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Farmed salmon isn't naturally pink or red
- rayiner 7y agoSome environmentalists grasp at straws to shoot down alternatives that enable expanding consumption in sustainable ways, because what many really want is to promote asceticism. New generations of contained aquaculture have gotten Seafood Watch’s recommendation, correcting pollution and pest problems with open aquaculture methods. Contained aquaculture offers a real way forward for sustainable seafood. But salmon raised that way is still white without the additive. That doesn’t actually have any impact on the healthiness or taste of the fish. (My wife is a sixth generation Oregonian, where salmon is serious business, and prefers the taste of farmed Norwegian Atlantic to wild caught sockeye.)
- ardit33 7y agoFarmed Norwegian Salmon is one of the most toxic fish out there.... Unless something has changed in the last two years, I'd steer clear of that stuff.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYYf8cLUV5E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYYf8cLUV5E
- tschwimmer 7y agoThis is interesting to me, but I don't have an hour to watch this doc. Is there a link to a study or related news article?
- rayiner 7y agoThe problem with scare media like that is that it does nothing to put the risk in context. What is the actual danger from eating fish with high levels of PCBs? The EPA guidance is based on a 1 in 100,000 increase in cancer risk over 70 years, based on extrapolating from animal testing to humans. There is no real scientific evidence that eating fish with elevated PCBs actually results in a measurable increase in cancer risk: https://seafood.oregonstate.edu/sites/agscid7/files/snic/pcbs-anatomy-of-a-health-scare-in-salmon.pdf https://seafood.oregonstate.edu/sites/agscid7/files/snic/pcb.... To put that into perspective, moving from New York to Chicago will increase your risk of being murdered in a single year by 15 in 100,000, and your 70-year risk of being murdered by 1 in 100. Smoking and then quitting raises your lifetime risk of lung cancer by 3-5 in 100.
- snissn 7y agoAs a stubborn new Yorker who occasionally considers moving before thinking better of it I approve
- tesq 7y ago> The problem with scare media like that is that it does nothing to put the risk in context. What is the actual danger from eating fish with high levels of PCBs The problem with not watching the documentary you choose to comment on is that you'll end up strawmanning the video you didn't watch or responding with a red herring. If you had watched the documentary, you would have known that the issue goes far, far beyond PCBs.
- rayiner 7y agoI’m aware of the other problems with open aquaculture. But OP referred to the “toxic” nature of the fish. What’s “toxic” besides the PCBs? Farmed salmon is lower in mercury, or example. (Also, you’re right, I didn’t watch the videos. As a rule, I don’t watch informational content in video form, because it’s a stupid way to present information. They’re geared to obfuscating and emotionalizing topics in ways that are harder to do in written documents with citations and footnotes.)
- tesq 7y ago> But OP referred to the “toxic” nature of the fish. What’s “toxic” besides the PCBs? If you had watched the documentary you commented on, you would know. Insecticides, dioxins, various neurotoxins, heavy metals, and various toxic waste chemicals from oil production and industry. > Farmed salmon is lower in mercury, or example. If you had watched the documentary you commented on, you would know that this is not necessarily true, and not at all true for the regions that the video covered.
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- aey 7y agoI have personally switched to a diet 100% composed of the flesh of the beyond beast. And I’ve never felt better! Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyes wgah'nagl fhtagn
- undersuit 7y agoWhy don't the farmed salmon producers just not dye the salmon flesh if it's just some pointless asceticism?
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- elil17 7y agoColor is an important part of what makes food appetizing. If all good was grey eating would be less enjoyable If anything, food coloring is underused. A pinch of turmeric, while not particularly flavorful, can really liven up a dish by giving it some color
- darkpuma 7y agoGray is a color as good as any other.
- foldingmoney 7y agoSince when is turmeric not flavourful though?
- tptacek 7y agoPeople seem to have no trouble paying top dollar for halibut, which is also white.
- harryh 7y agoI think you might be confusing the word asceticism with aestheticism.
- cam_l 7y agoWait, is the colour difference just due to lack of exercise?
