Who invented fish sticks

During World War II consumption of fish rose in the US, not because Americans had acquired a new taste for seafood, but because meat producers were focused on the war effort. Beef was being rationed, and burger chains like White Castle were even brainstorming new products like chop suey and fish patties.

But after the war, the sale of fish declined and Americans went back to buying meat. So what did the fishmongers do? They came up with a futuristic product that absolutely no one asked for and marketed the hell out of it: the fish stick. The title alone is wonderful, but the paper gives us a great look at how a food product can be created, marketed, and ultimately sold to American consumers even if those same consumers are tremendously skeptical that the product even qualifies as food.

These advances occurred in catching, freezing, processing, and transportation technologies. The postwar years witnessed a rapid increase in the size of merchant marines in many countries, with these merchant fleets adopting new, almost rapacious catching methods and simultaneously installing massive refrigeration and processing facilities onboard huge trawlers. Sailors caught, beheaded, skinned, gutted, filleted, and then plate or block-froze large quantities of cod, pollock, haddock, and other fish—tens of thousands of pounds—and kept them from spoiling in huge freezing units.

Once on shore, the subsequent attempt to separate whole pieces of fish from frozen blocks resulted in mangled, unappetizing chunks. Before the fish stick arrived in Some of the most important technological developments for fish sticks involved freezer technology.

The fish needed to be quick-frozen at sea. When the fishing trawler reached port, there needed to be an ability to ship frozen products by rail and truck. Supermarkets needed to have a sufficient freezer section.

Then households needed to have a refrigerator with a freezer. By the early s, the big moment had come:. A newspaper article even claimed that that this was "the most outstanding event" in seafood since the early s. Fish sticks signaled the modern era of easy-to-prepare, nutritious foods. This shift toward precooked foods, and sea foods in particular, represented "the first big improvement in the use of raw food materials since early days of the introduction of quick freezing.

Just as important, the fish stick would "help increase the per capita consumption of fish. As noted, fish sticks met with immediate success. Within months of their introduction in , they had grabbed 10 percent of noncanned fish sales. However, there is no doubt that E. Robert Kinney popularised the fish stick among Americans, and among American youngsters in particular. He grew up in Maine and started a canning business called North Atlantic Packing Co than began canning crabs that otherwise would have been discarded by lobster fishermen.