Let this be another reminder that tradition is often backed up by a lot of sense
It was a tough choice when I was out for lunch yesterday: should it be the rare breed pork chop with hispi cabbage, apple and a cider jus, or possibly the grilled calf’s liver with treacle-cured bacon? In the end I discarded them as possibles and opted for a monkfish curry for my main course, served with baby aubergine. Not only was it delicious but it left me feeling wonderfully virtuous. For according to a new study by Cambridge scientists, we will save the planet with our fish eating.
There is also a particular burden on my shoulders now, given my religion. The study’s author, Dr Shaun Larcom, has worked out that the path to salvation for people like me – Roman Catholics – is also the road to redemption for Mother Earth. If we Catholics return to our tradition of always eating fish on Fridays, it will cut carbon emissions and have a significant impact on climate change. Dr Larcom is so convinced that the future lies with cod-chomping Catholics that he wants the Pope to restore the Friday fish tradition.
Not that it completely went away. Think of how many staff canteens offer fish and chips as part of their end of the week menu, even now in post-Protestant, secular Britain. Nor did all Catholics abandon their piscine tendencies when the Vatican chucked out the fish edict decades ago. If you’d been used to fish pie instead of a lamb chop at the end of the week, it just felt wrong, somehow, to serve something meaty on a Friday. Lovers of tradition lobbied Roman Catholic bishops in 2011 to restore fish on Fridays in England and Wales as a discipline, and according to Dr Larcom’s calculations, it saved 55,000 tons of carbon being emitted.
There are plenty of other reasons to keep fish as a dietary mainstay. Long before the food faddists urged us to embrace Veganuary, religious disciplines about food encouraged a balanced diet. It could also mean avoiding food that might be dangerous: think of the origins of the Jewish rules about eating pork, a risky meat in a hot country and with a danger of tapeworm. Then there are the benefits to the economy; Cornish fishermen used to have a thriving business selling barrels of salted fish to the Spanish, as part of their diet during Lent when meat was banned.