
Caviar is one of the most expensive foods in the world. There's a good reason for that: the Caspian sturgeon that the eggs come from are rare and getting even more so as the demand for caviar grows. One way to to alleviate the strain on those giant fish is to create an imitation caviar, and that's what one Japanese company has done.
According to Inventor Spot, the Hokuyu Company makes an imitation called Cavianne that looks very similar to the original. They say that it is also lower in calories than black caviar (which I had no idea was high in calories), in addition to being a way to stop the poaching and pollution that go into obtaining the real thing.
Cavianne has been around for a few years, now, but it's mainly sold wholesale to restaurants and hotels in Japan. Apparently the taste isn't quite up to snuff, but its inventor, Susumu Mikami, says that if he can get the taste of Cavianne closer to the real thing then his company will try to export it globally.
What do you think? Would you buy faux caviar?








Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
6-23-2008 @ 1:47PM
christopher said...
its an interesting idea but I'm pretty sure other fish have eggs worth eating too. I read an article the other day that other types of roe are gaining popularity due to the rarity, price, and impact traditional surgeon caviar causes. Some are entirely different like salmon, which sushi lovers probably already know, and some are fairly similar like paddlefish. I personally would rather eat the roe of a different fish than some laboratory creation.
"The imitation caviar, named Cavianne, is made from an unlikely mix of ingredients -- squid ink, pectin from apples, extract of sea urchin, oyster and scallop as well as a type of gum derived from kelp."
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6-23-2008 @ 7:23PM
Michael Schmitt said...
Its mentioned that one would rather eat other roe than eat "some laboratory creation".
I have to throw in my $0.02 since I've eaten many pounds' worth of "laboratory" creations during my stint as a food scientist. The laboratory of the food scientist is, more often than naught, a combination of kitchen with specialized instruments and pilot plant equipment. The experiments run are usually based on having a "kitchen" version of the food and trying to make a "customer's" version of the food.
Part of a food scientists' challenge to making food is to try and recreate those foods that either your grandparent or your parent made for you (with love as that 'special' ingredient) in a form that would allow a food scientist to make it in Portland, Maine and have a customer eat it in Portland, Oregon.
I work for a company that makes sour cream as one of its products. Sour cream made at home has a problem of "wheying" off and being thing and customers, at one point many years ago, didn't like the wheying off, so food scientists added stabilizers to give a thick body to the sour cream and prevent the wheying off. Current customers are now demanding that we take the stabilizers out AND prevent the wheying off AND have the same thick body as a sour cream WITH stabilizers.
Talk about a challenge. But, as a scientist, I'm trying my best and will come up with a solution. So, if you ever get a chance, visit a food scientists' laboratory. We aren't making frankenfoods or mixing chemicals together and then magically calling it food. We're making solutions to what you, the customers, are asking of us and we are coming up with different solutions to the same problem. Just like this/these scientist(s) came up with a food version of making caviar available, rather than going the ecological route.
That said, I wouldn't eat some of the "solutions" that my fellow food scientists have come up with...
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6-23-2008 @ 9:20PM
Monty Harris said...
I never acquired a taste for the stuff and I have had Beluga too, it was not bad but I can't say it was good either. It's one of those foods I just can't figure out what all the fuss is about. The absolute worse episode of The Amazing Race was a stop in Russia where the contestants had to each eat a kilogram (2.2 pounds) of the stuff before they could move on. I could hardly watch it. I felt for the contestants.
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