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Thanks to social media, canned sardines are a scarcity on the supermarket shelf
- steveBK123 2mo agoIf we can get TikTok addled zoomers to discover frozen dinners as well and reduce their burrito taxi usage.. we may just slay the inflation beast finally.
- mminer237 2mo agoI'm the rare breed that's disappointed that every pizzeria around me no longer stocks sardines either. Used to be such a classic, if divisive topping.
- darksaints 2mo agoCanned sardines have been a staple of my diet since I was in the womb. I can’t wait for this trend to die off, it has been so difficult to find them lately. I mean I understand all of the reasons for it, and I can at least appreciate that sardines are the most sustainable form of fishery we have, but goddamn it is super frustrating.
- stevenwoo 2mo agoI haven’t noticed this at my local Costco in Northern California (plenty in stock this week) but maybe I will next week with this making the news. I usually wait to stock up when it goes on sale but I only eat two cans a week.
- CrimsonRain 2mo agoWhich type do you buy? In olive oil? Any specific brand?
- bjelkeman-again 2mo agoDestroying ecosystems beyond a tipping point. And the politicians just care about being re-elected. Focusing on short term gain. ” The decision taken by the Council of Ministers earlier this week on the 2024 fishing quotas in the Baltic Sea is in many ways unique. It shows a remarkable historical short-sightedness, ignorance of the fish and fishing in the inland sea, inability to understand the scientific advice of the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) and - perhaps most of all: the ministers are bending the laws that regulate fishing, ecosystems and the marine environment to the limit.” https://balticwaters.org/en/baltic-sea-brief-60-the-final-herring https://balticwaters.org/en/baltic-sea-brief-60-the-final-he...
- bjelkeman-again 2mo agoThe world reached peak fish catch in the mid-90s. [1] And we now eat more grown fish than caught fish. The problem is that with increased acidity in the oceans, as part of the ocean absorbing mor CO2, we get less algae and eventually less fish. [2] But, yeah, let’s keep fishing until the stocks collapse. [3] They take a very very long time to recover. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/capture-fisheries-vs-aquaculture https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/capture-fisheries-vs-aqua... [2] https://www.ioc.unesco.org/en/articles/ocean-acidification-threat-marine-life https://www.ioc.unesco.org/en/articles/ocean-acidification-t... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse_of_the_Atlantic_northwest_cod_fishery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse_of_the_Atlantic_north...
- ElFitz 2mo agoWhat makes it even more ridiculous is that one could think grown fish are a fine solution over-fishing. But it turns out, many fish farms use caught fish for (part of) the fishmeal and fish oil used to feed the fish they grow. Because many fish we eat turn out to be pescetarian.
- ra 2mo agoYes. And that foodstock is often either processed bycatch from unmanaged fisheries somewhere in the world - or industrial scale processed sardines.
- EA-3167 2mo agoOcean acidification is much more complex than "less algae and less fish." In fact some algae and bacteria will have giant blooms partly as a result of that, warming, and Nitrogenous runoff. Giant blooms consume oxygen in the primary marine trophic levels, causing die-offs that liberate more nutrients, leading to hypoxic and even large anoxic zones. You also have the concern that acifification can lead to (at first) worse outcomes for organisms depending on carbonates, and eventually (potentially) their extinction. All of this assumes that we have a pretty solid understanding of what this system looks like as we wrench it from one feedback loop into another, but it's the best we've got.
- BugsJustFindMe 2mo agoWhere can't you find them? All of my local supermarkets in the US have a million cans of sardines from a dozen different brands each, ranging from like $1.50/can for e.g. Goya in soybean oil[0] to like $7/can for very fancy ones, with the average around $4.50/can for ones in olive oil. They're not gone, just more expensive than last year for nice ones. [0] - sardines come packed in your choice of water, soybean oil, olive oil, extra virgin olive oil, tomato sauce, or louisiana-style hot sauce with additional selection choices of containing herbs or hot peppers or olives, and olive oil ones always cost more than water or soybean oil ones for obvious reasons
- johnnyApplePRNG 2mo agoYea this article is trash. I can find canned sardines anywhere in Canada here right now. They're in stock on Amazon.ca for goodness sake.
