Wild Alaskan Salmon is a Powerhouse of Nutrition that May Help You
Live Longer
April 15, 2013
Story at-a-glance
Research suggests that eating oily fish once or twice a week may
increase your lifespan by more than two years, and reduce your
risk of dying from cardiovascular disease by 35 percent
Compared to those in the lowest percentiles, those with omega-3
blood levels in the highest 20 percent were 27 percent less
likely to die of any cause; 40 percent less likely to die of
coronary heart disease, and 48 percent less likely to die of an
arrhythmia
If you want to maximize health benefits from fish, steer clear
of farmed fish, particularly farmed salmon, and even more
specifically genetically engineered farmed salmon, which may end
up being approved within the next two years—especially if you’re
seeking to improve your omega-3 to omega-6 ratio
The ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 fat of wild salmon is far
superior to farmed. Whereas farmed salmon has a 1-1 ratio of
omega-3s and omega-6s (due to its “junk food” diet), the ratio
for wild sockeye salmon is between 6 and 9 to 1, which is a more
ideal ratio
Avoid Atlantic salmon, as salmon labeled "Atlantic Salmon"
typicallly comes from fish farms. Look for “Alaskan salmon,” and
“sockeye salmon,” as Alaskan sockeye is not allowed to be farmed
and is therefore bound to be wild
By Dr. Mercola
A slew of media reports encouraging you to eat more fish have
surfaced lately, following the publication of a study on omega-3
fats and health. The research, published in The Annals of
Internal Medicine,1
suggests that eating oily fish once or twice a week may increase
your lifespan.
Naturally, there’s still the issue of environmental pollution
and contamination, which was not addressed in this study. Do the
benefits of eating fish really outweigh the risks of
contamination?
In my view, I believe the benefits CAN outweigh the risks,
provided you make really wise choices. There are few
uncontaminated fish available these days so you need to know
what to look for.
Needless to say, toxins like mercury and PCB will not do your
health any favors.
Lately, I’ve shifted my own diet a bit, and am now eating
three ounces of Wild Alaskan salmon about every other day. But
this is really the ONLY fish I’ll eat on a regular basis, and
the only one I feel comfortable recommending as a good source of
healthful fats.
Higher Blood Levels of Omega-3 Associated with Longer Life Span
The featured study investigated how eating fatty fish
affected health. Nearly 2,700 American seniors in their
seventies were included in the study. None of them had prevalent
coronary heart disease (CHD), stroke, or heart failure at the
outset of the study.
Rather than rely on food diaries, the researchers measured
blood levels of omega-3’s instead. Since none of the
participants took omega-3 supplements, their levels were
indicative of their omega-3 consumption primarily from fish.
Phospholipid fatty acid levels and cardiovascular risk
factors were measured in 1992, and the relationships with
mortality and incidents of fatal or non-fatal CHD and stroke
were assessed through 2008 – a total of 16 years. According to
the featured NPR article:2
“After controlling for factors like age, sex and
lifestyle, the researchers found that, on average, adults
with the highest blood levels of omega-3 fatty acids lived
2.2 years longer. In particular, these adults had a 35
percent lower risk of dying from cardiovascular disease –
which is in line with other studies that have tied omega-3’s
to cardiovascular benefits. Higher levels of fatty acids
were most strongly associated with decreased risk of
coronary heart disease and stroke.”
Compared to those in the lowest percentiles, those with
omega-3 blood levels in the highest 20 percent were:
27 percent less likely to die of any cause
40 percent less likely to die of coronary heart disease,
and
48 percent less likely to die of an arrhythmia
One drawback is that since it was not a randomized trial, the
findings cannot prove causation, meaning there’s no way of
telling whether higher omega-3 blood levels were solely
responsible for the health effects. That said, there’s ample
evidence that omega-3 is critical for optimal health,
particularly cardiovascular health, so this research provides
additional support for the value of optimizing your omega-3
intake.
In the following video, I interview Randy Hartnell,
founder-president of Vital Choice Wild Seafood and Organics,
about the differences between wild and farmed salmon. Hartnell
spent more than 20 years as a commercial fisherman before
forming his company in 2001, which features sustainably
harvested wild salmon that are particularly low in heavy metals.
I’m a huge fan of their sockeye salmon, and Vital Choice
salmon is about the only type of fish I eat, for reasons I’ll
discuss below.
Beware, as Media Tries to Mislead You About Healthful Fish
Choices
According to lead author Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, an
associate professor of medicine at Harvard, the reason we need
omega-3 is because 95 percent of your cells’ membranes are made
of fat. Without fats such as omega-3, your cells cannot function
properly. He recommends eating one or two servings of fatty fish
per week to optimize your blood levels of omega-3. Interestingly
enough, the New York Times3
gets quite specific about the types of fish recommended:
“...3.5 ounces of farmed salmon, 5 ounces of
anchovies or herring, or 15 to 18 ounces of cod or catfish.”
