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Why is the Asian Carp so hard to stop?

Why don't Americans eat Asian carp?

  • Here is the news about the invasion of asian carps. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/asian-carp-woes/ Actually, I don't understand why the Americans refuse to eat them. The US government is trying to keep these fish off the Great Lakes by building a dam that will probably cost $2.5 billion dollars. How do Americans think of this? The asian carp contains 4 species that are particularly favored by the Chinese. They can be delicious if they are correctly processed. Why don't you consider using these fish to make meat balls? If so, people won't be bothered by the fish bones.

  • Answer:

    1. Carp are not native to the Americas. They were first introduced to the US in the mid-1800s. As a result, there's no long history of their being seen as a food fish. 2. Carp in the US are not generally farmed. That means that the fish eat what they find. Unfortunately, carp have a high tolerance of pollution. That means that carp can be ingesting things that people don't really want to eat. 3. Carp in the wild, eating what they find, tend to have a 'muddy' flavor, not something considered desirable. While not all carp are 'muddy', the ones most Americans come across, unless farmed, are. Other fish with bottom-feeding habits are equally deemed undesirable. In fact, American English has a term -- "bottom-feeder" -- that is utterly negative in its connotations. 4. Wild carp are perceived -- rightly or wrongly -- as damaging the native fisheries, thus making more desirable species less available. With all of this said, there is growing interest in farmed carp, particular from immigrant populations for whom the eating of farmed carp is of long tradition. http://www.nps.gov/miss/naturescience/carphist.htm

John Burgess at Quora Visit the source

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Most Caucasian Americans don't like to eat fish, especially when it looks like fish. If you go into a US supermarket and look at the processed fish meals, they are usually cut into fillets and fried. Looking at the packaging, you would never know it was fish, let alone what species of fish. This is very different from the Chinese, who often want to see their fish swimming in a tank and killed and prepared in front of them so that they know it's fresh. My favorite Chinese recipe is steamed carp, where the whole carp is steamed, and seasoned with soy sauce, vinegar, ginger, fermented rice and green onion. Even though I have prepared this dish for Americans, I could never imagine them preparing this dish for themselves at home.

Paul Denlinger

Because carp isn't very nice to eat, in comparison to other fishes available in North American fish markets. It has a very coarse texture, which is somewhat masked by sauce in Chinese dishes. Traditionally it's a popular dish in China due to its availability. However I noticed on my recent trips to China that its place on restaurant menus has been eclipsed by more popular salt-water fishes. As a side note, in Europe the carp has not been known as a culinary delight for quite some time. In Jules Verne's twenty thousand leagues under the sea, Ned Land, the harpooner from Quebec, expressed his disgust at the mention of the carp...

Jason Li

The short answer: muddy-tasting and too many bones. Yes, it can be delicious, especially when prepared steamed or with chili sauce, but after getting a couple of pin bones stuck in your throat, you too may be inspired to join the list of people I've heard call it "Asian crap"...including myself, at one point.

Charles Huang

I want to figure out too. Carp can be cultured to assure  its quality and cooked with suger and vinegar to eliminate odor. What shocked me is that after decades Americans still don't eat them, it can be caught even near their houses.(╯‵□′)╯︵┻━┻ But I have to pay money for themㅍ_ㅍ

Wu Yixi

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