i think the answer is simply that most of america is very far inland, and seafood is best fresh -- especially if one is especially sensitive to the 'fishy' taste it acquires after about a day or two, even frozen. every coastal community i've ever spent time in has a plethora of seafood restaurants, though i'm not sure if this extends to grocery stores.
Most of the landmass is far from the coasts, true, but the population concentrates at the coasts. So the geography is probably not the reason why fish is less popular in the US. There are probably multiple reasons but one could be that the competition from meat is very strong. Coming from Europe, I was always surprised how cheap meat is in the US.
Yeah all these people talking about Americans not having good taste in food are entirely missing the point. It has nothing to do with that, and everything to do with economics.
There's no reason to eat fish when in almost all cases chicken, pork, and beef provide much cheaper and filling sources of protein. I mean, I love the taste of fish, but even I rarely eat it because it's just that much more efficient to feed myself with chicken and red meat.
The US is a pretty wealthy place. I lived in Italy for something like 15 years, and people there eat a lot of fish too, of varying kinds. By and large, they do not have as much money as people do in the US.
If it were only about efficiency, you'd probably just eat beans and rice, day in and day out, with a bit of this and that thrown in.
Edit: BTW, this book has some interesting ideas about the US and food: http://amzn.to/2oVeaYz
Among other things, he points out that the US does have slow food with a high degree of regional variety: barbecue.
The point is, in the US most seafood at the store is at least $15/lb. Beef (depending on cuts) is as little as $3/lb. Chicken and pork are typically cheaper than beef.
This has a lot to do with the fact that a cow is a whole animal. If you raise one to sell the chuck, you also get T-bones and ribeyes and tri-tips and flank steaks and so on. Most of that goes into the same retail pipeline, so availability is correlated.
On the other hand, expensive fish aren't usually a byproduct of producing cheap fish, nor vice versa.
The US is a pretty wealthy place. I lived in Italy for something like 15 years, and people there eat a lot of fish too, of varying kinds. By and large, they do not have as much money as people do in the US
The US is a wealthy place, but a lot of individual families aren't wealthy at all. Cheap, mass-produced, pre-prepared food (either frozen or in cans/boxes) are the cheapest things to eat. Where I lived - a few hours flight to a coast or many hours of driving - fish was one of the more expensive protein options if one doesn't want to eat fish sticks or the like. Chicken and pork were usually cheaper, followed by beef.
If it were only about efficiency, you'd probably just eat beans and rice, day in and day out, with a bit of this and that thrown in
This misses part of the equation - the stuff folks are eating are time efficient as well. Plus a good amount of folks wouldn't know what to do with lentils and rice: Cooking isn't a focus of schools. I had 6-9 weeks of cooking instruction, and we only cooked (in groups of 4-5) once every week or two and that included things like baking sweets. It is amazing how many folks don't just look this stuff up.
I can't say how much I learned in the class, but I was taught cooking in a US public school, which included etiquette, dishwashing, and table service.
That class was one semester, and it was paired with another one-semester class that taught silkscreening, drafting, welding, wood joinery, and aluminum casting. This was, I think, in 7th or 8th grade.
WTF are they teaching in schools these days if not how to make pancakes correctly and clean as you go?
I've always viewed that as an excuse not to teach it in school, and I've never quite understood. Same with personal finance.
How are you supposed to learn something from your parents if the parents do not cook or are not responsible with their money or refuse to share financials with the child? We know some kids are in that situation and teaching such things is a preventative measure.
FWIW I live on the coast in a place where people eat a decent amount of seafood (anecdotally), and fish is also one of the most expensive protein options. Significantly more expensive than chicken/pork and often even beef. Up until I got my first post-college dev job, my family could not afford fresh fish and thus didn't eat it. Now I live comfortably and can afford it, but it costs as much as a nice piece of beef (like a ribeye), and since I didn't eat fish growing up, I'm going for that ribeye 9 times out of 10.
Economies of scale, no doubt. While there's only a few nationwide grocers (Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, Walmart), there's many more regional grocery supply chains all over the country, that largely offer the same products in every single one. Given any population center, odds are you're within an hour of at least one of these. Insanely impressive given the size of the US.