Farmed salmon?
I think not... That is one of your WORST options, for a
number of reasons that I will detail below. Cod and catfish also
primarily come from aquatic fish farms these days.
Unfortunately, fish farming has become big business, and a
protected one at that. To learn more about this sad state of
affairs, please see my recent article on the film
Salmon Confidential, which details how salmon farms
threaten the entire ecosystem in Canada’s British Columbia, and
how the Canadian government is covering it up to protect the
farming industry.
Let me put it to you plainly: If you want to maximize health
benefits from fish, you want to steer clear of farmed fish,
particularly farmed salmon, and even more specifically
genetically engineered farmed salmon. On December 21, 2012,
the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) took a giant step
closer toward the final approval of the first genetically
engineered (GE) food animal – a salmon designed to grow
abnormally fast,4
and to an unnaturally large size. It now appears the first GE
fish could reach your dinner plate within the next year or two,
unless a sufficiently strong opposition is mounted.
How to Identify Wild Salmon from Farm-Raised
Unfortunately, salmon are often mislabeled (and genetically
engineered foods don’t require any labeling at all as of yet).
Studies have shown that as much as 70 to 80 percent of the fish
marked "wild" are actually farmed. This includes restaurants,
where 90-95 percent of salmon is farmed, yet may be mis-listed
on the menu as "wild."
So how can you tell whether a salmon is wild or farm-raised?
The flesh of wild sockeye salmon is bright red, courtesy of its
natural astaxanthin content. It’s also very lean, so the fat
marks, those white stripes you see in the meat, are very thin.
If the fish is pale pink with wide fat marks, the salmon is
farmed. Avoid Atlantic salmon, as typically salmon labeled
"Atlantic Salmon" currently comes from fish farms.
The two designations you want to look for are: “Alaskan
salmon,” and “sockeye salmon,” as Alaskan sockeye is not allowed
to be farmed. So canned salmon labeled "Alaskan Salmon" is a
good bet, and if you find sockeye salmon, it's bound to be wild.
Again, you can tell sockeye salmon from other salmon by its
color; its flesh is bright red opposed to pink, courtesy of its
superior astaxanthin content. Sockeye salmon actually has one of
the highest concentrations of astaxanthin of any food.
Why Farmed Salmon is an Inferior Choice
As the first video discusses, there are three major
differences between wild-caught and farmed salmon, and once you
realize how different the fish are, based on how they were
raised, you’ll see why opting for the cheaper alternative isn’t
the wisest choice – especially if you’re seeking to
improve your omega-3 to omega-6 ratio:
Nutritional content – Wild salmon swim
around in the wild, eating what nature programmed them to
eat. Therefore, their nutritional profile is more complete,
with micronutrients, fats, minerals, vitamins, and
antioxidants like astaxanthin (which gives salmon its pink,
or in the case of sockeye, red-colored, flesh.)
Farmed salmon, on the other hand, are fed an artificial
diet consisting of grain products like corn and soy (most of
which is genetically modified), along with chicken and
feather meal, artificial coloring, and synthetic
astaxanthin, which is not approved for human consumption,
but is permitted to be used in fish feed.
Mother Nature never intended fish to eat these things,
and as a consequence of this radically unnatural diet, the
nutritional content of their flesh is also altered, and not
for the better. Farmed salmon taste different than
wild-caught, and much of it has to do with the altered fat
ratio, which is dramatically different. Farmed salmon
contain far more omega-6, courtesy of their grain-based
diet.
The ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 fat of wild salmon is far
superior to farmed. Wild salmon typically has 600 to 1,000
percent more omega-3s compared to omega-6s. So whereas
farmed salmon has a 1 to 1 ratio of omega-3s and omega-6s –
again due to its “junk food” diet – the ratio for wild
sockeye salmon is between 6 and 9 to 1. This is important,
because if you’re trying to improve your omega-3 to omega-6
balance, you simply will not accomplish it with farmed
salmon.
Fish Health – Wild salmon return to
their native spawning grounds each year, without you having
to do anything, while farmed salmon are kept in pens.
Naturally, fish swimming in the wild get more exercise, and
this alone make wild fish healthier than their incarcerated
counterparts. As explained by Tony Farrell5
with the University of British Columbia Zoology department,
fish kept in constrained environments become the aquatic
version of “couch potatoes,” with similar health
consequences as humans face when we don’t exercise enough.
Recent research6
has shown that survival rates of fish that have received
sufficient exercise is 13 percent higher than the “couch
potato” controls, and the exercise-conditioned fish had
better growth, and stronger immune systems, courtesy of
certain gene activations.
