Fish Bones

impish

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West-Central Arizona, USA
Always greatly troubled me, especially after a fish bone lodged beneath my gum, and I wound up with a horrible abscess and the most terrifying experience of my life, at age 19. The experience can be told later. Here, I seek to find an answer as to why I have as long as I can remember, even as a small kid, enjoyed eating the bones found in canned Salmon. Softened to the point of harmlessness, good calcium source, ugly to look at, though, I've always wondered why the bones of fish prepared from the fresh state on our stove present danger from bones left in.

I can recall expectantly awaiting a fried Blue-gill dinner my father in law was preparing. He was a life-long fisherman, adroit at "filleting" as my wife called it, removing each and every bone......

My first mouthful filled my teeth and gums with a myriad of tiny, sharp and pointed bones, feeling like steel-wool! I spat it out, and gave up. Much to everyone's consternation. Hell, I'd always pictured swallowed fish bones piercing the guts......then what?

So,.....why are canned Salmon bones so easily chewed and eaten?
 
I filet the fish I shoot, so no bones and the carcass is used for stock. I don't eat canned salmon or fresh for that matter, only cured or smoked. Bream here is a fresh water fish and those folks that eat them, always have store bought white bread for the purpose of swallowing the missed bones. I don't eat fresh water fish from our waters, too much run off from cane and sod farming. High levels of mercury.
 
So,.....why are canned Salmon bones so easily chewed and eaten?

Its because its been cooked for hours! And that is why it tastes very different from fresh salmon. Explanation here:

http://researchbin.blogspot.com/2014/01/why-canned-fish-got-soft-bones.html#.XFwURi2caqA

Strangely enough I can eat tinned salmon but along with other 'oily' fish, (and mayo) if I eat fresh salmon I get an 'intolerance' reaction and feel mildly sick.

One of my favourite fish is skate or ray wing - which is a dream if you have 'fish bone phobia'! The flesh slides off the bone with ease. Not sure if you can get it where you are.
 
Always greatly troubled me, especially after a fish bone lodged beneath my gum, and I wound up with a horrible abscess and the most terrifying experience of my life, at age 19. The experience can be told later. Here, I seek to find an answer as to why I have as long as I can remember, even as a small kid, enjoyed eating the bones found in canned Salmon. Softened to the point of harmlessness, good calcium source, ugly to look at, though, I've always wondered why the bones of fish prepared from the fresh state on our stove present danger from bones left in.

I can recall expectantly awaiting a fried Blue-gill dinner my father in law was preparing. He was a life-long fisherman, adroit at "filleting" as my wife called it, removing each and every bone......

My first mouthful filled my teeth and gums with a myriad of tiny, sharp and pointed bones, feeling like steel-wool! I spat it out, and gave up. Much to everyone's consternation. Hell, I'd always pictured swallowed fish bones piercing the guts......then what?

So,.....why are canned Salmon bones so easily chewed and eaten?


Eat a slice of bread. it is supposed to help dislodge the bone, making it easy to swallow. We did that as kids. We used to fake it so that we can get a slice of bread to eat for nothing!! Hah!! :wink:
 
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We always had bread on the table on fish nights.

All of the fish and other seafoods we ate were caught by my dad and prepared by my mum - often roasted whole so we learned how to eat the various fish and avoid the bones though my younger brother had a choking incidence that involved my mother having to manually remove quite a large bone from his throat. I think he was 4 at the time.
You shouldn’t be able to swallow anyth8ng large enough to pierce the gut - not accidentally anyway.


I took my 16 month old daughter to be scanned once as I believed she might have ingested a hair pin carelessly left on a low table by her teenaged cousin. The doctor reassured me that there was no sign of it but even if there was it would pass on it’s own and that the only items they are generally concerned with are swallowed magnets or batteries. You could quite clearly see on the film of my babies gut that she had chewed off some tiny bone fragments - we used to give her the meaty remains of T-bone steak to gnaw on when she was teething. Either that or she had managed to swallow sand or rocks from a playground. Just 4 tiny specks.
 
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