Gothamist: What's Fresh - Wild Shrimp

-ed

Wed, 03 May 2006 19:07:13 -0500

All shrimp is frozen, unless you're picking it up at the dock yourself..... And I've been getting *wild* Gulf shrimp from Freshdirect for a couple of months already.

alau

Wed, 03 May 2006 13:56:59 -0500

And if you go to Chinatown, you can buy live shrimp, still swimming in the tank. Now that's fresh.

IM

Wed, 03 May 2006 13:51:32 -0500

So you think that shrimp you eat in this town is fresher, even though its probably also from Florida or the gulf or whatever?

Brightliner

Wed, 03 May 2006 13:17:21 -0500

I can never get enough shrimp, but I refuse to go all ga-ga over wild shrimp. It may or may not taste better, but it's just terrible for the environment. The amount of damage to the seafloor necessary to trawl for those shrimp is staggering. With fisheries around the world being severely stressed, farmed shrimp is just fine with me, thank you very much.

luke

Wed, 03 May 2006 12:45:19 -0500

I am also a fan of Michael Pollan (I noticed you mentioned him in a previous column). He brings up an interesting point about Whole Food's ability to create heart-warming stories for their products. I think the "pulling a fast one" that snide points out is really more a case of being drawn to the heart-warming story about your wild shrimp. It is true that you ate never-frozen shrimp, and that's always good, but the fact that you ate them in Colorado shows that the reality behind Whole Food's stories is that WF doesn't always operate outside the industrial food system. Again, that isn't always bad, because never-frozen shrimp probably taste great and you can't get shrimp in Colorado without the help of a plane. I have to agree with Snide though, and say that we should really reevaluate the word "fresh." Food that has been carefully transported is "fresh" in that it has deteriorated in quality. And not to harp on WF (because I shop there too, sometimes), but I wouldn't be surprised to find out that the Flatiron steak you bought didn't come from Colorado.

the snide1

Wed, 03 May 2006 12:21:01 -0500

if you think you had "fresh" shrimp from florida, while in Colorado ... someone pulled a fast one on you.