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Thursday, September 28, 2006

Learn More About the Salmofan™

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After posting yesterday about how to choose your fish at the supermarket I was interested in discovering more about the Salmofan™. Boy, did I ever.

The closest comparison for the Salmofan™ is colour swatches at the paint store, which I guess makes sense, because fish farmers are painting the flesh of their fish with dyes in their food.

In a simple search for Salmofan™, I discovered a long discussion thread on renowned information designer and writer Edward Tufte’s website - What color is your salmon, flamingo, or soil sample? - that provides an analytic, objective approach to the Salmofan™ as a tool, but only scratches the surface in alluding to how alarmed the concept of dyed food makes me feel.

My first thought: that can’t be good for us. Dye in food - what for? To sell more farmed salmon, obviously. In the Tufte discussion one commenter says, “In one study, consumers from the East and West coasts of the United States were shown salmon fillets matching the hues on the Hoffman-La Roche SalmoFan??. Colour 33 was preferred by a two-to-one (2:1) margin. This market research suggests that consumers believe darker salmon colours are indicators of higher quality and better taste.”

Of course, that idealized, dark orangy, almost reddish salmon flesh occurs naturally in Sockeye and Coho salmon because of the way their bodies work and what they eat. Professor Salmon has the details on the reasons for the different colours of salmon flesh.

My second thought: if imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, then wild Pacific salmon should be on a pedestal. Wait, I suppose they are in a way. That’s why we launched this website, THINKSALMON.com, to celebrate all the ways salmon matter in our lives.

So how do you think salmon?