Photo CreditLast week I discussed how to eat quality seafood for less and gave a few basic principles for buying seafood (low in mercury, high in nutrients, with a low impact on the environment.). I also mentioned the regional guides to eco friendly seafood that Monteray Bay Aquarium puts out. These are very helpful in making sure that the seafood you buy isn’t putting our natural resources at risk.
But I also wanted to point out that not all of the eco friendly choices on that list (even the ones low in toxins) are necessarily good for us. Just because it is sustainable, doesn’t mean it’s good for us. Tilapia may be in that category.
The Chemicals
Once upon a time, tilapia was breed in a way where most of the fish would be male (which allows the fish to grow larger and be marketable). However, they soon discovered a nifty little trick. If they put testosterone in their feed for the first few months, they would all turn male. Now, I haven’t read of any adverse health effects from people eating testosterone feed fish. But I find the practice a little disturbing and unnatural. Secondly, some fish farms do use growth hormones. We avoid that carefully in our meat, so why would we consume fish that contains it?
Their Food
While some fisheries may still use their natural food ( like duckweed), many (if not most?) fisheries feed them corn. Tilapia are easy to grow because, like pigs, they will eat anything, including “poop”. So it’s quite easy to grow them on corn. First, the corn is probably genetically modified. That has it’s own problems. Secondly, this high in corn diet leads to fish that’s high in Omega 6’s.
Wait, a minute! High in Omega 6 Fatty Acids?
High in Omega 6 Fatty Acids
One of the biggest health benefits of eating fish is getting Omega 3’s. You aren’t going to find that in Tilapia. In fact, you may be doing harm instead of good by eating it!
Tilapia has higher levels of potentially detrimental long-chain omega-6 fatty acids than 80-percent-lean hamburger, doughnuts and even pork bacon, the article says.
“For individuals who are eating fish as a method to control inflammatory diseases such as heart disease, it is clear from these numbers that tilapia is not a good choice,” the article says. “All other nutritional content aside, the inflammatory potential of hamburger and pork bacon is lower than the average serving of farmed tilapia.” Source
Note of course that this is comparing tilapia to grain feed beef. So…. tilapia contains more omega 6 fatty acids than grain feed beef, and doughnuts? That seems pretty high. And pretty darn, not good for you too.
All things considered, I just don’t think that tilapia is a good choice in seafood.. Sure it’s cheap, but I can buy grassfed beef for the same price or cheaper per pound, and that will contain a much better ratio of omega 3’s to 6’s. Tilapia may be sustainable, but that’s doesn’t mean it’s good for you.
My only disclaimer is that there could be fisheries who follow better practices and feed tilapia better feed. But I don’t think that even then that anyone argues that tilapia is a good source of anything except protein.
So what do you think? Have you heard any other news or facts on tilapia to share?
{ 33 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks for sounding the alarm!
Much of the farmed tilapia sold in the US comes from countries with weak/non-existent health, labor and environmental laws, such as China http://www.ers.usda.gov/data/aquaculture/TilapiaImportsValue.htm
An 11:1 omega 6-3 ratio is just off-the-chart bad!
“(tilapia is) …a potentially dangerous food source for some patients with heart disease, arthritis, asthma and other allergic and auto-immune diseases that are particularly vulnerable to an ‘exaggerated inflammatory response’. Inflammation is known to cause damage to blood vessels, the heart, lung and joint tissues, skin, and the digestive tract.” http://www2.wfubmc.edu/News/NewsARticle.htm?ArticleID=2400
So true! I think I need to do a post about why you shouldn’t eat any seafood from China.
And the ratio is just terrible, isn’t it!
Thanks for clearing this up! I had questions on the same issue
Well, I’m going to pose a question – just HOW is farmed fish “sustainable?” Definition of sustainable: capable of being maintained at a steady level without exhausting natural resources or causing severe ecological damage. Aquaculture (fish farming) is sort of like agriculture – there’s quite a few ways of doing it, and most of them are bad, some of them are actually helpful (like raising muscles in the ocean on rope lines helps to clean the water). I could be wrong here, but I don’t see fish farming practices being very open with information to consumers. Mostly I’ve come across “vegetarian feed” comments for farmed fish…which could simply mean soy. And I don’t want that. As consumers have gotten more demanding about how their beef, chicken, and pork are raised, the shrill cry for information on fish raising practices seems to be much quieter.
