The last time I prepared frozen fish, I was amazed at the amount of water left in the dish after cooking. Lots and lots of water. I happened to mention it in passing to one of my (at that time) students, and he laughed.
He worked in a fish processing plant, he told me, and one of the things the company did to the product was add chemicals to the fish to make them retain water. Heaver fish, more money, he told me.
Turns out he was right on the money. The Codex Alimentarius, the global organization setting the standards for what's in our food supply, was created in 1963 by the World Health Organization and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Also part of the Codex are our own FDA and USDA--and, of course, the industry insiders, lobbyists and industry-paid consultants that infest our federal agencies.
The Codex publishes standards for pretty much everything we can consume, and in their standards for frozen fish--Codex Stan 165-1989 Rev. 1, 1995, if you're curious--we find the following additives allowed: monosodium orthophosphate, monopotassium orthophosphate, tetrasodium diphosphate, tetrapotassium diphosphate, pentasodium triphosphate . . .
What they all have in common is their ability to retain water. (Well, that and fertilize your lawn.) What they also do is make more money for the companies using them in their products. An interesting study in the Pan-American Journal of Aquatic Sciences in 2008 says this: "Thus, the seafood processing companies have a great concern in retaining this water, first for economic reasons (seafood is sold by weight) and secondly, for the quality of the final product."
First, of course, the money; quality comes second. So they pump our fish up with chemicals to keep the water in them; the fish weigh more, the companies earn more, and we eat fish full of phosphates.
At least we get to keep the water the fish leave behind when we cook them. Bon appetit!
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