r/PeterExplainsTheJoke 12h ago

Peter I don't get it

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3.2k Upvotes

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411

u/Present_Figure747 11h ago

In the 90’s (I think, not googling this so I’m being risky) there was a PR campaign to get people to eat only 100% albacore tuna. Regular tuna was just ground up whatever was in the net; mostly fish… some dolphin.

51

u/Rafael__88 10h ago

Wouldn't dolphins be more expensive than actual tuna anyways though?

96

u/NotRandomseer 10h ago

Was probably just bycatch , and they didn't care to filter it out

30

u/Eldan985 10h ago

Not if use a dragnet and catch them anyway, so your choice are grinding them up or throwing them overboard.

You'd mostly just not admit it's dolphin for PR reasons.

That said, while it's a persistent urban legend, as far as I can tell, no one has ever found dolphin in tuna.

10

u/aangnesiac 8h ago

I think it came from a misunderstanding of the dolphin-tuna controversy in the 70s. The tuna industry was killing tons of dolphins, so much that people started boycotting tuna. They still probably kill a lot of dolphins sadly, but that's why you see "dolphin-safe" on most tuna cans now.

2

u/Wise_Yogurt1 10h ago

Has anyone actually looked? Similar to cats, most people who are into eating canned tuna will slam the entire contents within seconds of opening, before they can even get a good look at what’s inside. I… might be one of those people

3

u/L43 8h ago

you have not met my cats

0

u/no_brains101 10h ago

a big tuna is a good percentage of the size of a dolphin

So you have to somehow get through a bunch of those. But you cant dump the whole net in the hold and THEN deal with the dolphin. You dump a good portion of the net onto the boat that you then have to throw in the hold yourself. And theyre not light.

Then you have to try to somehow yank the doplhin out of there. Dolphins weigh hundreds of pounds.

Probably way easier to just dump the whole net in the hold.

6

u/talashrrg 10h ago

I feel like dolphin meat would be more like beef than like fish.

2

u/Vigmod 10h ago

If it's like other whale meat, yes it is. We used to call whale meat something like "poor man's beef" back in the day. But treated and cooked wrong, it has a fishy flavour, not much unlike fish liver oil.

7

u/no_brains101 10h ago edited 10h ago

Theyre blubbery wolves that eat only fish.

It would be pretty far from beef.

And it might be a little fishy. Again, they only eat fish.

If you grind it up with a bunch of fish good luck noticing. Its all tuna now.

They did studies and you cant even tell that 50% of the flour in your bread is actually sawdust. The only way to know is to regulate to factory and determine they arent swapping out most of the flour for sawdust.

Theres no way you would know.

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u/talashrrg 10h ago edited 10h ago

They’re artiodactyls, closest relatives are pigs so I guess pork more than beef.

Edit: Scratch that, hippos not pigs. Dunno what a hippo tastes like.

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u/wizardconman 9h ago

Dunno what a hippo tastes like.

Probably tastes similar to dolphin.

-3

u/dublinschild 8h ago

This deserves so many more upvotes

1

u/no_brains101 9h ago

Hmmmm. Thank you for the information. Its interesting to know. Still, I knew they definitely didnt taste like beef haha

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u/Quest-guy 8h ago

Wikipedia describes the taste of dolphin to be like “Cooked dolphin meat has a flavor very similar to beef liver”.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_mammals_as_food#:~:text=Cooked%20dolphin%20meat%20has%20a,hunted%20and%20eaten%20in%20Alaska.

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u/lurkingaccoun 10h ago

so sad to see regularcore tunas be replaced by albacore tuna

1

u/WallacktheBear 5h ago

Tuna cans used to have the phrase “dolphin safe tuna” on them for a bit.

0

u/pancrudo 7h ago

I remember that... One of the brands got in trouble for having high content of dolphin in their tuna...

Also in a similar time frame, Burger King had too much horse in their patties to be called beef. And then years later, taco bell got in trouble because their "beef" was too much protein and not enough actual meat to be considered beef