Personally, I don’t eat ANY farmed fish because I generally don’t believe it’s sustainable. I eat only wild-caught. Yes, you have to worry about the mercury levels…but as far as I’m concerned, and I believe WAPF feels the same way, that any benefits far outweigh the risks. And I’d say the same thing, too, if I was pregnant. I’m lucky to have a local seafood shop that sells a nice array of wild-caught fish. It’s pricey, so I don’t eat it on a regular basis, but I try to eat it as much as I can afford to. That being said, if more information were available about the practices and living condition of the farmed fish, and I were determine that it was safe enough and ecologically sound, I’d eat it. But right now, with the questionable feed ingredients, soy, corn, dye, GMOs, chemicals and pesticides, less than optimal omega-3s, and lack of REAL nutrients in the wild that fish need, farmed fish seem more of a nutritional risk to me than a teeny amount of mercury.
Here’s food for thought: The FDA/USDA whatever recommends a certain level of mercury “allowed” in food by ingestion. For those people who vaccinate their kids, they will have a lifetime accumulated total of not only mercury, but other toxic heavy metals (such as aluminum) directly in their blood stream that is WAY, WAY more than you would accumulate eating a lifetime of “average” fish consumption. I read an article in Mothering magazine last year or the year before that addressed this issue.
I’m one of those who most likely will not be vaccinating my children when I do have them. I’m not going to worry about the smaller amount of mercury in my wild-caught fish, especially when eating a nourishing WAPF lifestyle that helps to mitigate any effects.
Another thing worth mentioning: farmed fish put dye in food pellets…farmed salmon is actually murky gray in color because of the lack of their normal diet found only in the wild that naturally makes their flesh coral pink. They actually put coloring in feed to make their flesh a pleasing coral color, like their wild counterparts. It’s not uncommon to find soy in farmed fish feed as well. If they stoop to putting dye in feed, what else are they putting in there?!
I’ll stick with my wild fish
Devon,
I used the term “eco friendly” simply because comparably it is much better for our environment than overfishing wild fish or farmed salmon (does anyone think farmed salmon is a good choice? I hope not). However, obviously, I don’t recommend eating fish just because it’s eco friendly.
I have also had a hard time finding information on farmed seafood. I think that you could contact individual fisheries to learn more about their specific practices. I don’t think there is uniformity in practice.
I don’t think the small amounts of mercury in low mercury fish is a problem and we eat it. Did you notice that wild Alaskan salmon was recommended in my last post? That may contain a small amount of mercury, but we eat it without worries.
One other thing of note – I saw on your previous post that you mentioned Nina Planck and her fish recommendation. I think, with her cautions, that it’s also important to point out that Nina herself takes the same WAPF approach – that benefits outweigh the risks. She herself states numerous times in her second book that she ate plenty of canned and frozen Wild Alaskan Salmon (with the bones, in the canned stuff) throughout her pregnancy, and in her most recent pregnancy with twins.
Definitely. Like I said in my post…” Nina goes on to give the advice of eating low mercury fish, low in the food chain, but not avoiding fish altogether. Fish is important for the development of your babies brain and shouldn’t be avoided.”
Though actually Nina differs just a bit than WAPF in that she will eat some farmed fish (not salmon, but ones recommended in the Monteray Bay Aquarium eco friendly list).
Taking precautions with what you put in your body is without a doubt important. Protecting yourself against disease is also important though. Vaccinations should always be considered carefully, but not ruled out. It may not be necessary to get the flu shot every fall, but childhood immunizations are the reason that diseases like polio are no longer the threat that they used to be. The following website has some interesting information on mercury levels in vaccines:
http://www.immunizationinfo.org/thimerosal_mercury_detail.cfv?id=3
According to this website, routine pediatric vaccines don’t even contain thimerosal anymore. Thimerosal is predominantly found in multi-dose flu and tetanus vaccines as a preservative to protect against bacterial contamination. Obviously, mercury exposure is not something to take lightly, but fish consumption should be a much bigger concern than routine vaccination.
In any case, farmed tilapia doesn’t sound all that great anymore. Thanks for the information Kimi!
Actually, a lot of diseases were on the decline(because of better sanitation and other factors) before mandated vaccinations began. Dr. Mayor Eisenstein is a doctor and a lawyer who has spent years studying vaccinations and their effects on children, esp. the correlation between vaccines and autism.
