As an island nation, the diet in Japan has traditionally consisted largely of fish. Over the last decade, though, per-person caloric intake of fish has dropped roughly 20 percent. Rattled by this shift in eating habits, the Japanese fishing industry has decided it needs to do something new to catch diners’ attention, and has set about creating fish that naturally contain the flavor and scent of fruit and herbs.
Before fears of gene-splicing and mutant fish grab hold of you, rest assured that the process is all-natural. As nutritionists have long told us, you are what you eat, and the same goes for our ocean-dwelling friends (whose friendship we usually terminate by eating them). While the fishing industry can’t control what fish eat in the open sea, it’s a simple task to mix fruit or herbs into the feed given to farm-raised fish, which in turn imparts a variety of flavor enhancements and health benefits.
Much like the microbrew industry, several of these “craft fish” are regional specialties. A number of them utilize the citrus fruits that thrive along the coasts of Japan’s Inland Sea, such as the mikan seabream of Ehime Prefecture.
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