinator 6y agoIt's completely possible that Americans snort more cocaine than that per year.
- wyattpeak 6y agoI feel fairly confident that the average American doesn't snort a sixth of a pound of cocaine each year.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Garvey 6y agoAt just over 1g a week, it's not out of the realms of possibility, taking into account those who abuse it. I've unfortunately known people who could use that much in a week.
- wyattpeak 6y agoOh for sure I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility that there is someone somewhere who goes through a sixth of a pound per year. In fact I'm sure there are people. What I absolutely do think it's out of the realm of possibility that the average American does. Something like 2% of Americans use cocaine.[1] That figure is probably extremely imprecise, but it barely matters because even if it was 20% it would require that the average user was going through a gram a day. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocaine_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocaine_in_the_United_States
- lucioperca 6y agoGermany consumes 27 fish sticks (2 pounds) per year and person. So I do not know if the American marketers where successful. https://www.br.de/wissen/fisch-fischstaebchen-alaska-seelachs-100.html https://www.br.de/wissen/fisch-fischstaebchen-alaska-seelach...
- verst 6y agoI can confirm I never had fish sticks in the US since moving here for college, but I've had lots of fish sticks during my childhood in Germany.
- andi999 6y agoProbably 100 pounds per year per child...
- deltron3030 6y agoIn Germany, Captain Birdseye (Iglo) TV spots ran on heavy rotation, so much that there was serious backlash when parents bought other brands, (e.g. house labels from supermarkets). My parents tricked me by guarding an older Iglo packaging and then swapping it before putting it into the fridge.
- leokennis 6y agoCan confirm this was also the case in The Netherlands. As a child. fish sticks from "Kapitein Iglo" where a delicious treat. Other fish sticks were not to be consumed.
- tluyben2 6y agoYes, I did know them as ‘fish’ exclusively before I dared to try sliptong, haring and paling; never ate a fish stick after that in my life.
- srtjstjsj 6y agoI saw that as "222/55" = 4 (almost exactly) and then notice the text that shifted the the unit scales significantly. Mixing numbers with non-boilerplate text is confusing.
- Causality1 6y agoFish sticks are definitely hit or miss with Americans. When I was young I had friends who served and ate fish sticks but my family didn't and neither did any of our relatives. We ate fried fish all the time but it was typically fresh caught from a river or lake.
- protomyth 6y agoI remember eating fish sticks as a kid in the late 70's when we were poor. Not sure if it was cheap store bought or a government thing. We also fished a lot and ate that. This is probably why I still have a visceral, somewhat irrational "poor people food" reaction to fish dishes. Does irritate the heck out of my Dad to this day that both his kids have the same reaction. He loves salmon, so not cheap.
- 082349872349872 6y agoI once heard a story from a Newfie: they were poor, and always had lobster lunches. Rich kids got peanut butter sandwiches. World Ends At Midnight Tonight! (12:30 in newfoundland) Bonus lyric: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-rB0pHI9fU&t=95 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-rB0pHI9fU&t=95
- vagrantJin 6y agoI would have thought you wouldn't like fish because you had too much of it, but 'poor people food'?
- tpush 6y agoWhat is a ""poor people food" reaction"? Do you not eat food that's eaten predominantly by poor people?
- tluyben2 6y agoWhere I am from, anything fried in batter is considered poor people food and indeed I avoid it but mainly because I do not like fatty taste like that.
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- crazygringo 6y agoWow. I'm from New York, and have never once in my life even seen a fish stick, much less eaten one, and I went to public schools my entire education until college. The only reason I've ever even heard of them in the first place was that famous South Park episode about Kanye misinterpreting them as "fish dicks". So this is fascinating to me... but who does eat them? Is it a geographical thing, or class thing?