For more info go to http://homefirst.com/info-1/vaccine-choice.html
I would be very cautious when following the advice of doctors like Dr. Eisenstein. A quick internet search doesn’t paint the prettiest picture of Dr. Eisenstein. Dr. Einstein’s ventures seem to be more entrepreneurial than medical. Articles from the Chicago Tribune and ScienceBlogs portray him as more of a quack, not the well-meaning, grandfatherly pediatrician that his website makes him out to be. There is absolutely no proven link between autism and vaccines. The one case in which vaccinations were related to autism-like symptoms was in the case of a young girl with a rare mitochondrial disorder, not autism.
Autism often begins to show itself in the early years of childhood, usually around the same time that children are receiving routine vaccines. This, interestingly, is also the same time that social behavior begins to develop. Many parents of children with autism notice that, around this time, their children are not developing socially like other children and consequently attribute it to vaccination. It is not that these children stop developing socially, merely that they do not start this development normally in the first place. Please don’t misinterpret this as insensitivity, I am very aware of the devastating effects of autism, but I think that it is very important to look at the issue critically and to be very wary of extremist ideas, especially when the proponent has something to gain, in this case, quite a bit of money.
I think that there is a lot more to autism than we realize. The complexity of the brain, and the subtle differences observed in the brains of individuals with autism are still being discovered. Much of these differences can be linked to genetic factors. I also think that the increasing prevalence of autism is, in part, due to increasing awareness and diagnosis. Many individuals who we may have written off as being “odd” or just a little socially challenged are now being diagnosed with Asperger’s and high-functioning autism.
Anyone interested in how diet effects the mind (including Autism) should definitely read Gut and Psychology Syndrome by Natasha Campbel-McBride. She’s had amazing results working with autistic children.
Thank you so much for addressing this issue. This was a very enlightening post and I will be sharing it with many people. You cleared up the muddy waters, and gave some new info as well. I really appreciate your blog and use it as a reference as I encourage and teach others too!
I am glad that you are discussing the problems with farmed seafood. I rely on seafood since I have not eaten red meat or pork for more than 50 years. This has made chicken and particularly seafood very important in my diet.
In the last five years I have become increasingly allergic to some seafood. At first I thought it was flat fish, then mussels and now it varies a lot. My fishmonger tells me that in his opinion it is a raection to farmed fish and I believe him. The alergic reaction consists of itchiness and then bumps but is becoming stronger oevr time. It makes me short of breath and brings stomach aches. Very scary. I hate the idea of having to be so careful about eating seafood, it is all leading to vegetarianism.
I had the same problem with allergic reactions when I started eating farmed fish/seafood. I was raised on fresh, wild caught seafood and when I started ‘compromising’ on cheaper seafood and bought farmed, I found I was allergic. I had heard that adults can develop seafood allergies at any time, so at first I just passed it off as a new allergy. Then, thankfully, I took a ‘risk’ and ate some salmon once at my parent’s house. NO REACTION! I started testing things out and found that the fish I had at their house (fresh, wildcaught) never made me sick, but what I had at home made me break out in hives. The correlation didn’t have to be proven beyond that for me. Farmed fish was making me sick, but the fish from the Columbia river and Pacific ocean (where I live) didn’t have an effect.
One more strike against industrialized food!
I have been trying, with no success, to locate some non-farmed tilapia. I typically won’t eat any fish unless it’s wild-caught, but for some reason, Tilapia really was on my “don’t touch it ’til you know it’s wild” list. Now I know why! Has anybody ever seen it “wild?”
Ah, how I wish Walmart would get on the wild-caught fish bandwagon. Their buying power is such that they no longer buy any dairy products with growth hormone in it (according to their statement in the movie “Food, Inc.”). There is so little now that we get there… paper & automotive products are about it!
Have you ever read Dr. Rex Russell’s book What The Bible Says About Healthy Living? It is what changed my eating life back in 1996. He has lots of the same ideas as Jordin Rubin and Sally Fallon. There is even a cookbook that goes along with his ideas.
He has a whole chapter about fish. It is very interesting. I don’t have it in front of me, but he recommends only eating fish with fins AND scales. So you eliminate fish that only have one or the other. He also explains how like pork, many fish will eat anything and are scavengers. They purify/clarify water. So, for example, catfish should not be eaten. His story about catfish in particular talked about how a pond that contained bass and catfish was accidentally contaminated with pesticides from a nearby farmer who was spraying his fields. A day later, all the catfish were floating at the surface dead, but the bass were all fine. The catfish purified the water essentially.
Thanks for that. I won’t be buying tilapia any more, which is too bad because it’s tasty! But yeah, hormones are not good. Darn!
