It's probably a lot less spread out than that. Some people might like fish sticks. But in my mind, they're something that people give to kids. I haven't had one in decades. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that a large majority of purchased fish sticks are not purchased by someone who intends to eat them.

On numbers:

A quick search [1] suggests 1.5 million fish fingers are eaten per day in the UK (18 per second).

A US search was less easy, but at 25,000 tons per year, and 26 grams per stick, that'd be the equivalent 2.6 million fish sticks consumed (purchased, I suppose) per day in the USA, which on a per-capita basis is interestingly much less.

[1] https://www.intrafish.com/marketplace/youll-never-guess-how-...

Fish sticks = Fish Fingers != seafood sticks

If you said fish sticks to most people in the UK, they'd think you were talking about these:

https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/287149425

A common gastro pub lunch time dish here in the UK is a posh fish finger sandwich, usually hand made fish fingers in a crusty white bread with a tartare sauce.

https://images.squaremeal.co.uk/cloud/article/9374/images/be...

Iceland do 28 “prison grade” fish fingers for £2, and you can ‘cook’ them in a microwave for the same time it takes to do the toast.

What's Hancock's Golden Rule?

Edit: seems to be the "rule of six". Best exceptions are country sports: hunting ("scaring the horses") and angling ("revising our knots"). Worst exceptions: canoeing/kayaking (too reminiscent of american beer) and gymnastics (unless one is the Duke of York?).

Crab flavored cod sticks.

https://www.google.com/search?q=imitation+crab&tbm=shop

https://www.google.com/shopping/product/8945736565554256086?...

I assumed they were like crab sticks, but mixed fish.

I bought real (river)crabs at Ikea. Needs a lot of time to get rid of the ice, and its a bit messy and tricky to eat (take your time!), but I found it delicious. The flavor is unlike anything I ever had, and the texture is pristine and delicate. After a while, it even becomes fun to dismantle them. Though the very first one got my glasses full with... whatever it was.

As for fish sticks, I know the brand we got contains Atlantic cod. Its a very cheap fish, and quite frankly it tastes disgusting (had it out of oven while cooking on budget). However the sticks add structure (crisp/bite and salt I suppose) to the otherwise bland fish which remind me of rotten fish, so they make it edible. Our daughter (2) loves them, and they can easily be prepared in an airfryer or oven. They might be a bit salty though.

Normal Atlantic cod I'd rather just feed my cats. Even with seasoning I still find it barely edible, and I just got this rule with fish (and shellfish) if it smells or tastes something remotely resembling rotten, I don't eat it. Cause as kid I ate enough of that already. Plus I generally eat my foods seasoned, with herbs and spices. Dill, for example, goes great with a lot of fish.

(Not that I've been to Japan, but I'm English, so not having seen them here I just associated them as being a French supermarket snack.)

Could be a coincidence. Naomi is a very traditional Hebrew girls' name, and also a Japanese girls' name.

I don’t like feeding my kid any baby food, even organic, but we make the majority of it.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/09/25/think...

It's likely that modal group is so large that the median American doesn't eat any in a typical year, either.

For the record: I have eaten 0 fish sticks in 2020, so far, and expect that the record will stand.

If I want an easy to cook seafood meal I'm just throwing a frozen tilapia fillet in the oven with some garlic and butter.

Picking words apart and applying literal interpretations to their component is often a bad idea. Language rarely works that way.

Cambridge English dictionary: "animals from the sea that can be eaten, especially fish or sea creatures with shells"

Merriam Webster: "edible marine fish and shellfish"

These are much more reasonable definitions, more line with modern usage. I doubt you will find any dictionaries that mirror your Britania definition.

I couldn't think of a better word that refers to cuisine involving animals that live in the water.

People who wanted fish and wanted it simple would go with canned sardines, canned tuna, or canned salmon made into salmon patties. Those who wanted fresh fish and were willing to cook would just get fresh fish and cook it however they wanted.

How often do you see fish sticks on a gourmet restaurant's menu? If you ever see it on a restaurant's menu, it'd be in the "kid's meals" section of a cheaper restaurant, next to or in place of chicken nuggets. If people actually wanted them, it wouldn't just be tucked away there.

Then a few decades went by when I wouldn't eat them at all.

Then I married someone who grew up on an island and couldn't understand why I don't eat more fish (I live in Dallas!). So now fish sticks are back on the menu. And still pretty cheap!

https://www.br.de/wissen/fisch-fischstaebchen-alaska-seelach...

As a child. fish sticks from "Kapitein Iglo" where a delicious treat.

Other fish sticks were not to be consumed.

So that's about six cubic yards per football field, or about enough to fill a couple of standard freezer sections at a supermarket.

We can conclude from this that football players don't eat fish sticks very often, or there wouldn't be any left for anyone else!

I figure, if they come in boxes of roughly a pound each, two for a "family size" bag, and a "regular consumer" would eat it once a week (or 52 times a year). So that leaves 1 million "regular consumers", or 250,000 families who consume it regularly. That's not very many at all. I wouldn't be surprised if scrapple or some other obscure regional food sold more annually than fish sticks.

I bet that most fish sticks are sold to fast food joints, and I would not be surprised if most of that consumption occurs during lint.

What I absolutely do think it's out of the realm of possibility that the average American does. Something like 2% of Americans use cocaine.[1] That figure is probably extremely imprecise, but it barely matters because even if it was 20% it would require that the average user was going through a gram a day.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocaine_in_the_United_States