- infamouscow 2mo agoTFA explains why sardines sourced from around USA, Spain, Portugal, and Morocco are harder to come by. Where are your sardines be sourced?
- BugsJustFindMe 2mo agoLooking in my cupboard right now: Goya: Spain Bela: Portugal Crown Prince: Morocco Bar Harbor: Latvia Brunswick: Latvia King Oscar: Norway
- markdown 2mo agoThis is bizarre to me. Do you always shop this way? Personally I find a favourite brand and stick with it. There isn't a single product I can think of where I'll buy the same thing from multiple brands.
- BugsJustFindMe 2mo ago
- TrackerFF 2mo agoJust came from a 2 week vacation in Portugal, they even had their own fancy (and very colorful) shops where they only sold canned sardines. Never seen such a range of products.
- alexaholic 2mo agoI assume you're talking about O Mundo Fantástico da Sardinha Portuguesa (The Fantastic World of The Portuguese Sardine). It's obviously a tourist trap and, btw, contributing to the craze.
- WillAdams 2mo agoMy grandfather lived in a time when commercial hunting went from viable to being outlawed --- I was worried that my children might live in a time when commercial fishing ceases to be tenable, but now that seems a near certainty. Consider that we now have more tons of ships in the sea than there are bony fish: https://what-if.xkcd.com/33/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/33/
- buildsjets 2mo agoNow I drive my downeaster "Alexa" More and more miles from shore every year Since they told me I can't sell no stripers And there's no luck in swordfishing here I was a bayman like my father was before Can't make a living as a bayman anymore There ain't much future for a man who works the sea But there ain't no island left for islanders like me.
- elorant 2mo agoI can find them just fine in Greece. Imported from Portugal or Morocco, plus some local brands.
- arjie 2mo agoThe numbers in question are quite wild[0] > The NOAA assessment estimated the Pacific sardine biomass will be at 27,547 metric tons by the summer – significantly less than the 150,000 metric tons needed to reopen the fishery to commercial fishing. Any fishery at less than 50,000 metric tons is considered to be overfished. The assessment estimates the sardine biomass was around 1.8 million metric tons in 2006. Haha, damn. Fishermen must have visibly noticed such a decline. 1,800,000 metric tons to 27,000 metric tons. Two orders of magnitude. Wow. 0: https://www.seafoodsource.com/news/environment-sustainability/controversy-descends-on-pacific-sardine-fishery-over-stock-surveys https://www.seafoodsource.com/news/environment-sustainabilit...
- ydat 2mo ago[dead]
- ra 2mo agoIt's a terrible picture almost everywhere you look. The Antarctic krill population is facing a similar decline due to influencer marketing (promoting Krill as a superior omega 3 supplement). Sardines and Krill are the foundation of the entire oceanic food ecosystems. This is not good.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- flohofwoe 2mo ago> ...decline due to influencer marketing... As terrible as the influencer scourge is for society, I somehow doubt that it was a 3 day social media fad a couple of weeks or months ago caused the collapse of ocean wildlife.
- thrance 2mo agoSure, a bunch of influencers have been responsible for the past century of overfishing and destruction of marine ecosystems.
- inigyou 2mo ago
- tayo42 2mo agoMillions of people are doing 3 day sardine and coffee diets for weight loss? People will believe anything.
- amanaplanacanal 2mo agoAnother version of keto. Protein and fat are pretty satiating. I will say any 3 day diet weight loss is going to be water weight, though
- SoftTalker 2mo agoEggs are cheaper than fish, even with recent volatility. Is it feasible to farm sardines?
- kombookcha 2mo agoI got curious about this and found a lot of people in older threads saying that farming sardines can't be done. Apparently small schooling fish are typically very difficult to farm because they're pretty fragile and easily stressed. Whether that's a technical barrier imposed by the biology of sardines being unsuited for how we do fish farming today, or more of a barrier of "it will never make financial sense to do this because so many in each batch would die" I don't know.
