Is Caviar a scam?

in this video we're doing a deep dive

into the world of caviar which at

upwards of3 or $400 for just 30 G is

easily one of the most expensive Foods

in the world but I'm approaching this

video as a bit of a skeptic and asking

the question is caviar actually worth it

or is it just popular because of its

status as a luxury product so I bought

six different fish egg varieties at

drastically different price points white

fish caviar at just $10 salmon caviar at

$13 and then I bought four varieties of

sturgeon caviar American white at $50

baa at 77 osetra at $130 and a beluga

hybrid cavar all the way at $250 for

this little 30 G tint now we'll get into

blind tasting these shortly but first I

have some questions that we need to get

to the bottom of one what does caviar

even taste like for example does a cheap

caviar taste that much different than a

$250 one and what are the these

different types of caviar we have and

maybe Most Fascinating why is caviar so

expensive and how did it become popular

all over the world and that is the

question we are going to start with

because today caviar is known as this

high-end ritzy appetizer but over the

course of history that was not the case

in the early days of Russia it was food

for the everyday person and maybe even

more shocking in the late 1800s there

was what could be referred to as a

Caviar Gold Rush in the United States

where caviar was actually so popular and

abundant it was offered as a free

appetizer in bars to encourage drinking

which is much different than today where

the most expensive caviar in the world

can go for 30 to even up to

$100,000 for a kilogram of the stuff the

history of caviar has gone through so

many twists and turns over the past

sever hundred years and it all starts

with the sturgeon one of the longest

living and largest fish in the

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video now let's get back to learning why

