The seafood industry bets Americans will finally eat more fish if it looks more like meat [View all]

BOSTON (AP) — The future of fish is looking a lot like… salami? And meatballs. And fried chicken. And breakfast sausage. And, of course, spareribs and burgers. This is America, after all.

Welcome to the era of surreptitious seafood, an industry gamble that overcoming Americans’ relative disinterest in the meat of the sea is all a matter of making fish look and taste less like, well, fish.

“Our Taiwanese magic is making tuna taste like fried chicken,” said Jack Chi, a spokesman for Tuna Fresh, a Taiwan-based company that sells tuna as fried “nuggets” and breaded chicken-tender-like strips. “We wanted to be able to engage in the U.S. market, and we found that fried foods are the way.”

Chi’s company was one of hundreds showcasing their products at the recent Seafood Expo North America in Boston. And among the sea of smoked salmons, scallops and all manner of crustaceans, one trend stood out: The seafood being pitched to the American market is looking less and less like seafood.

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Oddly, the most likely audience may well be the one typically most averse to seafood -- the very young, said Joshua Bickert, a seafood market reporter and analyst for Expana. “If you package it like hot dogs and hamburgers and chicken tenders, you maybe change that mindset at a younger age

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https://apnews.com/article/fish-seafood-meat-flavors-appearance-00fd86440d41da2a67b701836532a589