- globular-toast 2mo agoPeople repeat this thing about satiation but it's not really true. In fact, the most highly satiating food is potatoes. Fish is quite high up there, but other "protein" foods like meat, eggs and cheese are nowhere near the top. Oats and many fruits like apples are higher. The really stupid thing about fad diets like keto is you either just start craving carbs because food is miserable without them, or you develop an eating disorder. The only thing anyone should do is eat normal, delicious, home-cooked food made from mostly plants.
- darth_avocado 2mo agoThe oceans are depleted. And some countries with shadow fleets are to blame more than the others. But somehow it’s not even a small priority for most countries. Whales are dying because they are malnourished and that is an indicator that there’s barely anything left. The idea that international waters are available for anyone and everyone to exploit is just wild.
- amanaplanacanal 2mo agoThe tragedy of the commons, on a planetary scale.
- dredmorbius 2mo agoHardin's original essay addressed just that. <https://www.garretthardinsociety.org/articles/art_tragedy_of_the_commons.html https://www.garretthardinsociety.org/articles/art_tragedy_of...>
- jimbob45 2mo agoThere’s really no cause to raise a panic with lab-grown meat right around the corner. AI, FSD, electric cars, nuclear energy, and drones are eating up most of the VC money right now but lab-grown meat is waiting in the wings to take over in the next few decades.
- doy3n 2mo agoI had to make an account to tell you to look again; lab-grown meat isn't at all a given or even a good alternative. 98% reduction in biomass in twenty years isn't a cause for alarm?
- edoceo 2mo agoWhy lab meat? Plants are right here now, require very little electricity, the sun is free, they can't run away, many can be eaten with very little preparation. It's both cheap and easy.
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- jmyeet 2mo agoSo I've been thinking about this. It's more general than social media and sardines. There are now areas of the world with overtourism. Santorini, arguably Venice, Machu Pichu and maybe even Barcelona have more tourists than they can support. It's becoming a huge problem. Why is this the case? It's in part because people have disposable income to visit these places but I think there's a larger issue of why people want to visit these places. I think there's a FOMO element and the idea is pushed by social media in particular and media in general. As another example, I blame at least in part the crazy NYC rent situation on Sex and the City, particularly on rents in the West Village. If you've lived in NYC you know there's so many SATC girlies living out their NYC dreams and not all of them have trust funds. You see this reflected in rents too. One side of 14th Street is Chelsea. The other side is the West Village. Rents on the Chelsea side are significantly lower than the other side because people want to be able to say they live in the West Village. On a smaller scale you see this where people seem to view themselves as the main character in a movie or TV show and they're living out these scenes in their heads, typically to video and post online. They can be really inconsiderate about it too. Like just today I saw a video that someone in a public beach "dared" go in the water while someone was trying to get a photo of themselves and that other person got in frame. It really is main character syndrome [1]. I think what made a lot of things good in the past was lack of information (and the resultant FOMO). You've seen this in food trends too when Omega-3 became big and fish stocks suffered or when palm oil became big and that's a big problem. Interestingly, China has a system to try and prevent everyone flocking to one or two cities ("hukou") and it's hard not to see the argument for this. I have several triggers when I'm doomscrolling. One of the worst is when someone says "I'm trying the viral (restaurant, dish, bakery, bar, whatever)..." I've always hated this because whatever it is is never worth it. But the psychology of people wanting to show off this way is fascinating. It really feels like people's lives are that empty that they just want that external validation. [1]: https://health.clevelandclinic.org/what-to-know-about-main-character-syndrome https://health.clevelandclinic.org/what-to-know-about-main-c...
- TMWNN 2mo ago> As another example, I blame at least in part the crazy NYC rent situation on Sex and the City, particularly on rents in the West Village. If you've lived in NYC you know there's so many SATC girlies living out their NYC dreams and not all of them have trust funds. Highly relevant: <https://www.thecut.com/article/nyc-west-village-neighborhood-new-generation-women-girls.html https://www.thecut.com/article/nyc-west-village-neighborhood...>
- Hikikomori 2mo agoWhat will tinned fish review guy do now? https://youtube.com/@tinnedfishreviews https://youtube.com/@tinnedfishreviews
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- berlinbrowndev 2mo agoI know this is about sardines, I like canned tuna, oysters and other things. Curious where social media is on the other canned items.