these sturgeon fish eggs are so darn

expensive the sturgeon is the common

name for the 28 species of fish

belonging to the Aspen seridi family

which are recognizable for their

prehistoric looking physical

characteristics and for many centuries

the term caviar exclusively referred to

salted fish eggs from the sturgeon so

for purposes of this section we're going

to use the term cavar to specifically

refer to these loose fish eggs harvested

from the row of a female sturgeon now

fish row is technically the entire ovary

of a female fish including the mass of

eggs and in preparation for spawning

female fish will develop astonishing

numbers of fish eggs in their row and

this row forms into the coherent mass

that runs alongside the belly of the

fish for example a single salmon can

have around 20,000 pearl-shaped eggs

while a single sturgeon can have

anywhere from 400,000 to 2 million eggs

depending on the species age and body

size and today one of the ways that

caviar is differentiated is based on the

species of thuron that the fish eggs

come from for example baa osetra and

Beluga hybrid caviar that we'll be

tasting today are fish eggs from those

specific species of sturgeon and two

facts about sturgeon completely blew my

mind and begin to explain why caviar is

so expensive today first sturgeon are a

slow growing late maturing fish where

most species can live up to 60 years if

not even longer and typically the

females can take anywhere from 7 to 15

years before they even start producing

eggs secondly sturgeon are massive and

have very few Predators for example

according to the National Oceanic

Atmospheric Administration the five

Atlantic sturgeon species can grow up to

800 lb and 14 ft long what's even

crazier is that the largest single

Sturgeon caught on record was a female

beluga sturgeon caught in the vulga

delta in Russia in

1827 and this sturgeon measured in at 23

7 in and

3,463 pounds now these days of catching

wild surgeon for caviar are completely

gone as in 2006 the United Nations

actually banned the global trade of wild

caught caviar today basically all the

caviar on the market is from sturgeons

that were farmed through aquacultures

with sustainability and conservation in

mind now we'll take a look at how caviar

is produced on farms today in just a bit

but first let's do a crash course into

how these fish eggs became so popular

around the globe and to start it's worth

asking why did humans start eating fish

eggs in the first

place as noted in on food and cooking

because fish eggs contain all the

nutrients that one cell will need to

grow into a hatchling they're often a

more concentrated form of nourishment

than the fish itself with more fat and

large quantities of savory building

block amino acids and put simply humans

started eating fish eggs for the same

reason we started eating bird eggs as a

nutrient-dense protein source and you

can see they actually have similar

layers that we learned about in the

chicken egg video in fact many cultures

preserve the entire row Mass from

different types of fish and from on food

and cooking they have a whole table of

common fish eggs eaten around the world

now the Persians seem to have been the

first people to consume sturgeon eggs

from the Caspian Seas as there are

mentions of this as far back as the 4th

Century additionally the word caviar is

ultimately derived from the Persian word

caviar from Caya meaning egg however to

understand how it exists in its current

press form and how it became popular all

over the world we jump forward several

hundred years to Russia where caviar was

seen as kind of an innovation from the

cured row Sachs of the sturgeon as noted

in on food and cooking caviar appears to

have risen in Russia sometime around

1200 CE as a more palatable alternative

to the traditional preserved sturgeon

ovaries and in Russia wild surgeon were

caught from these Caspian Seas where the

fish eggs were then harvested and the

most popular and well-known species of

sturgeon during this time and still

today was the

Beluga however instead of this very very

high- pric luxury caviar was likely a

normal part of the diet in most areas

with an abundant supply of sturgeon

however that soon changed just how many

foods develop reputations that favor

where they originated from such as

parmesan from Italy or soy sauce from

Japan Russia and the other countries

neighboring the Caspian and black Seas

became known for the original and

supposed top quality caviar that was

primarily from the surgeon in these

areas which yield large plump eggs so

over the next 6 to 700 years people

began getting a taste for these sturgeon

eggs which have been described as salty

Umami and will tantalize your tongue

with its little burst of flavor however

the more popular that caviar got the

more it was traded and transported the

more surgeon was fish for and the

population plummeted remember depending

on this species they can take 7 to 15

years to produce eggs and live for 50

years or more so while the population of

sturgeon was huge in the beginning since

they don't really have any Predators

other than humans every time a sturgeon

was caught it's going to take a couple

decades to recover which during the 13

to 1900s no one was really worried about

and towards the end of the 1800s there

became a shortage of caviar from the

sturgeon in the black and Caspian Seas

so fishing started to extend to other

sturgeon species around the world caviar

fishing operations popped up in China

Italy France Bulgaria the United States

and several other countries during this

time but then they quickly collapsed and

I think this story from the NOAA is

probably a pretty common one that

happened in most countries quote during

the late 1800s people flocked to the

Eastern United States in shts of caviar

riches from the surgeon fishery known as

the Black Gold Rush and by the beginning

of the 1900s sturgeon populations had

decline drastically close to 7 million

pounds of sturgeon were reportedly

caught in 1887 but by 1905 the catch

declined to only 20,000 lb and by 1989

only 400 lb of sturgeon were

recorded despite sturgeon becoming more

and more scarce people still wanted

caviar all throughout the 1900s and

would happily pay for it as the price

got higher and higher there's a great

quote documenting this rise in price

from a 19 1970 New York Times article

whereas 10 years ago those Pearls of

Caspian cost in the vicinity of $40 a

pound the price is now well past the $60

price level in some of the swankier

emporiums about town which if you adjust

that into today's price is around $480 a

pound now does caviar actually taste

good enough to Warrant those prices

we'll see shortly eventually though all

this over fishing did come to a head

with every sturgeon species becoming

critically endanged DED and facing

extinction and this is what led to the