- mywittyname 6y agoIt's a class thing, and definitely a midwestern thing. I ate them as a child because they were dirt cheap and I could make them on my own. Often, I ate mine with a box of Kraft Mac & Cheez. The modern equivalent is probably frozen chicken nuggets. You've probably seen them at restaurants. Something like the Fillet-o-Fish. Other fast food joints offer similar items during lint. They aren't bad. As is typical with frozen, deep fried food, they really don't taste like anything. So I wouldn't really go out of your way to try one. The IQF fish fillets you can get in the grocery store are better in every respect.
- labster 6y agoI think you mean Lent, the 40-day (minus Sundays) season when traditional and mainline Christians give up a physical pleasure, like red meat or chocolate, as a sign of repentance and devotion. Not lint, the detritus that comes out of the clothes dryer, from the word linen. New startup idea: the lintless dryer.
- mywittyname 6y agoYes, that's what I meant. I haven't been to church in decades, so I haven't seen Lent spelled out in a long time.
- labster 6y agoJust curious, do you speak English with an accent that has the words Lent and lint pronounced the same, or nearly the same? For example, do you pronounce "pen" and "pin" identically? The sounds are close, but in some accents the words are pronounced exactly the same.
- mtnGoat 6y agoNot gonna lie, fish sticks are a guilty pleasure of mine. :)
- sudosteph 6y agoSame here. But only when smothered with ketchup and ranch!
- mtnGoat 6y agoI smother mine in tartar sauce. ;)
- hedberg10 6y agoAs a fellow connoisseur: Make them yourself. Ramsay has a recipe. Much, much better. I didn't even know that was possible, or allowed. I expect to be clubbed to death by an angry white bearded fish sticks peddling boat captain any minute now.
- coldcode 6y agoA friend of mine grew up calling them squarefish for some reason. It's like an abstraction of fish.
- ouid 6y ago>There is perhaps nothing more quintessentially American than the fish stick. uh....
- mcv 6y agoThere must be hundreds of things that are the most quintessentially American thing while also being popular in the rest of the world. The only thing I can come up with about which you could credibly say that "there is perhaps nothing more quintessentially American", is American Football. Literally the entire rest of the world plays regular football instead. There are American Football leagues outside the US (or there is at least one), but my impression is that they rely very strongly on American athletes who couldn't quite make the NFL. Everything else that feels quintessentially American (apple pie, fast food, ketchup, fish sticks) is less quintessentially American than that.
- michaelt 6y agoThe statue of liberty? Cowboys? Rodeos? Hollywood? Superhero movies? Gun shows? Harley-Davidson? McDonalds? For-profit healthcare? Putting flags on everything? Greeters in stores?
- mcv 6y agoYou've got a few good ones in there. The Statue of Liberty comes from France of course. I believe Australia also has cowboys, but I can imagine the culture around it, including rodeos, is very American. The others? Well, maybe. Most of them are not strictly limited to the US, but the US does tend to put a very unique spin on them. For-profit healthcare exists elsewhere, but medical bankruptcy might well be strictly limited to the US. I'm willing to settle for medical bankruptcy being the most quintessentially American thing.
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- I-M-S 6y ago
- shajznnckfke 6y agoI noticed that the supermarket near my house has a separate freezer section for seafood (maybe it needs a different temperature than the main freezer?). About half of it is fish sticks or some other kind of fried fish/shrimp (mostly carbs on the nutrition info), and the other half is fried fish fillets of various kinds (a lot more protein). I was curious what a good frozen fish fillet to buy would be, that would be easy to cook and healthy. It’s not an ingredient I have any experience with.
- whynaut 6y agoI would recommend salmon, if you like the taste. Very healthy, cooks quickly, can be made a number of ways.
- GarvielLoken 6y agoSalmon if you get it, here in the Nordic it is considered high class food, usually expensive.
- ganzuul 6y agoFried crispy in oil, sprinkled with lemon, and a side dish of steamed peas and bearnaise sauce they are delectable.