- throw0101a 2mo agoRecent episode of the Odd Lots podcast, "How a Sardine Gets From the Ocean to a Can": > Just a decade ago, tinned fish was hardly a premium product. Most Americans likely associated cans of tuna with thrift. But that has changed a lot in recent years. The category took off during Covid and now shoppers are shelling out for high end brands like Fishwife. Today's guest Becca Millstein started the company in 2020, positioning it as a distinct, artisanal product, more akin to one might find in European grocery stores. In addition to the sheer challenges of scaling, the nature of the business itself has changed, influenced by climate change and geopolitics (shortages have led Morocco to suspend frozen sardine exports for instance). We discuss the tinned fish supply chain and how a new brand positions itself in today's media market. * https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-a-sardine-gets-from-the-ocean-to-a-can/id1056200096?i=1000780414506 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-a-sardine-gets-fro... * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqP18fQi_CM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqP18fQi_CM * https://omny.fm/shows/odd-lots/how-a-sardine-gets-from-the-ocean-to-a-can https://omny.fm/shows/odd-lots/how-a-sardine-gets-from-the-o...
- wolvoleo 2mo ago"Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area." Sadly Agent Smith was not wrong there.
- strken 2mo agoHe was wrong. Animals don't "instinctively" reach a natural equilibrium when they're introduced to a new environment. They eat all the available food, die off en masse, and repeat, until the food sources which were vulnerable have all gone extinct and the only things left are able to survive. See mouse and grasshopper plagues, feral cats, etc.
- teo_zero 2mo agoSometimes yes, sometimes an equilibrium is finally reached. The fact that we see more equilibrium than extinction is purely "survivor's bias".
- Ygg2 2mo ago> Sadly Agent Smith was not wrong there. Wachowskis just don't know any better. You think it's air your breathing now? Oxygen? More like plant waste product. Also no ecosystem is in perfect harmony. It's basically jenga tower where you pull a piece on a long enough scale it looks eternal.
- aaron695 2mo ago[dead]
- IncreasePosts 2mo agoIf we're going to continue to eat sea food, isn't plankton some of the best to eat? It's basically as low on the trophic chain as you can go, unless people start developing a taste for krill I guess.
- recursive-call 2mo ago“Plankton” is a category including a lot of things, most of which are more important in their current role than they would be viable as a protein source for humans. A lot of plankton is microorganisms made entirely out of silica or calcium carbonate (probably not nutritious for humans). A lot more is the eggs and larvae of fish and crustaceans. If humans started eating this, it would cause ecological disaster even faster. I think at some point we’re going to have to normalize eating bugs, at least those can be farmed easily…
- IncreasePosts 2mo agoYeah I totally messed that up. I meant to say sardines, and say unless people want to start eating krill and plankton. It's just too hard to check my posts when I'm weaving between traffic on the highway
- Animats 2mo agoLocally in Silicon Valley, Costco and Safeway are both out of stock on sardines. Kippered herring is in stock, though.
- Animats 2mo agoTrader Joe's is out of stock, too.
- aucisson_masque 2mo agoI got two dozen of canned sardines at home, selling for 100$ each.
- BrtByte 2mo agoWe have apparently reached the stage of the attention economy where even sardines can experience a demand shock because someone branded eating only one food for three days as a "diet"
- cma 2mo ago>We have apparently reached the stage There used to be only 3 TV channels or so. You had things like Johnny Carson jokes causing a toilet paper shortage. In Britain, Delia Smith's How to Cook caused 10% swings in egg sales, far more abundant and harder to affect than something like inventories of sardines. https://www.bbcamerica.com/blogs/british-icon-of-the-week-delia-smith-the-doyenne-of-u-k-cookery--1016238 https://www.bbcamerica.com/blogs/british-icon-of-the-week-de...
- account42 2mo agoA lot of that is more about lack of buffer in grocery supply chains rather than the scale of the induced demand.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- linuxhansl 2mo agoDarn, originally from northern Europe, I have always enjoyed sardines. I was wondering why they are suddenly harder to get. I can't believe a weight-loss fad is going to take "my" sardines from the shelves. Also, why only sardines? Any fatty fish will serve the same purpose. I guess a fad is a fad.