un's 2006 Global ban which effectively

ended wild cot caviar and ushered us

into the modern-day Farm caviar that we

have available today as a reminder these

are the four sturgeon caviar that I

purchased for tasting in this video

which were all farmed in various

countries with different types of

sturgeon and additionally we'll be

tasting eggs from salmon and white fish

too which made me wonder two things one

why are there such big price differences

between them and secondly do they

actually taste different so let's

quickly cover how is caviar made and

process today and what is the flavor of

caviar then it will be time for us to

evaluate these in a blind taste test and

answer the question is caviar actually

worth it so now that sturgeon Farms are

popping up all over the world you may

think that caviar prices will start to

come down however even with advances in

aquaculture engineering sturgeon fish

eggs will likely remain a luxury product

due to several variables first there is

a high infrastructure cost of the large

tanks feeding and filtering all on the

farms secondly sturgeons are hard to sex

they have to be around 5 years old

before a farm might be confident if a

fish is male or female and because of

this you're spending money on male

sturgeon which don't exactly Drive much

profit third once they are sexed the

female surgeons still take a long time

before they are ready to produce those

eggs and many farms will start checking

the surgeon at around 7 years for a

potential Harvest but depending on the

fish it could be 15 or 20 years and

fourthly there is a tight window to

actually harvest the eggs at their Peak

ripeness so after years of waiting and

finding the perfect time and keeping a

sturgeon stress-free only then will a

farm be ready to harvest the row but

this is just half of the caviar process

that row must be turned into the

individual eggs for human consumption

and is another reason why cavar is still

so expensive today caviar processing is

delicate tedious done by hand and the

quality control is meticulous and here's

an overview of how this process works so

how is caviar made today well first the

female surgeon is captured and stunned

secondly the row is then removed from

the fish and typically will be killed

and butchered but there has been some

experimentation with modern methods that

can keep the fish alive third the row is

then passed through a series of screens

to loosen and separate the egg from each

other and this step also filters out the

actual ovaries and any membranes in the

row sack however before going any

further forth the caviar workers must

carefully clean up the loose eggs by

hand this includes individually picking

out damaged or spoiled eggs any of the

remaining row membranes and anything

else that may have made it through the

sifting screen process so this is very

time intensive and detailed fifth the

loose eggs are then mixed with salt

until they reach a specific

concentration and for caviar this is

usually between between 3 to 10% salt

six The Salted eggs are drained of that

excess liquid and before tinning they

are checked one last time for quality

control being meticulously parsed over

and graded before packaging then finally

The Salted eggs get into the can tins

and are preserved at below zero

temperatures but they don't solidify

since their salt levels lower the

freezing point and finally The Salted

eggs are then loaded into the tins that

we can find at the grocery store

available to buy and today the five

biggest exporters of caviar ranked by

ship weight are China Poland the United

States Italy and Uganda so as a

potential buyer of cavar you may be

wondering how do you even choose what

caviar to buy and why are there big

price differences between them

ultimately caviar is a product of supply

and demand but it seems that there are

two variables you need to choose from if

you are picking out caviar for yourself

first is the sturgeon species and

secondly is the grade of the

caviar so if you go to almost any caviar

website they will have their caviar

listed by the species of sturgeon which

jumps it into a certain price range in

my case the Bika sturgeon was the least

expensive the osetra was in the middle

and the Beluga hybrid was the most

expensive however the same sturgeon can

produce different grades of caviar for

example here the osetra caviar can range

from

$129 all the way up to $49 for that same

size 30 G tin and this is kind of just

insane and may make you wonder well how

is caviar graded and it seems to be

determined by multiple characteristics

such as the size firmness color and

flavor of the fish eggs however this is

where in our research there seems to be

a big problem as far as we could find

there are not standardized regulations

when it comes to grading caviar for

example if you go to a website or find

some in the store you'll see terms like

select Reserve Golden Reserve Royal

president or imperial but it seems like

all these terms are up to the individual

company compes that are processing the

caviar in the case of pasture raise eggs

or certain types of meat there are whole

documents outlining the specific

standards that these products must go

through and you have a much clearer

picture of why they cost a lot more with

caviar though it's tough to tell exactly

what is causing the massive leap in

price between grades like in the case of

alus the most expensive caviar in the

world it seems like the only reason the

price is so high is because there's such

a tiny supply of sturgeon that produce

this specific color of eggs now

personally I'm fairly pragmatic when it

comes to food and I don't really care at

all what the color of my fish eggs are

what I want to know is how different do

these actually taste and can I tell that

difference in a blind taste test so

let's get down to testing to round out

the video I did three different tests

with these six caviar variations test

one is a comparison between the three

most expensive caviar test two is a

comparison between the three least

expensive cavars and test three is a

triangle test to see if I can actually

tell a difference between a lowcost

sturing caviar and a higher cost one it

is not jumping off the page to me which

one is which

here now before I start giving my

observations here is how to think about

the flavor of caviar so at a high level

these six properties make up the flavor

of food taste Aroma texture sight

physical and the human element and of

the five tastes caviar is going to be

primarily salty from the percentage of

salt added before canning and secondly

it will be Umami from the eggs being

rich in the building block amino acids

from an aroma perspective caviar should

not have a strong Aroma and after doing

a little sniff test of each I agree as

far as smell goes I would say kind of

