Opening up a can of tuna yesterday I was wondering ‘where has the rest of this tuna ended up? How long will it be before the whole fish is eaten, and how much will be wasted’?
I’d bet you’re the only one that ate that tuna in the shower though
What can I say, it just feels more authentic that way
Wasn’t there a post on here not long ago with someone thinking the same thing about getting half an avocado? Like “woah someone else is eating the same avocado as me”. This also applies to say, cows. Pretty rare to eat one single cow yourself.
Oh I missed that! But wait, where you can buy half an avocado? Why would you only want half?
I think they meant being served half an avocado on a restaurant dish. Your plate comes out, there’s half a sliced avocado on top of your enchiladas… then you scan the room, thinking “who here has the other half of my avocado?”
My parents are dairy farmers and once or twice we had an entire cow in the deep freeze. Not any more though. It’s barely worth if you take the butchering cost and the electricity from he freezer in account.
If you have the freezer space, a butcher will happily sell you a whole cow, butchered into a mix of steaks, roasts, and ground beef to your specified quantities!
Applies to cities with fishmongers as well, although it’d usually be restaurants buying whole tuna to serve fresh or in steaks rather than canned.
When I was in fisheries the tuna boats would bring the haul of frozen tuna into port where they’d be weighed, counted, and transferred to a cannery also in port.
A lot were fileted and cut right there too, so not all was straight to can.
Now a lot of the cans stayed fairly together by shipment. So I imagine where a lot code was split across separate pallets or shipments might a single fish be sent to different locations in can form. So I would wager the ‘rest’ of the tuna is at least on the shelf next to… itself.
As far as waste though? Some companies are super diligent about their waste streams. Fish meals and such have resale value. Others leave large amounts of parts and material in their shop floors and just power wash it back into the marine waters even while being fined and penalized by regulators. So mileage varies there.
That’s really insightful, thanks!
Interesting, I suppose a single fish then would generally be shared by a single ‘community’ around whichever store sold those cans. But other fish caught at the same time could potentially be sent to another country entirely.
In terms of waste, I meant more at the consumer level. Seeing as cans last such a long time I’m guessing the wastage would be a lot lower than other more perishable foods…
I was gonna write “keep in mind that most canned tuna is skipjack, which is the smallest tuna species, so each fish only produces a relatively few cans.” Then I did the math, and found out that even a skipjack has about a hundred cans worth of muscle on it!
I call this “the Tuna of Theseus”
Are you sure there was only one tuna in the can? I don’t eat cans often but have you ever gotten a different batch of tuna? Like different sizes of chunks, different curl? I wouldn’t be surprised if into one can a sorted batch of similar patches from different tunas was packed. “To ensure the quality of experience”
Possibly, but it’s always been quite hard to tell. Whenever I get cans it’s always in tiny flakes so I guess that could be from multiple tunas if one can needed a top-up etc.
If you get the more expensive brands or varieties it’s more likely to be solid pieces vs a slurry.
If you buy more expensive tuna, you’ll get cuts that are clearly from one fish. Albacore, for instance, I’ve never seen come in that shredded form.
Also, if you’re interested in sustainability, look for line-caught tuna. It’s not the only sustainable fishing practice, but it’s an eat one to remember. In the US, there’s an MSC certification on the can that’s a reasonably indicator that the company practices sustainable fishing.
If you’re getting cans full of flakes, it’s probably not all from the same fish, or even the same kind of tuna.
Hmm looking at the can I got from Aldi in the UK, it says ‘responsibly sourced’ (whatever that means) but doesn’t have an MSC certification. I’ll see if I can find cans that do in future!
I think the MSC certification may only apply in the US. The UK probably has different certifications.
Ah no, I’ve seen the logo before and there’s a report about it here: https://www.msc.org/docs/default-source/uk-files/msc-uk-tuna-shopper-report-2023.pdf?sfvrsn=5309aa2f_7
It feels like you’re imagining a system where people are loading cans from sides of tuna, when in reality it’s probably much closer to the cans being filled by a machine loaded with a hopper just packed full of large batch tun chunks.
This video seems to suggest that quite a lot of the process is manual: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mt3SbqYAbf4
People deboning, sorting it and so on. It’s not entirely clear but yeah they seem to load hunks of meat in which I guess a machine then places into cans.
Yeah they don’t show the actually canning step it seems, but it looked like they were sorting them into different batches and from my limited experience on packing lines things get big batched.
Why is tuna like that? As opposed to say canned salmon which is immediately identifiable
No idea. But isn’t it that salmon meat more sticks together when tuna meat more often breaks apart?
Did some googling.
Tuna is massive and lean by default and has more denser muscle and less fat. Fat holds it together and stops it falling apart. The lean muscle makes it taste dry. Tuna has to be chunked to get anything into a can.
Salmon is way smaller (typically can sized), very fatty and has fast-twitch muscle, all of which lead to a juicier more cohesive fillet.
To think, one shower is all it takes to explore the flesh of fish :D
Shower?
According to OP, that question was a showerthought
Wrong! There’s only the Afri can and the Ameri can
Don’t forget the Domini Can!
What about the can Ada, though?
If only humans cared to see the atrocities they commit every day
Tuna fishing?
That’s morbid
Technically correct
