Tilapia: should we feel offended?

I’m getting to the point where I’m offended when a nice restaurant offers an appetizing sounding dish but uses tilapia. I guess the name sounds exotic, but the facts of the fish are anything but.

The fish is one of the least healthy seafood options and conditions of farm-raising them are pretty foul.

Can anyone convince me to not hate this fish?

better than Basa but not by much. I won’t eat either.

Not Carp but CRAP !

I’m totally with you normally. I hate it too – smacks of a restaurant trying to be cheap, and you often find it in something like fish tacos at a nice-ish restaurant. My one caveat: I’ve been to some Asian restaurants in Houston that serve excellent Tilapia in traditional preparations. In particular, there is a Sichuan place (Mala Sichuan) that has a tank of live tilapia that serves killer water and oil boiled fish along with all sorts of other tasty preparations.

Ryan, I’d had great fish tacos when we visited CA and always hated that tilapia was the only option in Houston (aside from Torchy’s which offers salmon and tuna tacos). So happy that it’s now easy for me to get great tacos made from quality fish.

It’s also tricky, because “tilapia” covers many species of fish and I’m sure some are better than others, I just choose not to gamble.

One of the few fish I do not enjoy.

What’s especially frustrating is that Gulf fish are perfect for fish tacos. Snapper and grouper were practically created by god to go into tacos.

Before 2001 I had never heard of tilapia. My wife swears it is not a real fish.

I have a different point of view, but then I am also offended by Tilapia on the plate.

After reading “King Solomon’s Ring” by Konrad Lorenz back in grad school (1969 or so) just before he won the Nobel Prize with Karl von Frisch – I got fascinated by Cichlid fishes and really wanted to have a fish tank with cichlids. They are evolutionarily more advanced (one way of thinking of this is – the lower fins, pectorals, started out at the “bottom” of the body away from the head. We are descended from primitive fish so our legs are at the bottom and our arms are at the top. Over time the pectoral fins moved forward until they are more or less at the front of the fish. Think of an Angel Fish, another Cichlid. Cichlids are also some of the smartest fish and behaviorally interesting.

I tried various cichlids and ended up with a pair of African Black-chinned Mouth Breeders. Which you know as Tilapia. As pets, I can tell you that Tilapia are basically the Golden Retrievers of the fish world. Mickey died but Minnie lived on for a couple of years and I got to know her better and better – she did tricks and I could actually reach down with a finger in the water and pet her. I could go on.

But it always kind of hurts when I am eating with friends and they order Tilapia. I try not to be annoying, I know my point of view is far from the norm – but my closest friends know better than to eat Tilapia when I am around. I would like you to imagine that someone (maybe Mr. Burns?) decided to “farm” golden retrievers for meat – and you could get that meat everywhere. Gives you a glimmer of how I feel.

I never order Tilapia and I too am offended when it’s on offer.

Just curious, does chicken or pork bother you?

In case that is aimed at me, Joe, not at all. I teach about octopi in an evolution class and I think they are wonderfully intelligent for invertebrates. But I never made friends with an octopus, or a cow, pig, goat, lamb or chicken. And I’m perfectly happy eating any of them, as well as all other kinds of fish. But Minnie was wonderful, I actually had a couple of dreams where my apartment was full of water and Minnie would swim over to greet me (she did greet me in the aquarium when I came home). I lived alone, that was the last year before I got married, and Minnie was honestly a friend in the way a dog can be a friend. I don’t eat cats or dogs either, although I think I’ve eaten horse meat.

Why do you ask? And if I might ask, do you like eating cats and dogs?

Can someone please educate me on the evils of tilapia? I myself rarely have eaten it, but my ex wife regularly makes it for our two young children and they love it. What exactly are the issues?

My biggest issue is that some/much of the farm raised tilapia is grown in water treatment plants. They live on human waste.

And they’re just not healthy in terms of what people think of as ‘healthy’ within the seafood category. I believe I read somewhere that tilapia is just about as fatty as 80/20 burger meat after cooking.

Also, I just don’t find the taste/texture at all attractive compared to other white fish (eg snapper, sole, seabass, flounder etc.)

Oh, I thought you said “breathers.”
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It’s funny how flavor doesn’t even factor into why I don’t like this fish!

It’s like a worse tasting version of catfish and I really don’t even like catfish all that much.

It’s like a worse tasting version of catfish and I really don’t even like catfish all that much.

That sums it up for me.

I see your point, and that is why I buy shares in real free range heritage chickens and pigs, raised like they were 100 years ago.

Aside from that, factory raised chicken and pigs can’t come close to the insipid texture and lack of flavor as tilapia. Not to mention that they are
healthier to eat.

P Hickner

I had no idea tilapia ate human waste. Good to know. I can eliminate that one from my diet.