7 Quotes by Nicholaas Mink

It leaves its native river at an early stage of growth, and going, even naturalists know not where, returns of ample size and nourishment, exposing itself in the narrowest streams, as if Nature intended it as a special boon to man. - Cassell's Dictionary of Cookery

This means that food is always in the here an now; it is everywhere and nowhere. Yet every time people eat the pliant flesh of salmon they are tasting evolution, natural history and deep time. Indeed, salmon's evolutionary, natural and life histories turned what might have otherwise been a common fish into one of the handful of most important sources of marine-derived fats and proteins the world has ever known.

Salmon so efficiently convert the sun's energy into food because they are dietary generalists. Much like us, they eat everything.

When this characteristic is combined with their extraordinary metabolic and growth rates, a normal fish becomes an extraordinary producer of proteins and fats, which, sometime in the not too distant past, exploded from a chain reaction in the sun.

Not only do salmon efficiently convert the sun's energy into food for humans, but they also deliver that food in meal-sized packages right into the hands, hooks and nets of waiting humans.

Anadromy, in a funny way, produced nature's original convenience food: calorically dense and reliably delivered straight to people's homes in such vast quantities that it seemed limitless.

Because of the king's evolution in highly specialized environments, it has a relatively small habitat and is therefore the rarest of salmon species. King salmon account for less than 0.1% of the globes salmon. Prized by wealthy consumers, the scarcity maps itself onto taste buds, making king salmon an elite food. Unexpectedly, perhaps evolution is even refracted through our marketplaces and our class structures.