As I munch over-priced slices of Marlborough King Salmon, I cannot help but buy into the marketing narrative: pristine natural environment, grass-root businesses and a rugged beauty akin to the Southern Man sporting jandals and Swanndri (the last one may however depend on your taste in men). What can I say? I am a sucker for Kiwiana.
However, this is where I shatter your dreams. Due to the cramped size of aqua-farms, farmed salmon are not actually ‘pink’ in hue. They’re naturally grey.
Worse of all, to make salmon that beautiful colour we love, salmon farmers buy a product known as Carophyll Pink 1 and pick a shade. Yes, it even has a name: SalmoFan. 2
Source: same as footnote 2
What should we do? Riot? Ignore? Cry? All three?
One potential answer can be found in Dr. Sharp’s commentary on the disappointment of ‘imperfect’ produce:
“Does this co-coordinator’s[sic] intent further an elitist project of fancy food or normalise the alerntiy of inglorious produce? Or does it actually show that these spaces are neither both, and complex?” 3
This is not simply the Food Industry’s fault. As we have learnt, food interactions are far more complex.
We must acknowledge how our superficial categorisation of food – “good” salmon is pink, “quality” salmon is darker – is influential in creating the narratives we eventually resent. Deceit within the Food Industry is not merely the result of greedy Big-Business; it is all too often driven by the unreasonable and unsustainable demands we place on agricultural structures within our increasingly disconnected world.
Before demanding the Salmon industry change, we might first ask ourselves whether we would be keen gorging on grey fillets any time soon.
- Carophyll pink is a cartenoid pigmentation supplement used in aquaculture. Source: Koninklijke DSM N.V, “CAROPHYLL – because colour matters”, Accessed 26 March, 2019. https://www.dsm.com/markets/anh/en_US/products/products-carotenoids/products-carotenoids-carophyll.html ↩
- Koninklijke DSM N.V, “The DSM SalmoFan”, Accessed 26 March, 2019. https://www.dsm.com/markets/anh/en_US/products/products-solutions/products_solutions_tools/Products_solutions_tools_salmon.html ↩
- Sharp, E.L. 2017. (Re)assembling foodscapes with the Crowd Grown Feast. Area 50(2):269 ↩
You’ve raised an interesting point, Blair. Should our consumption be blind? Of course, not blind in the sense of not knowing its provenance or ethics, but its appearance. As a vegetarian I can’t comment on the appeal of salmon, pink or not, but I know that although I wouldn’t like to admit it, I’ll more easily reach for an apple without spots, or a particularly beautiful capsicum. It would definitely help the issue of food waste if we didn’t prefer our carrots straight, salmon a particular shade of Pantone pink, and so on. But the question you raised is so valid- in a society plagued by excessive food waste, is it acceptable to demand perfection in our food? Conversely, in a society obsessed with self care and being good to ourselves, is it acceptable not to?
-Hannah
Interesting take- I’m hooked!
As you said, we must consider the farmers – they are under so much pressure to create “perfect” salmon that they must turn to artificial enhancers to keep their business afloat.
There is not only one gillty party at play here. Is it fair to place the burden on the overworked and underpaid farmers, who must battle against ofishal standards for quality, let alone consumer expectations? Or how about the media, pushing this narrative that some less-than-pink salmon is a-trout-cious?
Or, as you suggested, must we look inwards, and figure out whether we are our own nemo-sis? Is our treatment of food really so warped and shellfish that we discard anything that isn’t coloured Salmofan 26 or above?
I’ve got to say, humanity is skating on fin ice right now, and these odd and convoluted standards of food (both in terms of quality and quantity) need to change. We all need to fix this mess, or else we’ll end up going downstream without a paddle.
No pun fintended.
Important ideas you’ve raised, Blair. I find it interesting how we are drawn to the uniform, the shine, the hue.
despite the fact, most of us understand that a blemish on fruit or a different shade of salmon is natural, we are still reluctant to consume a product that isn’t ‘perfect’, why? is it in our nature to want the objectively best bit of produce? perhaps it’s a cultural restriction, and we have become products of a false reality, something we have all played a part in creating. But what to do about it? We could do nothing and not care, have an education program or maybe a small food revolution?!
Wow, that sounds pretty scary. It just highlights how little we actually know about where a lot of our food is coming from!
Your comments about the aesthetic value of food make me think of other issues too like curvy bananas or slightly misshapen fruit that is thrown out from supermarkets in such high quantities…although recently I’ve seen a new initiative in my local Countdown called ‘the odd bunch’ (misshapen fruit and vegetables for a cheaper price), which I think is an awesome alternative. You can get some really weird (cool)-looking carrots!
What a great insight into our 21st century food-landscape!
Following from your assertions, which would lead me to think that our “perfectly aesthetic” foods are a human convention that have been applied to them, I begin to question who should take ownership over, as Dr Sharp puts it, reclaiming our food soverignty.
Additionally, your thought-provoking blog post, leads me to questions the conventions we as humans have put around the aesthetic and origins of our food – and whether we should aim to break free. Apart from salmon and our “perfect banana” as decribed by Dr Sharp, I think towards a more pressing matter. Lab-grown meat, which is a proven way to help alleviate the world’s carbon footprint and mitigate climate change. However, the biggest challenge in getting people on board with this environmentally friendly option seems not to be infrastructure or economy, but human convention. Moreover, the idea what a proper streak or hamburger it.
What I take away from your blog post is that perhaps we need to realise and achknowledge a problem, per say, in our society more intensely in order to understand how to move on from here.
Drawing a parallel to your ending question, can we move on from the notion of a hearty hamburger to choose a lab-grown yet sustainable option?
I enjoyed the humour and light irony throughout the blog, and I am similarly idealistic about the fresh, juicy pinkness of salmon. I would in fact have liked the SalmoFan before now to present to waiters in fish restaurants. But I find it hard to get too bothered about this supposed deceit: there don’t appear to be any health or other negative consequences of dyeing salmon (if that is the correct verb). And I’d probably eat it even if it were grey. Indeed, the “truth” about most products, from cigarettes to fizzy drinks, is readily available to the consumer with only a little effort, sometimes only with the mere ability to read. Rather than worrying about tarted up salmon, I’m more annoyed with the lack of independent thought in a society in which a bag of peanuts now contains the caution: “Contains nuts”.