- Aramgutang 2mo agoSardines specifically, because they are small, and therefore have amassed less mercury than the other commonly eaten fatty fish. Plus because they're eaten whole, you also get bonus stuff like calcium and phosphorus from the bones.
- cromka 2mo agoNot everyone eats them whole. In fact of all people I introduced to sardines in the US as a Pole, as far as 2015, all of them remove the backbone. Meanwhile I hope the social media influencers leave herring alone and move on to mackerel.
- locallost 2mo agoThis is only going to get worse with AI and not just for food recommendations. Think "where do I go for a vacation" and then the recommendation is pretty much the same for everyone, and you end up in overcrowded places because everyone else got the same advice.
- thomasben 2mo agoWhat a sad world we live in :( Social medias have such a significant impact all over the planet, from overcrowded tourist spots dedicated to taking instagram pictures, to canned sardines diets. Why do people fall for this kind of thing ? I still can't understand it. Is it all just an ego war ? That worries me
- flakeoil 2mo agoIt has always existed (that we do what others say or do), the difference now is that it is at a much larger scale. It's global and spread to millions and millions in seconds. Earlier it was a news paper or magazine or a TV show. It was national or regional and local. And it was slower. It took days and weeks to spread using magazines and TV and word of mouth. Today with social media it is global and it takes seconds.
- Eisenstein 2mo agoNewspapers, magazines and TV shows had editors to curate content, reputations to uphold, and were liable for things they published. Social media has none of those things.
- flakeoil 2mo agoAgree. Today a dude in their underwear can compose whatever they want from their bedroom without any team discussion, no accountability, no responsibility and nothing to lose.
- account42 2mo agoI think we should first ask what proportion of people actually does fall for this. It doesn't take a large percentage of the world population to crowd a few popular spots or buy out what was previously a low-volume market.
- Steve16384 2mo agoBack in the day, adverts used to be obviously just adverts. Nowadays it's very difficult to determine what actually is an advert/influencer, or someone with some genuine facts.
- OJFord 2mo agoTinned sardines are convenient for toast, but if you want to cook with them it's crazy how much more you get your money from the fish counter.
- ljf 2mo agoReally? I need to look into how much sardine I can get for a £1. Here in the UK, for my lunch I've just had a 49p tin of sardines in tomato sauce from Aldi - I used to each smoked mackerel about 3 days a week for either breakfast or lunch, then some years ago turned to tinned. Then in the last year tinned mackerel moved to £1 a tin, from 50p before, so I gave sardines a go and I love them even more. I usually have the ones tinned with tomato sauce, then 60g full fat Greek yoghurt, 100g carrots, 100g cucumber then cherry tomatoes and green salad. A really delicious and filling lunch, at less than 400 calories and with over 25g of protein. Plus costs less than a £1 a meal. Just not one to eat on my office days... I had been feeling rather proud of this, especially avoiding meat for lunch, but maybe I need to find a different protein source.
- j1elo 2mo agoSomeone should use those same social networks to write en masse to those social influencers, the same message to them all: > Look what you've done, dumbass
- JsonDemWitOster 2mo agoI'm sad for King Arthur[1] who genuinely loves his tinned fish and wants to share his passion with the world. He is a good boi and not part of this trend. I don't really like fish. I watch his videos more for the vibes. I did buy a can or two to give it a chance but I still just can't stand it. [1] https://www.youtube.com/@KingArthurReviews https://www.youtube.com/@KingArthurReviews
- 3guk 2mo agoI still find it wild that Tinned Fish Reviews, the parent channel of King Arthur can get 240k subscribers on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnM8PMUe_Kmp4-Ohq4V7Vdw https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnM8PMUe_Kmp4-Ohq4V7Vdw I must admit though I agree with you - the videos are kinda amusing !
- trentearl 2mo agoCanned mackerel is pretty good too.
- geysersam 2mo agoYes that's good, blame social media and not the absence of sufficient regulation or the unsustainable fishing industry.
- pelagicAustral 2mo agoMan, I had some Latvian sardines a few days ago. The can looked like I was about to enjoy a trip to culinary heaven and I was absolutely slammed back to reality, the fish had massive bones that you can try and break but they were extremely offensive to the product. Latvia WTF!!?
