Americans eat about 19 pounds of seafood a year. Iceland eats 200. The gap isn’t about access—it’s about appetite. Or more specifically, the lack of one when confronted with something that looks like it crawled out of a nightmare and tastes like the ocean floor.
So the seafood industry did what any rational business would do when faced with a consumer base that finds its product fundamentally unappetizing: it stopped calling it seafood.
At the recent Seafood Expo North America in Boston, vendors unveiled their solution to the fish problem—seafood disguised as meat. Tuna nuggets shaped like fried chicken. Shrimp burgers that could pass for beef. Tambaqui ribs from the Amazon that look like something you’d tear into at a tailgate.
“Our Taiwanese magic is making tuna taste like fried chicken,” a Tuna Fresh spokesperson announced, which is either brilliant marketing or an admission that nobody actually wants to eat tuna.
The Problem: Fish Looks Terrifying and Tastes Like Fish
There’s a reason 40% of Americans avoid seafood entirely—it’s because they’ve seen it. The ocean is full of creatures that look like they belong in a horror film, not on a dinner plate. And even when you get past the appearance, there’s the taste. Fishy. Briny. Oceanic in ways that make you question your life choices.
The industry knows this. They’ve known it for decades. That’s why fish sticks exist—because nobody would willingly eat a “fish rectangle” if it looked like an actual fish. McDonald’s Filet-o-Fish is probably the only seafood some people eat on purpose, and even that’s debatable.
But fish sticks and fast-food sandwiches only go so far. If Big Seafood wanted to close the gap between American consumption (19 pounds) and global norms (38 pounds), it needed a bigger play. So they borrowed a page from the plant-based meat playbook: if people won’t eat your product as-is, make it look like something else entirely.
The Solution: Rebrand Fish as Chicken, Beef, and Ribs
Enter the new wave of seafood disguised as meat. Tuna Fresh is selling nuggets and strips designed to mimic fried chicken. SK Food Brands is pushing shrimp sliders and full-sized shrimp burgers—because apparently, calling it a “shrimp patty” was too honest.
“It gives them an entry point,” a sales manager explained, which is corporate-speak for “we’re sneaking fish into your diet without telling you”.
Then there’s Friocenter Pescados, a Brazilian company offering spare ribs made from tambaqui—a freshwater fish from the Amazon. The pitch? Fans tearing into fish ribs at a stadium while watching football. Never mind that nobody tears into beef ribs at arenas. The vision is there.
And let’s not forget salmon salami and fried calamari chips—because if you’re going to disguise seafood as meat, you might as well go all in.
Why This Works (And Why It’s Absurd)
The strategy isn’t new. The food industry has been disguising unpopular ingredients for decades. Chicken nuggets exist because kids won’t eat “mechanically separated poultry.” Hot dogs are a triumph of branding over ingredient transparency. Fish sticks turned an entire generation into accidental pescatarians.
But this latest push takes it further. It’s not just about making seafood palatable—it’s about erasing the fact that it’s seafood at all. Tuna that tastes like chicken. Shrimp shaped like burgers. Fish ribs are marketed like beef.
The logic is sound: if 40% of Americans won’t eat fish, stop selling them fish. Sell them “nuggets” and “burgers” and let them figure it out later.
The absurdity is in the execution. At some point, someone at Tuna Fresh looked at a piece of tuna and thought, “You know what this needs? To be indistinguishable from a McNugget.” And they were right. Because Americans will eat almost anything if it’s fried and shaped like something familiar.
The Bigger Picture: What This Says About American Food Culture
This isn’t just about seafood—it’s about how far the food industry will go to meet consumers where they are, even if “where they are” is a place of profound culinary avoidance.
Americans eat 19 pounds of seafood a year. Next year, that number might jump to 22—but three of those pounds will be accidental. People biting into a shrimp burger thinking it’s beef. Fans at a stadium gnawing on tambaqui ribs, thinking they’re pork. Kids eating tuna nuggets thinking they’re chicken.
It’s not deception, exactly. It’s strategic rebranding. And it works because most people don’t actually care what they’re eating as long as it tastes good and doesn’t look like it came from the ocean floor.
The question is whether this trend will hold. Will Americans embrace seafood disguised as meat, or will they eventually notice that their “chicken” nuggets taste suspiciously oceanic? Will tambaqui ribs become a stadium staple, or will they remain a novelty item at food expos?
Hard to say. But if the Filet-o-Fish taught us anything, it’s that people will eat almost anything if you package it right.