French companies often offset the price of the largest meal of the day via restaurant vouchers. The meal is that important to them. I wouldn't cover that under, "disposable income", exactly.
While our population concentrates on the coast, IIRC on balance it still ends up being about a 50-50 split depending on how generously you want to define "coast". Also, the demographic trend is people moving towards coastal cities, so a large portion of current coastal city dwellers established their taste preferences growing up inland.
Geography is certainly a plausible component of the answer. But I personally think cultural norms are pretty arbitrary and self-sustaining; there doesn't need to be a deeper reason why "americans like beef" other than our parents did and that's what we grew up with (recurse N generations).
I don't know: it seems like a lot of America's logistics and infrastructure design choices are made with equal consideration to inland and coastal populations, despite unequal size. For example, coastal US cities are designed for car travel despite their density, presumably because that makes them more accessible to "the average US citizen" who lives inland and goes everywhere by car.
There's nothing inherently dense about American "coastal cities". In the U.S., density is primarily related to age--how large a city was prior to the invention of the automobile. With the exception of the oldest cities in the north east, most U.S. coastal cities are not particularly dense unless they are also quite old. LA is a prime example.
You presume incorrectly. It's a tangled web of federal and state policies, along with the (not exclusively) American fetish for cars and low-density home ownership, which led to the car-centric design. And that's certainly reductive, but helping from landlocked states visit NYC and SF probably never played a role.
>Coming from Europe, I was always surprised how cheap meat is in the US.
Lower quality meat is cheaper. Similar quality meat (for example, in Scotland, all the beef is grass-fed, I don't know about the rest of the EU) seems to cost a similar amount in either area.
Speaking of fresh, its hard enough to eat fresh produce when you only shop once a week.
I have done the "drive to the gourmet food store to get fresh fish supposedly flown in by air that's only a couple hours old" and its expensive, like $15 to $20 per pound and interesting and tasted very fresh and delicious but tonight my kids have baseball practice and my son has scouts and weekly food shopping night is Thursday to avoid the weekend rush so looks like frozen fish tonight.
Farm to table is good signalling but not really practical for perhaps 95% of the population if not more. Something from the freezer aisle that can be cooked in the oven and tastes OK is better than something better that I can't eat because I don't have two hours tonight for special store supply runs and homemade preparations.
Also especially inland we have plenty of lakes and recreational fishermen and they all know about mercury poisoning such that they can only occasionally eat what they catch. Someone who can only safely eat one walleye per month looks at me pretty weird for feeding my kids fish every week "You having the pediatrician test them for mercury?"
Its also extremely bad social signalling, I know its wrong to even say this, but fish is generally pretty boring and bland. Its like trying to obtain artisinal flavored chicken or artisinal flavored sea or mountain salts. There's a reason people put a lot of work into what goes in or nearby the dish in a fish, spices and stuff. I'll blow money and time on something that will taste good. Fish isn't in that list.
That depends entirely on the type and quality of the fish. The most obvious example is salmon, which has a great, unique flavor and texture if cooked properly. White fish tend to be more bland on average, but there are some that are very flavorful; for instance, ling cod is absolutely delicious grilled (or seared) with nothing more than olive oil and salt/pepper. And then you have oily fish like herring and mackerel that are generally not cooked, but rather cured, pickled, or smoked, that are flavorful enough to be eaten on their own (but also make fantastic accompaniments in dishes like dressed herring).
In fact, you could say that a lot of lean cuts of beef are "boring and bland" as well: they don't have a ton of flavor unless you add herbs, spices, and/or fat.
(All that being said, I don't disagree with your other points about convenience and safety.)
A lot of fish need to be frozen for a period of time to kill the parasites to the FDA standards. Some types of fish and some farmed and contained fish doesn't need this treatment though. I don't think proximity to the ocean is a good metric as you can freeze fish for a few months with no noticeable degradation in quality. It can be held indefinitely at 0 degrees F I believe as well.