- bonoboTP 2mo agoThis is an AI generated article.
- HardwareLust 2mo agoI was just grocery shopping yesterday (Philly) and there seemed to be no lack of the low quality sardines I normally see on the shelves every week? There are no "empty shelves" that I have seen in the two stores I normally shop at.
- t1234s 2mo agoI think they did this with cottage cheese a few months ago and avocados a few years ago.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- getnormality 2mo agoThis is an important problem, and the response can go in starkly different ways. While many in the West wring hands and call for degrowth, China is scaling up aquaculture to create abundance without overfishing, and solving aquaculture's ecological problems with technology.
- 2muchcoffeeman 2mo agoInfluencers are a real fucking scourge to our society.
- gwbas1c 2mo ago"Stuff you should Know" recently did an episode on sardines. I tried a tin because it was cheap, and they're better than I anticipated.
- tasty_freeze 2mo agoI've experienced this recently. My wife has osteoporosis and her doctor told her to eat sardines with bones to get more calcium. She doesn't like eating them straight, so she makes hummus and blends in two cans of sardines. That batch lasts two days, so she eats a tin a day. But in the past year we have had stretches of weeks where we couldn't get them.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 2mo agoI've actually been wanting to try to raise my own. There is a freshwater member of the sardine/anchovy family native to Australia, Thryssa lackeyii. They're more towards the sardine size than anchovy, and they might (or might not) have an awful flavor. But they're not on the list of prohibited-for-import organisms, and I believe I'd just have to pay the fee for inspection on arrival.
- beached_whale 2mo agoMore and more I think we need to fix farmed fishing and stop cleaning the oceans of life. We don't, en mass, hunt for cows or chickens. We farm them. It has an impact but it doesn't take out the whole ecosystem either.
- ljf 2mo agoWhat will we feed the farmed fish (at the moment they are mainly fed wild caught fish and fish oil). Would be amazing if we can feed them something else, but currently wild caught is cheaper, and closer to their natural diet.
- beached_whale 2mo agoWild caught is unsustainable and no amount of washing will change that.
- ljf 2mo agoTotally agree!
- alexk307 2mo agoNot to say that climate change isn't affecting this in some way, but the Pacific Ocean is known to oscillate between Sardine and Anchovy regimes [0][1]. [0] https://www.mbari.org/news/from-sardines-to-anchovies-and-back-in-50-years-local-fisheries-part-of-bigger-cycle-affecting-entire-pacific-ocean/ https://www.mbari.org/news/from-sardines-to-anchovies-and-ba... [1] https://fishbio.com/collapse-pacific-sardine/ https://fishbio.com/collapse-pacific-sardine/
- leephillips 2mo agoThe article and many comments here suggest that a “sardine” is a specific species of fish. In fact, about a dozen species are canned and sold as “sardines”.
- jambalaya8 2mo agopity it can't be salmon mousse gone.
- waffletower 2mo agoI noticed the scarcity a bit in the last few months. I have been giving them to my dog for years for the low mercury omega 3s -- I even had a veterinarian stamp of approval.
- ana_voicearcai 2mo ago[flagged]
- euroderf 2mo agoIt is a very emotionally loaded word to use. But I think it is fair and accurate to talk about the rape of the oceans.
- dredmorbius 2mo agoI'd been noticing very spotty availability of sardines (a long-time fav of mine) going back to last October/November. Some stores are out entirely, others will alternate through available brands over time, but often have slim pickings. I'd suspected an issue with fisheries, and am very sorry to see this confirmed.
- Beestie 2mo agoSo I read the article and a good many comments and surprised no one has mentioned overharvesting by the fish oil pill industry as a major reason for the decline in culinary sardines. This shortage has been discussed for years - long before overconsumption was even a drop in the bucket compared to the fish oil supplement industry.
- f18m 2mo agoBeen to Trader Joe’s 3 weeks in a row now and I can’t find sardines anymore.
- cromka 2mo agoLuckily sardines are not a universally tasty treat and so this is just a temporary fad, until the fitness clique decides on the next big thing.