canned fish

Jeff,

Can you please advise about canned sardines, mackerel, salmon, anchovies if difficult to get hold of fresh, and most of the fresh salmon available is unfortunately farmed?

Malcolm

http://www.wildplanetfoods.com/

Where is here? 

Canned wild Alaskan salmon is the best of all the canned fish to get right as in its the easiest to find a good one. Tuna being the hardest. Anchovies and sardines are pretty straight forward, just get the ones with the highest fat content. 

But on the note of farm raised fish here is my take: Unless you only eat 100% grass fed beef, lamb, pasture raised chickens and the such why are you worried about farm raised fish? Farm raised fish is not different than any other meat you are going to get in the grocery store they have just done a better job as marketing it as wild. Further are you wiling to pay true "wild" prices? As in twice as much. 

Eat the farm raised, its fine if you are eating conventional farmed animals. But if you want to turn it up to 11 then start with a grass fed cow, far cheeper. 

Thanks,

I'm in the UK but not in an area with easy access to fresh fish especially oily fish. I thought there was a reduction of beneficial fats in farmed fish. I also wasn't sure if there was a loss of omega 3's, vitamins in canned fish and if it made a difference if they were canned in water, brine, oil or as often with salmon, canned in salt. 

There is a loss of nutrients from true wild caught to farm raised just like there is from a true "wild" cow to a feed lot cow. 

My dad and I rode motorcycles down the baja and we kept seeing what looked like really skinny cows so we stopped and asked the locals, they told is "thats a cow. What do you mean its skinny? Thats how they look". These cows were truly wild, they just roamed around with a brand on them until it was their time. The flavor is totally different. Anyway, unless you are eating 100% of your meat from these types of sources, why demand it of the fish? Its an illogical approach. Start with the cheapest animal to get right; the cow. Then move on from there. To eat fed lot everything else and demand "wild" fish just doesn't make sense. 

So that means I shouldn't worry either with dyes or other stuff they put to farm raised fish? I was a great consumer of smoked salmon and didn't care about the origin, but once I read an article saying that they put a lot of stuff on it, that their true color is pale and they look pink because of the dyes, and that should not be eaten by pregnant woman because of their toxicity... (I read ir after my pregnancy so I consumed it while pregnat and fortunately nothing happened to my baby, but if I have a second child I will be worried about that...). So what do you think, can we eat it freely or should we be worried about its toxicity? Thank you very much.

I found this in English:

http://www.newsinenglish.no/2013/06/11/pressure-grows-on-farmed-salmon/

What do you think?

I wouldn't be worried about it. Salmons color is dependent on season, species and freshness. So for that source to say salmon is light pink is inaccurate. Sockeye is almost red. Generally farm raised is the only light pink one so in that case they are still wrong. 

There is "toxins" in every food. No matter what. Its not 1776 anymore. However, some are more problematic than other. Again it needs to be looked at from a big picture. Looking at just salmon and asking what about the toxicity of that one fish is tripping over a dollar to pick up .15 cents. If you ate truly wild caught alaskan salmon only, what would that put your percentage of quality meats? Say you eat meat at 3 meals a day 6 days a week = thats 18. If you ate alaskan salmon 3 of those that puts you at a 15% ratio of "quality meats" now you are paying $25 a pound for that. Now you are going from 0% to 15% for $25 a pound. Master the basics and start with raining the percentage the easiest way possible. Buy a 1/4 cow and you will go from 0% to 40%(guess) for $7-10 a pound. It stays frozen well and is far easier. After you master that basic then go to fish. 

There is always going to be a whistle blower out there. I don't see any issue with smoked salmon given you follow the buying directions. 

Thank you so much for you answer, I feel better now about this. Sometimes you see sensationalistic articles that make you feel like your eating poison... better to put it in perspective, and better to have farm raised salmon that no salmon at all I guess... thank you!

No prob.

Its easy to examine one thing in isolation and say it has X Y Z toxin and so on but, when you make comparisons of all other proteins, accessibility, and price it becomes a different game. Everything is multi factorial and you are exactly right - thy take one thing and sensationalize it 

Hum... I may get chastised by Jeff, but I have to add a few things :-)

First, I absolutely agree with Jeff that optimizing canned fish shouldn't be a high priority task, but rather an advanced tweak.

That said, farmed salmon does have more bad stuff in it than many other foods:

• the typical process does add dye to the feed and some feeds are based on animal flours, not even fish or seafood based, but rather rejects from the agro industry. Not the type of things you want your salmon to be eating.
• toxins and dioxins does come in play here as well simply due to the location of the farming pens: some are located in polluted waters, and the salmons stay there for their entire life, so they do come with a lot more toxins than other foods.

BUT: all this is depending on the location and farmers, so there is no single answer to them, but unless you trust the source highly, I would avoid farmed salmon simply because the risks are really high to end up with bad stuff in it.

However, how about substituting salmon with sardines? The nutritional profile is great, they're wild and very inexpensive. My typical lunch protein is comprised of 2 cans of sardines in spring water mashed with cider vinegar. Taste great for me, takes 2 mins and nutritionally great. You can mash the sardines with the seasoning of your choice and end up with a pate-like paste that's very tasty :-)