The Ringer:
You might have seen articles about absurdly expensive bluefin sold at Tokyo’s famous Tsukiji fish market during the first sale of the new year. In 2017, a 466-pounder went for $632,000 — an astronomical price that was still a deep discount from the record-breaking $1.76 million someone paid for a 489-pound bluefin in 2013.
Until the 1970s, bluefin tuna was a literal trash fish. If it wasn’t put into cat food, sport fishermen paid to have it hauled off to dumps (after taking a smiling photo next to their strung-up carcasses). Until the mid-1900s, tuna’s reputation was so bad in Japan that it was referred to as neko-matagi, food too low for even a cat to eat.
Now, bluefin is the most expensive fish in the ocean.
I had no idea bluefin tuna used to be considered garbage fish. I do know we are overfishing at an unsustainable level.
As I recall, Lobster has a similar story. Used to be the food of peasants and prisoners.
Yup. My grandmother told us stories as kids of her and her siblings getting lobster in their lunch to take to school and they’d throw it away on the way because they didn’t want to be seen as “the poor kids who could only afford lobster”. 🙂
This is somewhat imprecise. Bluefin tuna spoils quickly and thus was unpopular among the elite until the rise of refrigeration. Lower class people didn’t consider it garbage, but they weren’t the ones documenting history.