that Brin like nutty earthy is it's not

very fragrant however it has been said

that different types of caviar can have

subtle notes of nuttiness a butteriness

dried fruit toasted grains or an earthy

seaweed note too it and as we'll see

some of this Aroma does come through

oyster like maybe from a texture

perspective the fish eggs can obviously

range in size the white fish eggs are

the smallest the sturgeon are kind of a

medium size and the salmon eggs here are

clearly the largest Additionally the

membrane of the egg itself are said to

range from soft to firm and of the

sturgeon caviar the website says the

Bika is the softest osetra is a similar

softness and then the Royal Beluga is

the firmest now can I pick up on these

differences we'll see and as a teaser

for test number two texture is one of

the big differences in the salmon caviar

whoo those bigger pearls actually do

kind of burst and pop very unique

textural experience next we have sight

which as we touched on can vary widely

and lead you with many interesting

colors but I'm going to be blindfolded

for all the tests so I can focus on the

other aspects of flavor from a physical

perspective the salty and Umami flavor

should cause plenty of salivation in the

mouth and generally caviar is typically

served at cool temperatures from 30 to

40° so it'll be a nice cool Pleasant

bite and lastly we have the human

element and this is a reminder that we

experience food not just with our

physical senses but also through our

emotions Nostalgia and cultural

associations and when it comes to caviar

the big one at play is its Association

as a luxury product where if we spend a

couple hundred on some fish eggs we are

likely to to rationalize our purchase

and really enjoy the experience so let's

hop into test number one and see if the

most expensive caviar is the one that I

actually enjoy the most so I come to you

as a complete caviar novice and I'm

going to mix these up in blindfold

because I don't want to know which one

I'm tasting I'll just give you kind of

an unfiltered honest opinion about which

one I think tastes the best we got three

different price points here but caviar

can even be much more expensive than

these three 30 G tins but let's see what

we

have mix

them I got to be careful about not

spilling any too got

my got my fancy little caviar spoon too

all right caviar number one and my first

observation here is that eating caviar

is just a very unique experience your

tongue really salivates that's a very

interesting

textural experience the little orbs just

kind of like they don't burst it almost

feels like they kind of just they're not

actually melting but you kind of just

like swallow them and it's nice and

salty your your tongue starts gushing

with saliva um very very interesting

however as I move on I'm asking myself

are these significantly different in

terms of taste Aroma and texture or is

it pretty subtle that one to me tasted

it a little more more salty Briner not

as much salivation I would say on that

on that second one as

well okay number

three

okay that one I feel has like a little

more little more Funk to it the first

one I like the most I feel like I

salivated the most but maybe that was

just because I tried it first and I

didn't know what I was expecting

but let me go back through one more time

and see what we got try not to spill any

all right number one

again yeah like a smoother cleaner

finish if that makes sense I think it

like causes me to like salivate a little

bit more all right number

two that one more is like a a a top

salty taste I'm going to come back to

number three here because I think three

kind of has this interesting like

Briney

seafoody to it that the others like

don't have all right number

three so if I'm evaluating these for me

three feels the most kind of salty Briny

then two is the second most salty Briney

and then I would say one is the the

cleanest and smoothest of them number

one is my favorite it just feels the

most pleasing in the mouth and has like

a very clean smooth finish whereas two

and three kind of linger and overall

here my biggest takeaway from this test

is that there are some differences in

taste and Aroma but they are pretty

subtle and I would argue largely up to

personal preference and from a texture

perspective they can say the eggs are

soft or firm but honestly they all felt

very similar to me however that changes

a lot with test number two where we look

at fish eggs from a completely different

species at a significantly lower price

point I've got the sand fish eggs the

white fish eggs and this is white

sturgeon caviar which was I think $50 so

significantly cheaper than the other

options I have so let's give these a

spin and see how close these are to

those higher end and then we'll do one

final taste test taking my favorite from

this one and the prior test and doing a

triangle test to see if I can guess

which one is

which all right there's not a perfect

way to do this without touching the jar

because they're different jars but let's

just go with number one

here texturally definitely a firmer bite

to that one no question about it taste

wise I would say a little kind of just

salty Briny didn't get much else to it I

would say that's kind of closest to the

uh the Bika caviar that we had in the

prior test let's go to number two here

here who for me those are salty those

are salty those bigger pearls actually

do kind of burst and pop very unique

textural experience not one I'm sure I

love but a very interesting textural

experience let's go on to number

three for me this one's much closer to

the osetra doesn't have the firm but

that the white fish

does matches the texture of the sturgeon

eggs we had in the prior test I actually

think this is pretty good and to me it

tastes pretty close to the osetra which

was my favorite from the last test so as

a final test let's put the white

sturgeon versus the osetra and see if I

can save myself um 80 bucks and see if I

can get that close experience so now

let's do the final test between the

lowest cost American farmed caviar and

the middle priced osetra caviar which

was my favorite from test number one

okay so we have the two bowls of osetra

from test number one and two bowls of

the white sturgeon let's give them a

spin take one away and see if I can

actually tell a difference between

these okay see what we got

here okay number

one tasty good salivating dare I say

that's the osetra off the bat ah I don't

know let's give them let's get let's go

down to number

two those felt pretty

similar uh let me let me go to three

though before I get ahead of myself

here

after tasting all

three it is not jumping off the page to

me which one is which

here these are all kind of running

together for me I'm going to say one and

three are the same and two is different

not a confident guess