Pescetarianism — the ethical choice?

Last week I decided to cut meat out of my diet. As I will con­tinue to eat fish and sea­food, I will be known as a pes­cet­arian – not a veget­arian as some would have it. But just how vir­tu­ous can I feel about this life­style choice?

The primary reason for me turn­ing my back on meat is one of health. I find it dif­fi­cult to digest meat, espe­cially the red vari­ety, and I am aware that it doesn’t carry as many health bene­fits as fish, which is full of good fats, pro­tein and vit­amin D – also good for healthy skin and nails. Luck­ily for me I love fish and sea­food, and gen­er­ally ate more of it than meat anyway.

Plenty more fish in the sea?

So, I feel vir­tu­ous in the know­ledge that I am being kind to my body, but can I score extra points by play­ing the eth­ical card? Sadly, I fear not. Gran­ted, fish and their water-​​loving friends aren’t as cute and cuddly as their farm­yard coun­ter­parts, but they are still living, breath­ing creatures that are killed for our culin­ary pleasure.

Aware­ness of the dev­ast­at­ing effect that over-​​fishing is having on the envir­on­ment was also heightened earlier this year, both by the con­tro­versy sur­round­ing celeb-​​favourite Nobu’s refusal to take endangered spe­cies bluefin tuna off the menu and by the End of the Line doc­u­ment­ary. Sci­ent­ists involved in the film pre­dict that if the fish­ing industry con­tin­ues to oper­ate as it cur­rently does, most of the world’s sea­food resources will have run out by 2048.

Savvy shop­ping

But choices for the eth­ical fish-​​eater are grow­ing. Per­haps buoyed by the increased pub­li­city, the Marine Stew­ard­ship Coun­cil (MSC) reports that sales of fish products cer­ti­fied from sus­tain­able sources, as well as the number of such products on the market, are increas­ing.

The blue MSC label assures con­sumers that the sea­food in a product has come from a “well-​​managed, sus­tain­able source”, min­im­ising envir­on­mental impact. Rupert Howes, chief exec­ut­ive of the MSC says that since 2006, the number of MSC-​​labelled products avail­able world­wide has quad­rupled, reach­ing the 2,000 mark at the begin­ning of the year – with 300 of these in UK super­mar­kets and eateries.

The big four super­mar­kets – Asda, Mor­ris­ons, Sainsbury’s and Tesco – all now stock MSC-​​accredited products, as do Marks & Spen­cer, Somer­field and Waitrose. Sea­food pro­du­cers Young’s and Bird­seye have also added MSC-​​certified products to their range.

Still, it’s hard to escape a heavy con­science when eating my favour­ite – king prawns, which are widely farmed and there­fore not ter­ribly sus­tain­able. But last month, Cum­brian Sea­food, one of the UK’s largest sea­food sup­pli­ers, launched the first king prawns to be sold in the UK under the Best Aquacul­ture Prac­tice. Hoorah!

If you want to know what other fishy dishes you can enjoy with a clear con­science, this handy web­site lists the spe­cies of fish avail­able to the UK which the MCS believes are fished within sus­tain­able levels and which do not cause unac­cept­able damage to the environment.

So, is being pes­cet­arian more eth­ical than eating meat? Inher­ently not, I would say. Being an eth­ical eater is all about savvy shop­ping, and this applies just as much for fish as it does for meat.

Image by Flickr user

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Ori­gin­ally posted 2009-​​11-​​04 02:23:00. Repub­lished by Blog Post Promoter

Tags: Fish, Marine Stewardship Council, Marks & Spencer, Morrisons, MSC, Sainsbury, Tesco, Waitrose
Posted in Food | View Comments

Five top tips on how to cook a goose

I’m fol­low­ing the fash­ion this year and cook­ing a goose for our christ­mas dinner. Appar­ently, it’s not as easy as it looks. Luck­ily I’ve got my mum’s top tips for the per­fectly cooked goose.

It being the season of good will and all that, I thought I’d share them with you.

1. Cook­ing a goose is not easy. It’s not like cook­ing a turkey or a chicken. If you’re feel­ing nervous – you should be. Make sure you have got a big enough pan to not only hold the goose but also a cook­ing rack under­neath it. A goose must not cook in its own fat. If it does, really bad things happen. I don’t know what they are, but take my mum’s word for it. Fat needs to run off. A goose can pro­duce a tre­mend­ous amount of fat!

2. Don’t wrap your goose in cook­ing foil. You may have heard that geese dry out really easily (see point one above). This is true. But put­ting foil round it won’t help. And it will prob­ably stick to the bird and burn. So def­in­itely don’t use it.

3. The out­side of your goose must be very dry. To make sure you get lovely crispy skin that’s nice to eat, your goose needs to be dried. If pos­sible, hang it up some­where to dry for 24 hours before you roast it. Pat it down with kit­chen towel before you put it in the oven. If you like, you can very lightly salt the skin.

4. The inside of your goose must be very moist and juicy. Put lots of fruit and juicy stuff­ing in the middle because it has a large interior cavity and it can dry out. This is the trick to making sure your goose doesn’t look like a shriv­elled prune when you take it out of the oven.

5. The fat is useful. Use the fat to cook your pota­toes in. Makes them taste amaz­ing and really crispy.

The cook­ing time for a goose will vary dra­mat­ic­ally depend­ing on its size. Gordon Ramsay recom­mends about 15 mins for each kilo. This BBC video might have more detailed advice … if you can be bothered to watch it – I couldn’t, I rang my mum instead. She says: the oven should be about 150 degrees for a fan oven – and then you just have to keep an eye on it. When the bird starts to get a good colour (and you’ve removed the excess fat to start your roast pota­toes) use a two pronged fork and press into the thigh meet until you reach the bone.?

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Ori­gin­ally posted 2008-​​12-​​23 04:03:00. Repub­lished by Blog Post Promoter

Tags: Chicken, Cook, Domestic turkey, Goose, Gordon Ramsay, Home, Potato, Stuffing
Posted in Food | View Comments