Dear Mr. Bittman: You’re Kidding, Right?
I know that our readership includes a number of fans of Mark Bittman, the author of the New York Times’ The Minimalist column in the Wednesday food section. (Betsy, for example.) I’ve got to step out today, however, and take exception to something he said in an article about seafood in yesterday’s Dining & Wine section. His article, which is certainly worth a read, discusses the problems inherent in being a seafood lover in a world where the ocean is becoming increasingly fished out to meet vastly increased worldwide demand for seafood. All well and good and true. Knowing for sure what to eat and where to buy to avoid contributing to unsustainable or damaging practices is extremely difficult and seems to become more so with the passage of time (although this dilemma is definitely not exclusive to seafood, as anyone who’s tried to parse out the issue of local and organic foods is aware). It’s definitely an issue worth being aware of.
Here’s my issue with this article:
None of this changed a basic fact about fish: cooked with almost nothing else, it outshines every other animal in terms of ease of cooking and variety of tastes and textures. The best fish dishes — grilled toro, pils-pils, fried shrimp, boiled lobster, smoked salmon, barely cooked bay scallops, you name it — are not only among the greatest culinary pleasures, they’re among the least fussy.
Is he seriously comparing a category including “all animals that live in water” to, say, beef? Toro — that’s tuna — this is a fish, yes. Shrimp? This is not a fish, it’s an arthropod. Scallops? Not fish, mollusks. Frankly, tuna and salmon are not any more closely related to each other than cows and sheep, and the list he includes has three different phyla with wildly different body plans and life cycles. If you add other seafood dishes that he doesn’t list but that would logically also be “fish” under his definition, it would include at least two other phyla as well. OF COURSE there’s a huge variety in taste and texture. These animals are less closely related to each other than we are to any of the beef or pork or even frog’s legs we ingest.
This, in my opinion, is actually one of the reasons that there are so many people who claim to hate all seafood. I’m sure there exist people who have in fact tried a wide variety of seafood and disliked it all, but frankly, I have difficulty believing that category actually includes as many people as claim to hate seafood. I’m pretty confident that at least some of these people are people who tried one or two things, probably fish, and then condemned all other aquatic life as similarly icky. In a lot of people’s minds, there is this idea that actual bony fishes like trout and cartilagenous fishes like sharks and totally unrelated sea life like sea urchins and clams and shrimp are all the same thing and therefore can all be gross or weird tasting in the same way. Admittedly, I have a bent for biology, but come on, people. Jellyfish and mako shark are not even close to being the same animal.
I presume that Mr. Bittman is aware that these animals are in no way similar and is simplifying for the readers, but honestly, I don’t think he’s doing us or the sea life a favor by doing so. Thinking of all sea life as a unit makes it more difficult for people to understand both the unique delights and the equally unique management problems that each species can present.
And really, can’t a mollusk get some respect?
I have no problem acknowledging Bittman’s shortcomings. But I don’t see what’s so offensive about this bit. He’s not writing for an audience of scientists who would see the grouping of different phyla into one category as inaccurate. He’s writing for people who cook and eat, and like it or not, when you categorize animals for eating purposes (in restaurants, grocery stores, calorie charts, etc) … everything that lives underwater gets filed together under “seafood”. I know you have a problem with this, but simple economics and consumer tastes drive that decision, and most people are pretty clueless about biology. And anyway, the only blanket statement he makes about seafood in general is that it’s easy to cook and tastes good – both true!
I actually think larger points that he makes in the article – about what’s overfished vs. not and where various types of fish are raised and caught and the differences between them – go some way toward educating his readers about the range of sea creatures out there and what distinguishes each from each.
More dumb than offensive. If he called it seafood (which he could easily have done), I would have had no problem with that statement. But he doesn’t. He calls it fish when clearly not referring just to fish, and made a comparison that frankly, I find a little idiotic. I don’t actually have a problem with seafood going in the same section in the grocery store — why should I? Land animals get lumped together in the butcher section too.
I get it. For some reason I often see seafood described as “fish” – like in chinese restaurant menus