- smcameron 6y agoBest use of fish sticks I know of is fish tacos. I don't like the usual fish taco sauce, so I use a remoulade, and treat them as if they were shrimp poboys. I also use flour tortillas, just because I like them better than corn, and the corn tortillas always break on me. (Every once in a while, I'd get excited to try fish tacos at a restaurant and end up being disappointed. This went on for decades. Subbing flour tortillas for corn and remoulade for the usual fish taco sauce makes fish tacos work for me.) Make remoulade ahead of time (something like, mayo, sour cream, tartar sauce, hot sauce, pickle juice and horseradish mixed is what I do... or better yet, look up how to make a proper remoulade). Shred some cabbage. Make a pico de gallo. Make the fish sticks (or breaded fish fillets if you want to get fancy) as per directions (typically, bake in oven at 425 for 20 minutes, flipping once). Assemble fish tacos: 1. Heat flour tortillas directly on burner to char them slightly. (do not skip this step!!!) Keep them moving, a pair of tongs helps here. 2. Apply a slathering of remoulade 3. Put some shredded cabbage on 4. Put fish sticks/fillets on. 5. Put some pico de gallo on. 6. Squeeze some lime juice on (do not skip this step). Chow down. Would they be better with fresh fish fillets battered and fried for the occasion? Yes, but who's got time for that when you're wondering what to make for dinner and you happen to have some fish sticks in the freezer. Because the fish sticks are incorporated into a fish taco with all sorts of other delicious ingredients, the lameness of the fish sticks as compared to a proper piece of fried fish is reasonably disguised, and the sum of the parts is in my experience pretty damned delicious. Before I hit upon this fish-stick-taco idea, I hadn't had a fish stick in decades, but I've made these twice in the last month and now they're in my regular rotation.
- known 6y agoAs per statistics Fish is good for healthy heart
- ulisesrmzroche 6y agoWow, fish sticks on the rise? I was delivered to the wrong galaxy, that’s for sure.
- codeulike 6y agoFor Brits: This article is about Fish Fingers
- wjdp 6y agoLuckily South Park had prepared me!
- mcv 6y ago> "Where else but in this nation could one freeze processed whitefish into a brick, cut it up into deep-friable strips, and ship it to a landlocked region like Kansas for immediate consumption?" How about anywhere else in the world? I know fish-sticks were pretty popular (and heavily marketed) in Netherland in the 1980s. They may have been invented in the US, but they exist elsewhere. I remember they used to be somewhat popular with kids. Whether that was because of the marketing or because it's a convenient form (boneless and fried), I don't know. Adults generally prefer slightly more 'real' fish.
- bakuninsbart 6y agoFish sticks weren't even invented in the US, it is a British thing (called "fish fingers" there), and the earliest recipes date back to the 19-00s.
- robaato 6y agoSlightly off topic, but reminds me a little of the story of Norway managing to market salmon to Japanese as sushi option. https://www.npr.org/2015/09/18/441530790/how-the-desperate-norwegian-salmon-industry-created-a-sushi-staple https://www.npr.org/2015/09/18/441530790/how-the-desperate-n...
- dalbasal 6y agoThis is a great story. Not necessarily for the story, but for the gall of Norway insisting on teaching Japan how to eat sushi. Next up: Poland explains to America that they've been doing ribs wrong.
- robaato 6y agoI think it was more serendipity re lots of salmon available to export, and large potential market if hurdles can be overcome... Win, win all round!
- zeveb 6y ago> As William Bradford, the first governor of the Plymouth colony, wrote in a letter in 1623, “If ye land afford you bread, and ye sea yeeld you fish, rest you a while contented, God will one day afford you better fare.” I am pretty sure that what he wrote was ‘If þe land afford you bread, and þe sea yeeld you fish, rest you a while contented, God will one day afford you better fare.’ The letter which is sometimes confused for ‘y’ is actually ‘þ’ (thorn), which in current English orthography is written ‘th.’ Me, I þink þat we should go back to using þ.
- cblconfederate 6y ago... or the iphone
- Markoff 6y agoDid they? 55 million pounds seems like error margin next to amount of chicken nuggets
- shaneprrlt 6y ago> There is perhaps nothing more quintessentially American than the fish stick. This person has clearly never heard of baseball, apple pie, or mass incarceration.
