Four Fish: A journey from the ocean to your plate - Softcover

Greenberg, Paul

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1846140021 ISBN 13: 9781846140020

Publisher: Allen Lane, 2010

Synopsis

This book is available in another title with the same text - The Fish on Your Plate: Why We Eat What We Eat from the Sea (ISBN 9780141031071)

Whether it’s wild or farmed, fresh or tinned, in batter or a bento box, we’re eating more fish than ever before. But what’s the story behind the fish on your plate?

Award-winning writer and lifelong fisherman Paul Greenberg takes us on a culinary journey through the oceans, telling the stories of the fish we eat the most: salmon, cod, bass and tuna. He visits Norwegian mega farms that use genetic techniques once pioneered on sheep to grow 500,000 tons of salmon a year. He travels to Alaska to see the only Fair Trade certified fishing company in the world. He investigates the pollutants that cause mercury build-up in seafood; discovers how Mediterranean sea bass went global; meets a Polish émigré on the Shetland Islands who may have saved the cod; and gets sea-sick chasing blue fin tuna off Hawaii.

Throughout, Greenberg poses the questions many of us ask when confronted with a seafood menu or a supermarket shelf: which fish can I eat without worrying? What does overfishing mean? What's the difference between wild, farmed and organic? Should humans domesticate fish as we have animals – or stop eating from the sea altogether?

Fish, Greenberg shows, are the last truly wild food we eat - for now. By understanding fully how it gets to our dinner table, we can start to enjoy fish in a way that's healthy for us - and good for the world that exists off our coasts.

About this title

Review:

Finally we have learned that food is best when produced on a small scale in accordance with the rhythms of our planet ... Warm and witty, Four Fish takes this concept to the ocean. Seafood deserves the same kind of respect and political awareness as food from the land. Maybe more (Alice Waters, Chez Panisse)

We are lucky to have the exceptional journalist and writer, Paul Greenberg turn his attention to one of the greatest threats to our food supply, the depletion of the world's fisheries ... Greenberg will change the way you think about the fish you eat (Amanda Hesser, food columnist New York Times)

If you've ever ordered salmon, if you've ever slurped a bowl of chowder, if you've ever sat down for sushi, Paul Greenberg's friendly and thoughtful book will lure you in, surprise you, probably shock you, and certainly make you think ... Read this book (Trevor Corson, bestselling author of The Secret Life of Lobsters and The Story of Sushi: An Unlikely Saga of Raw Fish and Rice)

Four Fish is not only the best analysis I've seen of the current state of both wild and farmed fish - it's a terrific read (Mark Bittman, author of How to Cook Everything and Food Matters)

Important and stimulating ... a necessary book for anyone truly interested in what we take from the sea to eat, and how, and why (New York Times Book Review)

Greenberg writes with tremendous knowledge and passion to tell the engrossing story of the impact of history, geography and politics on our seafood, and offers a clear-eyed manifesto for the future of fish (FT)

Paul Greenberg observes ... we are at a significant moment (Economist)

Accessible and enlightening ... It's not Greenberg's way to preach; he's happier letting the facts speak for themselves (Observer)

Required reading for anyone who eats seafood ...Greenberg is an unfailingly entertaining writer, and his book arms you with the information you need to make intelligent choices when you are confronted by the ... offerings at the fish counter (Atlantic)

From the Back Cover:

In the last few decades, humankind’s relationship with the ocean has undergone a remarkable change. The environmental impact of commercial fishing and the advent of extensive fish farming have led to grave and widespread concerns about the uncertain future of wild fish. We are on the precipice of a cataclysm; there is a distinct possibility that our children’s children will never eat a wild fish that has swum freely in the ocean. Are we on the brink of fishing every edible species of fish into extinction? And if so, how can we prevent such a disaster? Paul Greenberg, a journalist who writes regularly for the New York Times Magazine and National Geographic, fears that we’ve reduced the natural variety of fish we consume to just four species: bass, cod, salmon, and tuna—and that, as a result of this lack of imagination coupled with an insatiable thirst for protein, we are dangerously overfishing every one of them. In Four Fish, he deftly uses these fish as a lens to provide a state of the ocean; traveling the world from Alaska’s wild salmon runs to the massive fish farms of Vietnam, he explores the history of these four species as he examines where each stands at this critical moment in time. In Four Fish, Greenberg seeks to determine whether we can bring these four beloved fish back from the edge of extinction. His conclusion? With government intervention, proper management, and above all, public awareness about the fish on our plate, there is hope yet that our troubled relationship with the ocean and the fish we find in it can be mended.

About this edition

• Publisher: Allen Lane
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 1846140021
• ISBN 13: 9781846140020
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304