In Chinese grocery stores and restaurants, I see about as much veggie fish/shrimp as veggie beef/chicken, and it tastes about as good. But the veggie fish and shrimp take less like real fish/shrimp than veggie beef/chicken taste like real beef/chicken. So it may be that similar effort went into each, and many cultures were less satisfied with the results for fish.
I don’t know if this could be relevant, but some cultures have a religion that allows them to eat vegetables and fish. Some branches of Buddhism, if I remember correctly. Thus less people motivated to work on fish replacements.
if you consider ranking living things by their capacity to feel or understand pain, you end up with fish being lower than large land animals. Also humans more often can develop relationships with land animals than fish, while we can develop relationships i.e. with dolfins; we don’t eat them often.
Does anyone know why a lot of work has gone in to vegetable-based imitation beef and chicken, but not into good imitation fish?
In Chinese grocery stores and restaurants, I see about as much veggie fish/shrimp as veggie beef/chicken, and it tastes about as good. But the veggie fish and shrimp take less like real fish/shrimp than veggie beef/chicken taste like real beef/chicken. So it may be that similar effort went into each, and many cultures were less satisfied with the results for fish.
It may be possible to do better vegetarian “fish” with modern technology, but I haven’t heard of anyone working on it.
imitation bacon is common, immitation squid is too. (Although maybe Australia is different) (as well as beef and chicken as you mentioned)
I don’t know if this could be relevant, but some cultures have a religion that allows them to eat vegetables and fish. Some branches of Buddhism, if I remember correctly. Thus less people motivated to work on fish replacements.
if you consider ranking living things by their capacity to feel or understand pain, you end up with fish being lower than large land animals. Also humans more often can develop relationships with land animals than fish, while we can develop relationships i.e. with dolfins; we don’t eat them often.
Wikipedia seems to describe it that way: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhist_vegetarianism