Being vegetarian, fish matters shouldn’t really concern me, however I do take an interest in anything to do with nutrition, and this is not merely because my family enjoy the old smelly protein. Tonight, as I was cooking my boys some lovely organic salmon, I couldn’t help but thinking that a mere fillet each may not actually be enough to provide them with the very sought after long chain oily fatty acids. The amounts of omega-3 oils in farmed salmon has actually gone down by 50%. Think that: only five years ago a 130g portion of Atlantic salmon provided the recommended weekly intake of omega-3, but not any more. The problem is that oils are literally fleeing the fish at an alarming rate. It would appear that the fall is due to the amount of anchovies in the salmon’s feed being reduced, because too many poor anchovies are caught to feed other fish. Don’t get me wrong, farmed salmon is still ahead of the wild salmon as a source of omega 3… but does that mean we have to eat a lot more? What might be the side effects of increasing our salmon intake? Fair enough, salmon is one type of fish with the least mercury in it, but still. Some food for thought everyone, no pun intended.
