Cod and its oil, cuisine and its supplements: Fish fragmentation, commodity connections and naturalising resources in Newfoundland

By spotlighting cod liver oil as an example of a global fat and reflecting on the commercialisation of fish – from food source and medicine to dietary supplement – this article surveys cod’s colonial history in Newfoundland alongside cultural imaginations of resources. The oil’s popularity boomed in the early twentieth century with the discovery of vitamins, which gifted foods and their by-products new values. This article thus sketches out how fish, fat and commercial markets connect the history of cod liver oil in Newfoundland with the world. Prioritising three cultural artefacts – a folk song, a cookbook and a piece of prose – it introduces what I call ‘fish fragmentation’ and, in broad strokes, shows how this overlaps with the invention of cod as a commodity. To conclude, it considers what makes a resource ‘natural’ and, along the way, represents Newfoundland’s history as a colony built by cod, which is to says its extractive relationship with the ocean. This article was published open access under a CC BY 4.0 licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ .