Hitler failed, but climate change may alter our national dish
THE Great British takeaway of cod and chips is under threat.
This is the iconic dish that fed the nation during the Second World War when Hitler was knocking on the door and rationing made everyone eat a healthy diet whether they wanted to or not.
Home Front families scoffed potato pies, carrot scones and vegetarian stews and made the best of what they had although they never took to snoek, the tins of fish imported from South Africa by the ton, that were so unpopular that by the end of the war they were being sold as cat food.
Why stoop to snoek when every working class street had a chippy?
Everyone has memories of a favourite chip shop. Mine range from the one at the end of our terraced street in Leeds in childhood when fish was 3d and chips a penny, the long gone King Street Fisheries in Huddersfield and the fish and chip shop on the canal at Skipton (now Bizzie Lizzie’s) that was always our port of call on the way home after a day walking in the Dales.
The great tradition has survived the influx of takeaway catering of curry, chow mein, pizza, burgers and fried chicken and is still Britain’s great lunch and teatime standby.
But that could change in the near future, according to research by the universities of Exeter and Bristol, the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science, and the Met Office.
The results suggest that rising sea temperatures around parts of the UK could lead to an increase in such fish as red mullet, Dover sole, John Dory and lemon sole but decreases in cold water fish such as cod.
Dr Catherine Maltby said: “Climate change will continue to affect fish stocks in this sea region.”
Mullet and chips? Sounds like a bad hair day. Just don’t bring back snoek.