- pvaldes 6y agoThere are many cultural variations. Three countries in Europe love fish particularly (Portugal, Lithuania and Spain). Portugal kitchen is heavily based in cod, and compete directly with fish fingers. Is the same product, just more expensive. Lithuania has freshwater species like pike, and specially carps as a staple product engraved in their culture, it seems. They eat also cod and other marine fishes like herrings. As Spain has more km of coast than the other countries in Europe in several seas (except Russia that is also an Asian country), uses a wider range of species including things that many UK, US and Central Europe people would find probably disgusting (limpets, mussels, sea snails, sea urchins or even anemones). Trying to convince a german friend to eat octopus for the first time is always a lot of fun for us, muahaha! :-= In those countries knowing how to prepare fish dishes is normal and included in the cultural DNA (there is not a psychological barrier), and cod sticks are just so-so. Another possibility among many options and seen as a lower quality replacement for the whole product or the salty cod fillets. Here is mostly a niche food for introducing children to eat fish, but there are easier possibilities widely available (mussels in a can, or tuna, for example).
- leokennis 6y agoUnfortunately, buying octopus in The Netherlands means either buying "Calamares" which turn out to be deep fried rubber rings, or buying pre-cooked tentacles for €10 per 100g, which turn out to be rubber as well. There is hardly anything as delicious as properly prepared octopus.
- zrobotics 6y agoWhat I find truly odd is that, at least in the upper midwest of the US, carp is almost universally considered a trash fish. Sure, it is a bit of a pain to clean and fillet, but it tastes great. Also, wouldn't Sweden and Finland also count as European countries that consume a lot of fish? I've never been, but I grew up around a lot of Swedish immigrants, and fish seemed to be a large part of their traditional diet.
- pvaldes 6y agoI agree that carp is not particularly appreciated in Southern Europe. I don't know why. Is mostly a slavic thing, I suppose. > Wouldn't Sweden and Finland also count as European countries that consume a lot of fish? Probably, but Baltic's Sea situation is complicated (there are some seriously contaminated areas and lots of comb jellies) so many seafood is imported, expensive and sometimes of substandard quality. Salmon is everywhere and is excellent, but finding good shellfish or cephalopods at good prices is more complicated. If I'm not wrong the offer is mostly Salmon, Cod or Herring. Iceland has a particularly high per-capita consumption also, but their population is just too low to have a big impact versus the rest of Europe. From my non-expert point of view, the kitchen in North and Central Europe is very Americanized. I suppose than the high ratio of early emancipation in Nordic countries support fast-food adoption. From France to the South is a different world.
- klmadfejno 6y agoFish sticks are one of the cheapest sources of meat. They're like chicken nuggos but somehow have an even worse ratio of fried breading to meat. A large chunk of Americans prefer to not eat fish, aside from Salmon. But I wouldn't go thinking there's anything special about fish sticks. That being said, I have a hazy memory of, as a broke college student, thinking I should buy fish sticks because fish is good for you and my diet was bad and it was affordable...
- slfnflctd 6y agoIt was a regular purchase for me when I was struggling to make ends meet, and I know I wasn't the only one. Anything to add more variety. Cheap fishstick sandwiches with bakery outlet bread, mayo and hot sauce. Maybe some lettuce if I was feeling a little uptown. It wasn't until I got into looking at macronutrients that I realized this meal was mostly low quality carbs & fats. Nonetheless, for some reason I still have semi-fond memories. The power of marketing indeed.
- jscholes 6y ago> Where else but in this nation could one freeze processed whitefish into a brick, ... Probably plenty of places. E.g. UK has the fish finger: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish_finger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish_finger
- phendrenad2 6y agoLove how marketers get to pat themselves on the back for every product that does well. I'm unconvinced that marketers had anything to do with this, as fish sticks are, I think, a natural extension of hot dogs and hamburgers.