Shrimp and prawn as food

Shrimp and prawn are types of seafood that are consumed worldwide. Although shrimp and prawns belong to different suborders of Decapoda, they are very similar in appearance and the terms are often used interchangeably in commercial farming and wild fisheries. A distinction is drawn in recent aquaculture literature, which increasingly uses the term "prawn" only for the freshwater forms of palaemonids and "shrimp" for the marine penaeids. In the United Kingdom, the word "prawn" is more common on menus than "shrimp"; the opposite is the case in North America. The term "prawn" is also loosely used for any large shrimp, especially those that come 15 (or fewer) to the pound (such as "king prawns", yet sometimes known as "jumbo shrimp"). Australia and some other Commonwealth nations follow this British usage to an even greater extent, using the word "prawn" almost exclusively. When Australian comedian Paul Hogan used the phrase, "I'll slip an extra shrimp on the barbie for you" in an American television advertisement, it was intended to make what he was saying easier for his American audience to understand, and was thus a deliberate distortion of what an Australian would typically say. In Britain very small crustaceans with a brownish shell are called shrimp, and are used to make potted shrimps. They are also used in dishes where they are not the primary ingredient. The French term crevette is often encountered in restaurants. Shrimp and other shellfish are among the most common food allergens. Indeed, it is probably for this reason that the major religions of the world today adhere to dietary rules that expressly warn against eating these food items. For example, the Jewish dietary laws called Kashrut forbids the eating of shrimp. Finally, within the Islamic religion, the Shafi'i, Maliki, Hanbali and Ja'fari schools allow the eating of shrimp, while the Hanafi school does not. As with other seafood, shrimp is high in protein but low in food energy.