The scavenger has a heavy smell of earth, and feeds on garbage all year round, which is not very nutritious, compared to the nutritional value of ordinary food fish. It also eats other fish waste, riverbed trash, and various algae, so it has more bacteria in its body.

The scavenger fish eats a lot of different things, and when it is still a fry, it will eat fish feces, which is known as "garbage fish". As a result of eating silt, moss and algae for a long time, resulting in scavenger fish meat quality, taste are not good, and the body fishy smell is heavy. It is said that a few Sichuan chefs tried to cook the scavenger into food, but the use of heavy oil and spicy, but still can not cover the scavenger's fishy smell.

Thus, the scavenger fish is not picky about what it eats, the taste and the fishy odor that is difficult to remove, has become the main reason why it has not been made into a gourmet food.

Also the scavenger is an exoskeleton fish, its bones are larger and more numerous, and the meat is very little. These are the reasons why most people don't use scavengers as an ingredient. So the scavenger has no food value, and the scavenger's habit is to suck algae, benthic animals, do not mix with mild or small fish. If it reproduces in large numbers, it will devour the eggs of other fish, leading to the extinction of other fish. And it has no natural enemies in China, some places in the south of this fish has been flooded, resulting in the extinction of the entire river native fish.