More Than One Fourth Of People Surveyed Said They'd Never Eat This Fish

It might look like any fish fillet. It probably tastes like any fish fillet. But if we told you that the cooked fillet was made with carp, you might say you wouldn't be caught dead touching it, no matter how mild it tasted or how healthy it might be. What gives us that idea? Mashed asked people in a survey what fish they "would absolutely never eat," and 504 people in the U.S. answered. More than 25 percent of respondents (26.59 percent to be exact) named carp. 

Many Americans shudder at the thought of taking carp and serving it up on a plate, so if you are turned off by the thought of eating that particular type of fish, you aren't alone. Dirk Fucik, a Chicago fishmonger, told Food & Wine that "to us in America, we think of carp as a bottom-feeding, muddy-tasting fish, which it is sometimes." 

And this revulsion applies even if food scientist Clay Ferguson says that carp may actually be victims of a gastronomical smear campaign. "They have white, flaky meat that's mild, not very fishy, and take to most any seasoning," according to Ferguson. "If you are one of the few who try and don't like Asian carp, that fish was either poorly handled, overcooked, or you just don't like fish."

While carp was the biggest loser, for some respondents it wasn't the seafood they least wanted to see for dinner. Nearly 21 percent (20.83 percent) of people said they would give octopus a hard pass, followed by its tentacled distant mollusk cousin, squid (how anyone can give deep-fried and breaded calamari a hard pass is something we don't understand, but there you go). Catfish and swordfish are close on the most-reviled list of seafood with 8.93 percent of respondents saying catfish is not something they'd want to eat, while 8.33 percent felt the same way about swordfish.

At the rear of the "fish we don't want to meet on a plate" is flounder – 4.96 percent of those surveyed told Mashed they had no interest in touching the stuff, which may be a bit sad because according to Global Seafoods, flounder is seen as a "beginner fish," something they might recommend if you didn't like the taste of fish but were willing to change your mind. Flounder is seen as having a "delicate texture" and a "slightly sweet" flavor. So dare we ask: is this flounder-aversion related to a certain animated character of the same name?