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This made me curious about how it was that Clarence Birdseye came to discover the fast-freeze approach that preserves flavor. The answer is surprisingly straightforward - he was a fur trader in Labrador (northern Canada) and noticed when he pulled fish out they froze immediately and were still delicious months later. So if only you could make fish as cold as northern Canada, you could make frozen fish tasty! It was from there that he designed a -45F calcium chloride based belt technique and then a -25F ammonia evaporation driven technique.

https://www.loc.gov/everyday-mysteries/technology/item/who-i...

I like that you can still buy Birdseye brand frozen foods in the Grocery store.
Sounds like he was inspired to try that by the food company of the same name
> Each kilogram of fish sticks produces about 1.3 kilograms of carbon dioxide, which “rivals the climate impact of tofu,” she says. Beef, by comparison, produces over 100 times that amount of carbon dioxide per kilogram.

These estimates vary a lot from one source to another, but even then 130 kgCO2/kg is an unusually high estimate for beef. Common range, I think, is from 20 to 60. For example this estimate is 26 [1] and this is 21 for beef from dairy herd and 60 from beef herd [2].

[1] http://css.umich.edu/factsheets/carbon-footprint-factsheet

[2] https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local

This also depends on what you count as carbon dioxide production. For example, cattle produce methane through gut fermentation, which is a strong greenhouse gas. However, it contributes to warming only to the extent the cattle stocks are growing. If cattle numbers are stable for some amount of time, than the methane produced by them does not contribute to new warming, as it forms closed cycle: methane decomposes to CO2 in atmosphere in a decade or two, which is then captured by grass, which is eaten by cattle. The result is a steady state of stable fraction of CO2 and CH4 in atmosphere, and no warming.

What really does contribute to climate change though is emissions that come from fossils, like fuel for machines, electricity for processing and storage, and gas for artificial fertilizer. The variation in reported numbers is caused by agenda, ie whether one wants to accurately assess impact of beef production, or whether they want to paint beef as worst thing ever.

> These estimates vary a lot from one source to another, but even then 130 kgCO2/kg is an unusually high estimate for beef. Common range, I think, is from 20 to 60

Still, we'd be much better off, had we stopped eating beef (and other ruminants) and instead switched to pork, poultry and fish.

Another thing British and Americans have a different name for. We call them fish fingers. If you ask for fish sticks in the UK you will probably get the pinkish crab sticks that don’t have breadcrumbs
Fish fingers sounds funny to me as an American, but actually it's more consistent. Chicken fingers in the US are the same product but with chicken instead of fish.
Indeed. Although I'm mostly aware of the American equivalents of British terms, in this case it caught me off guard. Seeing the headline I had no idea what it was talking about, and I thought it might mean "fish sticks" as in fishing using spears! I wonder what my American counterpart might have thought if the headline used "fish fingers" instead... maybe that the article was about the unlikely evolutionary success of vertebrate fingers‽
If you go somewhere upmarket in the UK, they will be cod goujons, and will be an artfully irregular shape.
> pinkish crab stick

interesting, these are Japanese Surimi, no?

I even thought the article was about the "crab" sticks.
Above all I find fish sticks convenient.

I can take only as many as needed out of the box and put the rest back into the freezer for next time. They only take a few minutes to fry and go well with a variety of side dishes which gives flexibility. I do not even mind putting them on burgers instead of patties when I am not willing to make some (I usually cook freshly and do not like pre-made patties at all) (-> flexibility again).

Such an improvement over fishbricks:

> Birdseye developed a novel freezing technique...but when used on fish, the method created large blocks of intermingled fillets that, when pried apart, tore into “mangled, unappetizing chunks” .... The fishing industry tried selling the blocks whole, as fishbricks. These were packaged like blocks of ice cream, with the idea that a housewife could chop off however much fish she wanted that day.

What a world.

Funny that we have certain collective nouns that don't cross meat types.

-- Fish sticks

-- Chicken nuggets or fingers

-- Shrimp poppers

And beef / pork don't seem to ever fall into those. (pork sticks?? Beef nuggets??)