- scruple 7y agoSalmon is a whitefish. The pink/red color of their (wild caught) flesh is due to their diet at sea. Specifically, shrimp eat algae which has a pigment that gives their shells and flesh a pinkish color and Salmon eat shrimp.
- ip26 7y agoAh come on it's not just asceticism. Anchovies, sardines, herring, mackerel and other small fish populations are currently being decimated, and 99% of the catch goes to producing... farmed meat, including salmon. Even if they've solved pollution & disease, if you're putting in 2lbs of unsustainably caught wild fish and getting out 1lb of farmed fish, you don't have a sustainable model. It's kind of tragically ironic- those small fish are incredibly healthy food & quite inexpensive.
- darkpuma 7y agoMackerel in particular is far superior to salmon in my opinion, but few seem to even give it a chance. There seems to be a widespread public bias against canned fish in general, and small canned fish in particular (larger canned fish such as tuna or salmon seem to be more accepted.) If anybody hasn't tried canned mackerel, I strongly recommend it. A can of mackerel and some crackers makes a super convenient and tasty lunch.
- wincy 7y agoI bought a can of mackerel the other day at the suggestion of another HN poster. It was amazing, and I bought a whole case of 12 on Amazon. I don’t know why it tastes so good but I’m happy I tried it!
- scruple 7y agoI think we read the same comment. I picked up a can when I was out grocery shopping yesterday, too, realizing I had always passedtl canned mackarel up for who knows what reason. It's good, I'll be adding it to my lunch rotation for sure.
- jasonboyd 7y agoI don't know anything about canned mackerel, I'll give it a try the next time I'm at the grocery store. But as far as sushi goes, mackerel is one of my least favorite. I can't quite say way. I eat plenty of "fishy" fish but that one is fishy in a unique way.
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- Alex3917 7y ago> That doesn’t actually have any impact on the healthiness or taste of the fish. Maybe not per se, but farmed salmon is vastly less healthy and the artificial coloring makes it much more difficult to tell the difference.
- Oletros 7y ago> Maybe not per se, but farmed salmon is vastly less healthy Is there any study showing that? Thanks
- TallGuyShort 7y agoInterestingly, I just ate brook trout out of a lake in Wyoming, and the meat was deep pink, almost red. I know each of the trout species are more closely related to at least one type of salmon than they are to each other, but I've never seen freshwater fish that color. I can't think of anything in the lake that's anything like the krill / crustaceans named as the cause of the color in the article...
- undersuit 7y agoThose trout are eating insects, crayfish, and yes, shrimp. https://wgfd.wyo.gov/Habitat/Habitat-Plans/Wyoming-State-Wildlife-Action-Plan/Crustaceans https://wgfd.wyo.gov/Habitat/Habitat-Plans/Wyoming-State-Wil...
- ajross 7y agoTrout and Salmon aren't proper clades. What you call the fish depends on where it lives, not what it's related to. In fact Rainbow Trout and Steelhead Salmon aren't merely closely related, they are literally the same species and will interbreed. Lake dwelling trout are the descendents of ocean-going ancestors that got stuck by dams and floods.
- TallGuyShort 7y agoI'm aware - my point was exactly that - Atlantic salmon and brown trout are in the same genus, whereas pacific salmon and rainbow trout are in a different genus. Certain combinations of varieties of trout and salmon are more closely related to each other than other varieties of trout are to other varieties of trout.
- wldlyinaccurate 7y agoI'm guessing this is not true for all species of salmon. I've "caught" salmon from a farm in New Zealand and the meat was a very deep orange-red colour.
- devenson 7y agoThe colorant is in the feed. Perhaps the fish you "caught" had already eaten such feed?
- shironineja 7y agoCheese is orange as it is also dyed that color.
- p1necone 7y agoIn my experience almost all cheese is not orange. Orange cheese is a processed American, and Red Leicester (among other varieties, I just picked a common one - Limburger anyone?) thing.
- chrisseaton 7y agoMany traditional high quality English and French cheeses have been historically flavoured with additives that also dye them. It isn’t something only people ignorant of cheese do.