Environment – Nearly 99 percent of
farmed salmon are raised in net pens in the open ocean. All
the excess food that is dropped in ends up going out in the
environment – the genetically engineered ingredients, the
pesticides, the antibiotics and chemical additives. Anything
the fish do not consume, along with all their now unnatural
waste products, end up contaminating the environment. To
learn more about the many hazards of fish farming, check out
FarmedAndDangerous.org.7
There’s also the vegetarian or vegan ethical aspect. Wild
sockeye salmon are the vegetarians of the salmon world. Their
diet consists of krill, plankton and algae, and they are caught
at the very end of their life cycle. By the time they enter the
fishing grounds, they’ve lived 95 percent of their natural life
in the wild. At the end of their life, they fight their way
up-river to spawn, after which they die a natural death – unless
they’re caught by fishermen or get eaten by some other predator.
Lethal Salmon Virus Found in Every Region with Installed Salmon
Farms
According to whistleblower Dr. Rick Rutledge, professor and
fisheries statistician at Simon Fraser University in Canada,
wild river inlet sockeye have been found to be infected with
Infectious Salmon Anemia Virus (ISA), also known as salmon
influenza. This highly lethal and much-feared virus is directly
attributed to farmed salmon, and has proliferated in every
region across the globe where Atlantic salmon farms have been
installed.
At least 11 species of fish in the British Columbia’s Fraser
River have also been found to be infected with ISA, yet the
Canadian food inspection agency has aggressively refuted the
findings. In fact, everyone who has spoken up about these salmon
viruses, which can be traced back to salmon farms, have been
shut down in some way or another. By muzzling scientists looking
into this problem, the Canadian government is allowing
potentially contaminated farm-raised salmon to be sold,
exported, and consumed, which is yet another reason to avoid
farmed salmon.
In fact, Canadian farmed salmon purchased in various stores
and sushi restaurants around British Columbia have tested
positive for at least three different salmon viruses, including
ISA, salmon alphaviruses, and Piscine reovirus, which gives
salmon a heart attack and prevents them from swimming up river.
Aside from the unknown effects on human health from eating
salmon with lethal fish viruses, these contaminated farmed
salmon may also pose a threat to local watersheds far from the
site of origination, as viruses are preserved by cold so when
you wash the fish the viruses get flushed down your drain...
This is a Flash-based video
and may not be viewable on mobile devices.
The Best and Worst Fish to Eat in Terms of Environmental Toxins
Interestingly enough, and fortunately for us, the types of
fish that tend to suffer the least amount of toxic
contamination also happen to be some of the best
sources of fat and antioxidants. So, by choosing wisely,
the benefits of a diet high in fish can still outweigh the
risks.
Most major waterways in the world are contaminated with
mercury, heavy metals, and chemicals like dioxins, PCBs, and
other agricultural chemicals that wind up in the environment.
However, the risk of authentic wild-caught Alaskan sockeye
salmon accumulating high amounts of mercury and other toxins is
reduced because of its short life cycle, which is only about
three years. Additionally, bioaccumulation of toxins is also
reduced by the fact that it doesn’t feed on other, already
contaminated, fish.
If you still want to take precautions, you can do what I do:
Whenever I eat fish, I eat it with chlorella tablets. The
chlorella is a potent mercury binder and if taken with fish will
help bind the mercury before your body can absorb it, so it can
be safely excreted in your stool.
Other fish with short lifecycles also tend to be better
alternatives in terms of fat content, so it’s a win-win
situation – lower contamination risk and higher nutritional
value. A general guideline is that the closer to the bottom of
the food chain the fish is, the less contamination it will have
accumulated. This includes:
Sardines
Anchovies
Herring
If you insist on eating typical, store-bought fish and want
to know more about the extent of your mercury exposure, I urge
you to check out the online mercury calculator8
at
GotMercury.org to get an idea of the risks. Additionally, as
mentioned above, you may want to consider taking natural mercury
chelators with any fish dinner. This includes zeolite (green
clay), chlorella, and fermented vegetables. Larger fish, which
tend to live longer and have the highest contamination
levels and should be avoided include (please note this
is not an exhaustive listing):
Tuna (tuna steaks, sushi, and canned)
Sea bass and largemouth bass
Marlin
Halibut
Pike
Walleye
Shark
Sword fish
White croaker
Enjoy Your Fish, But Choose Wisely!
Fish has always been the best source for the animal-based
omega-3 fats EPA and DHA, but as levels of pollution have
increased, this treasure of a food has become less and less
viable as a primary source of healthful fats. However, there are
still exceptions, and the key is to understand which types of
fish are the least contaminated.
I strongly recommend buying wild fish, and Wild Alaskan
salmon is in my opinion one of the absolute best, both in terms
of nutrition and potential contamination.
Remember, fish farms are the aquatic version of a confined
animal feeding operation (CAFO), and just like land-based cattle
and chicken farms, fish farms breed disease due to crowding too
many fish together in a small space. They also produce toxic
waste, and fish of inferior quality. These fish are further
contaminated by drugs and genetically engineered corn and soy
meal feed, and in the case of salmon, synthetic
astaxanthin, which is made from petrochemicals that are not
approved for human consumption.