Maybe because beef, pork seem worthy of preserving identity as a piece of a distinguishable reputable whole parent, while fish, chicken, are sometimes almost.... um, extruded and need a noun of their own after such process?

Fwiw - in Ireland & UK, they're fish fingers, not fish sticks.
What's a sausage if it's not an extruded pork stick?
I think the secret sauce for fish sticks’ success is tartar sauce.

By themselves fish sticks are meh, but when dipped in tarter sauce, the taste is sublime.

The shape and consistency of fish sticks make it easier to dip in tartar sauce.

Tomato ketchup is also pretty good - even if broadsheet journalists might dismiss it as "a bit childish":

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/dec/15/how-to-...

I like fried battered fish with tartar sauce, but cocktail sauce (ketchup and prepared horseradish) is better IMO and malt vinegar is several factors better.
"The fishing industry tried selling the blocks whole, as fishbricks."

Now that sounds unappealing.

But fishsticks were always great as a kid.

I don't know why it isn't mentioned that they were good for dipping. You could dip them in tartar sauce, inferior to british fish and chips, but kids didn't mind, they were even amenable to ketchup or mayonnaise.

> Each kilogram of fish sticks produces about 1.3 kilograms of carbon dioxide, which “rivals the climate impact of tofu,” she says. Beef, by comparison, produces over 100 times that amount of carbon dioxide per kilogram.

That's fascinating. I wish they'd explain why.

I've mostly seen statistics about water usage for dairy milk production, but it takes a lot of water and food to raise a cow to maturity. Fish (if harvested sustainably) care for themselves until caught, so it makes some sense to me that planting, growing, harvesting, and processing soybeans into tofu would have similar impact to fleets of ships traveling the ocean catching fish.

A few years ago I read and enjoyed the book "The Omnivore's Dilemma" by Michael Pollan. The author follows three different meals from farm to table as completely as possible given the nature of modern food production. It's a great read for someone who wants to know more about where food comes from and how it gets here, and it's definitely made me think about what I'm eating.

That beef number is going to vary widely. The low end might be grass-fed beef on rotational grazing regenerative grassland fed a methane suppressing supplement versus beef raised on factory farmed corn grown on land created by burning down the rain forest.
As a someone who came from a fish-eating nation (Japan), it's great to know that fish sticks are sustainable. The collective memory there was that Japan was condemned as fish abuser. People felt unfair but also were ashamed at the same time. (Over-fishing was/is at least partly true after all.)

However, I don't have any memory around fish sticks associated from my childhood in Japan. Fried (frozen) fish fillets are popular, but they are more chunky. "Fish sausages" used to be popular and felt kind of similar, but it was even more artificial. I wonder where it went. It doesn't make sense not have it there.

If Seaspiracy is to be believed, there's no such this as sustainable fishing at scale. In order to catch this much fish, you're going to kill tons of other animals, discard tons of nets and other fishing equipment, saying it's "sustainable" is probably a lie in most every sense.
> The collective memory there was that Japan was condemned as fish abuser

I don't know about the over-fishing, but I do remember reading a lot about whaling in Japan and some incidents about fishermen hunting whales in sanctuaries. Guess that could also be folded into "condemned as fish abuser".

I suspect the stuff that went into "fish sausages" is used to make surimi nowadays.
Fun fact, Birds eye belong to the Nomad Foods which resides in Tortola - British Virgin Island. I guess there neither there for the fish nor the weather.

https://www.icij.org/investigations/paradise-papers/british-...

And here I am amazed that British schoolchildren in the 70s apparently ate on proper plates with cutlery.
How do kids eat in other places or at other times? I think kids eat from plates with cutlery in most of Europe both now and in the past.

Do kids in the US use plastic cutlery and paper plates or something (and drink from red solo cups)?

How the sausage is made:

https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/47/5b/d9/21b5da4...

Bon appetit!