- p1necone 7y agoI am aware of that. I wasn't implying anything about the relative qualities of different kinds of cheese - just that "all cheese is orange" is a very USA-centric thing. (I suspect it's also a regional thing. Cheddar isn't orange in every state right?)
- duncan-donuts 7y agoI’m in MN (not quite Wisconsin but we love our cheese too) and there’s a ton of cheddar both white and orange. Pretty much any cheddar producer up here that makes orange would also make white. I don’t think it’s as ubiquitous as you’d expect.
- adrianmonk 7y ago> Cheddar isn't orange in every state right? At every grocery store in the US where I've ever checked, they sell both "white" (off-white) and "yellow" (yellow/orange) cheddar. Yellow is more popular. They also sell colby, which is a type of cheddar, also usually yellow. What is regional in the US is the shape of sticks of butter! It's either "Eastern-pack" or "Western-pack" depending on which side of the Rocky Mountains. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butter#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butter#United_States Since the Rocky Mountains are the continental divide, that means you can stand in a spot where rain the falls to one side of you ends up in the Pacific Ocean and on its way passes by sticks of butter in one shape, and rain that falls on your other side ends up in the Atlantic Ocean and passes by differently shaped sticks of butter on its way.
- cannonedhamster 7y agoMost meat has dyes of some sort. I'm not sure this is really that big of a bugaboo. A lot of food in general has food colorants that are entirely made in a lab.
- tyingq 7y agoBeef is quite often packaged with carbon monoxide to retain the "fresh" red color instead of turning brown after a few days.
- elchief 7y agoAnd it's highly inflammatory. Chronic inflammation is probably the cause of major diseases Wild fish is highly anti-inflammatory https://harvardmagazine.com/2019/05/inflammation-disease-diet https://harvardmagazine.com/2019/05/inflammation-disease-die... https://inflammationfactor.com/look-up-if-ratings/ https://inflammationfactor.com/look-up-if-ratings/
- ajross 7y agoThat link doesn't include any numbers for farmed salmon. There are three entries in their sample database, all wild (one each raw, baked and canned -- all look healthy enough). It's also, let's be clear, a front for hawking books and seminars by Monica Reinagel, a "nutritionist" with no particular science background or history of work on the subject. Frankly that's sort of a garbage link. In the real world there's plenty of science on inflammation in general, but very little conclusive numbers on diet, and AFAIK absolutely no real work showing an effect as specific as "farmed vs. wild fish", especially at the significance you seem to be claiming.
- jklinger410 7y agoWhat causes this difference?
- magicbuzz 7y agohttps://www.abc.net.au/7.30/how-green-and-clean-is-tasmanian-salmon/2674252 https://www.abc.net.au/7.30/how-green-and-clean-is-tasmanian... There was a longer report I think the above article was based on. I recall watching the section where a low-level employee talked about adding the chemical that makes the flesh go pink. The reporter asked whether that was any concern. The response was “Well, doesn’t everything have chemicals in it these days?”
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- bufferoverflow 7y agoI'd definitely buy uncolored salmon, especially if it were cheaper.
- seshagiric 7y agoOn a somewhat related note, free range non-broiler chicken meat tastes so much better than the farm-fed ones.
- jbaudanza 7y agoI eat the farmed atlantic salmon from Whole Foods several times a week. It tastes way better than the wild salmon and is half the price. Whole Foods claims it is responsibly and sustainably farmed. They are obviously biased, so I can't be certain. But the farmed salmon definitely wins on price and flavor. https://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/blog/truth-about-farmed-salmon-whole-foods-market https://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/blog/truth-about-farmed-sal...
- walru 7y ago'Color Added Freshness' was the most surreal term I ever saw posted on a piece salmon in the supermarket. Not sure I've bought any since.
- brandonmenc 7y agoThe Seafood Watch app from Monterey Bay Aquarium is a good resource when trying to purchase fish that is sustainable and safe to eat. https://www.seafoodwatch.org https://www.seafoodwatch.org