A trip to the Asian market

Now I know I started off complaining about the disconnect in out culture between how food comes to the table and how it's grown, raised and slaughtered, but I have to tell ya, Asian countries, which seem to have the least squeamishness about food (see eating live octopus in Korea), also feel the need to make lovable cartoon creatures out of processed foods.

Like this fish, for instance, which I saw in the local Hong Kong grocery:



Why is this fish smiling? Does it not know it is about be fried in oil, submerged in chili sauce and thrown into a can? Do they only can smiling fish, furthering the indignity by letting the unhappy ones go? And what sadomasochist would want to eat only the fish that happily go along to its own execution?

In the case of Asian food markets, I wonder if the images have more to do with trying to easily identify the contents of the can than to mitigate the guilt of eating animals by imagining them smiling and happy before hitting the cannery.

As as aside to the live octopus video, I have to add that there has to be no greater indignity than being made to serve as garnish to the very food your are providing. But this blog is not about sadomasochistic eating. You will have to go elsewhere for that.