Last updated on February 8, 2019
The Fish On My Plate. Author Paul Greenberg eats, lives and breathes fish and seafood for an entire year, aiming to boost his omega-3 fatty acid levels, in a quest for better heart health. He also places a heavy emphasis on investigating the health of our oceans, and not least of all the health of the fish we eat. By and large these are issues that Americans are oblivious to, with the overall thinking being that “fish is health food, brain food and the like…“
While the best way to get the full picture is to watch the entire documentary, which runs 1 hour and 24 minutes, I can provide some bullet point “factoids” that I took as essential takeaways.
- If you take omega-3 supplements the original source of the fish oil is most probably from Peruvian anchovies. A better bet is to eat 4 anchovy filets a day.
- The remainder of that anchovy becomes dried fish meal which makes up the feed for farmed fish, especially American’s favorite: salmon.
- America is the second largest consumer of seafood in the world.
- 90% of fish in America comes from abroad.
- Fish in an American restaurant travels an average of 5,000 miles before it arrives on your plate.
- Almost half the seafood we eat is now farmed.
- Fish farms from Asia and India are now flooding the American market with fish, such as shrimp and catfish. Due to differing regulations it is “hard to know what’s what.”
- Shrimp is the most widely consumed seafood in America.
- I was surprised to hear that it was sea lice from farmed fish that actually escaped out into the wild salmon population and diminished it. (In my book when I discussed the AquaBounty salmon, the fear was that genetically engineered salmon would escape the farms and mate with wild salmon. Perhaps that just hasn’t happened yet.)
- The cutting edge of the aquaculture industry is in trying to strike a compromise between the environment and the bottom line.
- The Chinese already have genetically engineered fish. (Of course, so do we.)
- Shellfish, such as mussels, clams and oysters, clean up the ocean by soaking up carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus.
- Kelp is the new kale.
- There are over 10,000 edible plants in the ocean.
- The future of our food is in the ocean; an interesting concept since land-based food is high in omega-6’s and our omega-6’s and omega-3’s are out of balance.
- There are new studies which indicate that the connection between heart health and omega-3’s have been called into question. (This doesn’t mean that omega-3’s aren’t really healthy for you!)
- The Alaskan wild salmon industry is worth $200 million, and it is based on sustainable methods for both the salmon and the environment.
- Mussels are a seafood source high in omega-3 fatty acids.
- If you eat salmon, only buy Alaskan wild caught salmon.
- Arctic Char is a good choice of fish because it is grown in tanks outside the ocean. It is also high in omega-3’s.
- Tuna is no longer a good fish choice. It has the highest source of mercury in the American diet and should be avoided. Mercury increases the risk of a cardiac event and is also detrimental for brain health.