Thanks for another inspiring and info-packed post. As someone unaccustomed to preparing fish and seafood at home (lazy and afraid, I guess), but who otherwise follows a WAPF diet, I’d love to get a few favorite recipes from you or your readers on easy recipes using some of the more virtuous types of fish.
Also, I know of a fantastic source for wild caught Alaskan salmon (the best I’ve EVER eaten) for anyone here in Minnesota – Wild Run Salmon, owned by a local guy who spends half the year with his family up in Alaska, available in summer at the Mill City Farmer’s Market (http://www.millcityfarmersmarket.org/vendors/wild-run-salmon) or year-round at Traditional Foods MN (www.traditionalfoodsmn.com).
On a related topic, I wonder if you’d consider a post sometime on the recent media coverage claiming that the burgeoning market for omega-3 fish oils is depleting some critical fish species. An example is a Jan 25 Time magazine article by Tim Padgett discussing the situation and possible alternative sources like algae. (Could a plant source be as good as a fish source in this case?) Wise Traditions magazine will likely continue covering it as well; their Spring 09 issue on cod liver oil was fascinating, and I’ve since switched to fermented high vitamin CLO (and you can just tell that stuff is potent!).
And now for something completely different… might you consider, if possible, adding a “search” feature to your blog, so we can search on any key word in your wealth of posts and recipes? Just a thought.
Hi Beth. Two recent favorite seafood recipes we’ve enjoyed are:
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Alaska-Salmon-Bake-with-Pecan-Crunch-Coating/Detail.aspx
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/My-Best-Clam-Chowder/Detail.aspx
I used a raw milk/raw cream mixture for the chowder, and it was excellent. My husband raved about it for a few days.
The salmon is delicious as well… we just had it for dinner tonight.
I highly recommend allrecipes.com when you need a recipe. You can search by recipe title or ingredients. There are usually lots of reviews from people who have tried the recipe, and you can find good tips. I try to stick with 4.5 or 5 star recipes. I’ve found so many excellent recipes, and most can be adapted (if necessary) to be WAP/NT friendly.
Thanks for this post Kimi! Before changing our diets, I’m sorry to say that we only ate tilapia, and occasionally shrimp.
Now we’re enjoying a variety of seafoods. I quit buying tilapia (and all farmed seafood) as soon as I saw Food, Inc. where they showed a fish farm… YUCK!!!
I like All Recipes too, and epicurious.com. Thanks for sharing the two recipes. The salmon bake one sounds great!
Another good recipe site is recipezaar.com. This post gives us a lot to think about, doesn’t it?
Hey Everyone,
I would love to have you share your favorite recipes with Beth!
And Beth, thanks for the link and the great post idea. (By the way, I don’t think Algae would be a good choice. I would go to krill oil before that). I actually do have a search feature, just look the the right of this post, about half way down. And in my main dishes section on my recipe index I have a few recipes using seafood.
THANKS KIMI, JEN AND JENNA for the replies. Can’t wait to try the clam chowder recipe, and as luck would have it, I get wonderful raw milk on a weekly basis, and my local Minneapolis co-op happens to have Crown Prince canned clams on sale this month! Thanks for pointing out the search function – sorry I missed it before.
P.S. I wonder how the tins of smoked oysters (Crown Prince brand) would rate according to all these seafood considerations. Any thought on that?
P.P.S. The Crown Prince brand smoked oysters I asked about above are from South Korea, and they contain olive oil. Thoughts?
Thank you, Kimi for doing this very helpful series on seafood!
Tilapia is out for us now , unless it specifically says ‘wild caught’. And I have never found that one anywhere. Too bad since it tastes pretty good. And I’d love to read that post on ‘why not to buy on Chinese stores’. We do buy from there once a month or once in two months’… I do know it’s bad, but once I read the hows and whys of it, I’m sure I wont go back there.
Actually you can buy great seafood sometimes at Asian stores, you just shouldn’t buy fish from China. The reason is because, although they are improving, many chemicals and practices that are illegal here are done there in their fish farms. The fish can be pretty toxic.
Thanks Kimi! We got some fish from chinese store yesterday and the taste was horrible – more leathery than flaky than a typical white fish. That just sealed the deal. No more fish from chinese stores.
I have a question about the information below that’s posted on the Whole Foods Market web site.