I'm unsure of why you shared this? Normal people are unlikely to have a plate freezer at home, which this seems to require in order to make these at home. And I'm not sure how many people keep minced fish meat around at home anyways.
That fish sticks episode of South Park is so good. Can't wait to watch it with my grandkids and admire the puzzlement in their faces.
I'm convinced having to eat fish sticks as a child has caused me to hate the taste of fish as an adult.
How healthy are the fish sticks?
> In 1953, 13 companies produced 3.4 million kilograms of fish sticks. A year later, four million kilograms were produced by another 55 companies. This surge in popularity was partly due to a marketing push that stressed the convenience of the new food: “no bones, no waste, no smell, no fuss,” as one Birds Eye advertisement proclaimed.

A dirty lie, at least when it comes to "no waste", when you consider that the skin, head and tail of the fish, or about 1/3 of its edible tissue, is thrown away as garbage, and lucky if it's made into pet food.

This is the convenience and advantage of rearing entire generations on food that doesn't look like food: that they never wonder what happened to the rest of the animal.

No respect for an other living thing.

If people bought whole fish instead, do you think those parts wouldn't still go to waste? I guess you could use them for stock, but really, how many people would bother. If anything, I would guess food processing companies would have an easier time finding some use for them (like you said, as pet food or whatever).
Industry factory farming is many horrible things but its not wasteful. They use every part of the animals to increase profit margins.
Why would you make such a confident assertion, filled with such vitriol, when it's completely wrong? I don't understand your motivation for this.

Here, this link will set you straight, and it has a real discussion of the actual downsides and consequences of this practice.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish_meal

Rather than what you said, which is complete nonsense. I'd accuse you of lying, since you used that word, but I'll be charitable and assume you were exhibiting ignorance.

Well, the upside is that if some time before we make cold fusion a reality we are able to make safe, nutritious and cheap artificial meat & co., at least it's going to be more easily accepted by folks that won't expect to also see the other body parts.
Is that what it means? I take that as "you won't need to dispose of waste"...
1> So you like fish sticks?

2> yes!

1> So you like to put fish sticks in your mouth?

2> yes!

1> So you are a gay fish.

2> I'm not a gay fish, I'm the voice of a generation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fishsticks_(South_Park)

> Each kilogram of fish sticks produces about 1.3 kilograms of carbon dioxide, which “rivals the climate impact of tofu,” she says. Beef, by comparison, produces over 100 times that amount of carbon dioxide per kilogram

That's an u̶n̶f̶a̶i̶r̶ comparison. (apparently they did consider some of my complaints)

Does it take into account the additional co2 that fishing boats emit? Esp. given that they usually use far more harmful fuels than the gas used on roads.

Comparing a dish to the raw. material is unfair. Fish sticks should be compared to the environmental. impact of beef stir fry or sukiyaki or at the very least, an order of burger and fries (per kg)

Then there is the fact that caloric densities vary. comparisons should be made per portion, not unit weight.

co2 is also a complex topic. There is carbon that is recaptured in replanting crops. Beef also primarily produces methane, so I'm not sure if the co2 impact of beef is the proportional impact in methane or actual co2. Methane has a much shorter term. impact vs co2.

Lastly, trawling has massive ecosystem destroying impacts that don't show up on co2 counters. We must also consider that in sustainability calculations.

All in all, fish sticks might be sustainable, but these back of the napkin numbers are rarely representative of the complex systems that drive climate change.

____

to be fair, I love fish. They are healthier, easier to do sustainably than red meat, you need less of it to flavor food and it is easier to use 100% of it vs red meat animals. Lastly, salt water fish have straight up more flavor. (too much for some)

If seafloor trawling is banned and ships are moved over to better refined petroleum products, then fishing can be quite sustainable.

There’s a class of adult baby food that fish sticks fall under. It’s food that’s conceptually shaped for kids but adults have no problem eating this stuff with a straight face. Wendy’s nuggets look like chicken feet.

I think as we figure out how to make protein alternatives that taste like meat, we’ll see a small rise in adult baby food, things shaped like a slim jim, etc.

Then we can finally fulfill our prophecy of being adults that wear children’s winter jackets and eat food that’s shaped like toys, and just really come full circle with the aging into infancy.