Whole Foods Market – Farmed Fish
When it comes to farmed seafood, we know exactly where ours comes from, what it was fed … and more importantly, what it wasn’t fed! When it’s done responsibly, fish farming — also known as aquaculture — provides high-quality fish, can be environmentally friendly, and can be a crucial way to supplement the supply of wild-caught fish. And we know we can trust the farmers we partner with because they are world leaders in environmentally responsible aquaculture. Together with scientists and environmentalists, they helped us to develop our strict Quality Standards for Aquaculture, which include:
* No use of antibiotics, added growth hormones and poultry and mammalian by-products in feed.
* Traceability that allows us to track our farmed seafood—where it came from and how it got to our stores.
* Requirements that producers minimize the impacts of fish farming on the environment by protecting sensitive habitats such as mangrove forests and wetlands, monitoring water quality to prevent pollution, and sourcing feed ingredients responsibly.
* Strict protocols to ensure that farmed seafood is not escaping into the environment and that wildlife around the farm is protected.
Question when they say ” No use of antibiotics, added growth hormones and poultry and mammalian by-products in feed.”…if this is true would not this take care of the worries that are talked about in your post?
Do you think they would feed their fish corn?
I found more information that may helped answer my questions on Whole Foods Market’s Blog….
Our Detailed Standards
Pardon our pride, but we really do have incredibly strong and thorough buying standards for farmed seafood—feel free to compare us to other markets! We are committed to these standards and to implementing them for farmed seafood throughout our stores. Here are a few highlights:
* Our Quality Standards for Aquaculture prohibit the use of antibiotics, added growth hormones and poultry and mammalian by-products in feed.
* We do not carry genetically modified or cloned seafood.
* We partner with farmers who work hard to be the leaders in sustainable aquaculture.
* Our standards require producers to minimize the impacts of fish farming on the environment by protecting sensitive habitats such as mangrove forests and wetlands, monitoring water quality to prevent pollution and sourcing feed ingredients responsibly.
* Our seafood is free from added preservatives such as sodium bisulfite, sodium tri-polyphosphate (STP) and sodium metabisulfite.
Here are some specific standards for popular farm-raised fish you’ll find at Whole Foods Market.
Farm-Raised Tilapia
Our tilapia is raised in Ecuador and Costa Rica to our strict standards which prohibit antibiotics and preservatives. Nor do we allow the industry-standard use of hormones for sex reversal. And, our tilapia feed contains fish processing trimmings instead of wild fish caught just for feed.
They have other fished listed also..http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/products/aquaculture.php
If you really want to know if any of the farmed seafood that Whole Foods sells is fed corn or soy (genetically modified or not), I would call and ask! The fish themselves may not be genetically modified, but I don’t see anything stating that the feed is not. Also, where does the “fish processing trimmings” in the feed come from? Are those fish genetically modified, or are they fed GM corn and soy? Whatever the case, with tilapia, it’s just not a healthy fish based on the omega 6:3 ratio.
I’m sticking with wild seafood!
We don’t eat farm raised fish. My husband’s father was a fisherman/shrimper and my husband spent his teen years out on the Gulf helping. He saw video of fish farms and was utterly disgusted by it and after hearing they are fed corn, refuses to eat it.
Tilapia are vegetarians – they are not supposed to eat fish trimmings! Also tilapia are known for being able to live in bad water. Especially when the fish come from other countries – I don’t even want to think about what is in the water over there!
HI All,
Just wanted to add a couple of quick notes.
My daughter has several food allergies, but Salmon was supposed to be one of her safe foods. I try to give them healthy seafood at least once a week so we ate a lot of salmon, still do. Once in a while we’d try to eat out, and sometimes she’d react to salmon, other times she’d be fine. WE finally figured out it was a difference between wild caught and farmed salmon, and as she has a severe soy allergy it would be understandable that she was reacting to the foods for the farmed salmon.
I use this website a lot for recipes- We follow WAP, NT, and Dr. Natasha C/McB’s suggestions faithfully. I’ve found a lot of recipes on this site that are GAPS friendly.
there are some great ideas for salmon, as well as other proteins, soups etc.
http://www.healingnaturallybybee.com/recipes/index.php
The reasons outlined here are a great example of why I’m skeptical of all such lists like the dirty dozen for recommending organic is necessary. For instance corn is not on the dirty dozen list because you peel off the husk so they can spray as much pesticides on it as they want to…not to mention genetically modified. The important thing to remember is that probably the lists are just propaganda anyway…no better or more trustworthy than any other list that corporations pay to put into existence.