Farmed salmon leads to loss of nutrients, instead eat 'feed fishes' directly | Hacker News Reader

Farmed salmon leads to loss of nutrients, instead eat 'feed fishes' directly

lancaster.ac.uk

47 pointsachow94 comments

Author Bren Smith recommends this in his book Eat Like a Fish. He also recommends eating seaweed and mollusks, and that the water of the eastern seaboard may have been mostly clear due to all the filter-feeders.

My general recommendation is to treat meat like a luxurious delicacy and to instead rely on sprouted seeds (legumes, nuts) and other plant parts for protein, until human population and customs can scale back to a point where the carrying capacity of the land and sea can support not only us but so much other life we share the planet with. Strength and resilience through diversity of species. I'm willing to give up a lot of luxuries for this. At the end of the day it's nice to settle down in a shelter with loved ones, all having eaten enough.

I always read general recommendation for diets as conditioned under the culture for which the author lives in. Without the cultural aspect, it always sound like telling people in rice eating cultures that they should all shift to wheat because of lower methane emissions (or asking wheat eating cultures to switch to rice because of lower CO2 emissions, both arguments has a point).

I do want to see a cultural change towards seaweed and mollusks on a global scale. Nutrition rich runoff from farms create a lot of damage in oceans, lakes and rivers, and both seaweed and mollusks are great in picking up that excess nutrition. I would also like to see a change towards consuming overpopulated fish. It is a completely cultural phenomenon that we can have both overfishing and fish overpopulations at the same time (usually not the same type of fish).

I would also like to see a return towards using domesticated animals in order to replace combustion. Waste food should be prioritized towards animal feed rather than bio gas. Household animals used to be a common practice, and it allowed people to eat meat with much smaller footprint. Chickens are also excellent lawnmowers that do not operate on fossil fuels.

Agreed most countries don’t appreciate meat like Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina. If everyone lived like us the planet would be a lot more healthy and enjoyable.

Ideally Europe would stop farming and restore its forests to an equal percentage of the land as Brazil. Sadly Europe has ignored the environment for millennia and is unwilling to change its ways.

> sprouted seeds (legumes, nuts) and other plant parts for protein

Doing so will drive demand for better diabetes treatments. Managing diabetes is a longer and more nuanced conversation than one can have here. The rule of thumb is that all carbohydrates harm blood glucose control. The best diet is based on your body type. For me (and many others), a low-carb, inulin-rich diet (unprocessed meats, low-starch vegetables) seems to give lower blood glucose increases.

Some claim a low-fat vegan diet will put diabetes into remission, and I'm sure it does for some body types. I can not judge the validity of that claim except that I do not have that body type, and it made my diabetes control significantly worse.

> The rule of thumb is that all carbohydrates harm blood glucose control.

This is untrue. Only simple carbohydrates harm blood glucose control. Complex carbs such as whole grains and fruit aid in it, in part thanks to their fiber. If you have a source that supports your claim, please share it, it must be bleeding edge nutritional science.

I've not seen any research showing that whole-grain carbohydrates have a lower impact on blood glucose than quick carbohydrates. We have only proof by repeated assertion.

My freestyle Libra CGM has recorded the impact of whole-grain products on my body. Whole-grain products consistently spike my blood sugar. 40 g of oatmeal or Bob's Red Mill 10-grain mix will push me up to 100-120 milligrams per deciliter. Whole-wheat pasta, 60g, will push me up about 150-200 mg/dL.

Eating more than 25 g carbs per meal pushes me up beyond 50 mg/dL at the one-hour mark. If I consistently let my blood sugar climb between 75 and 100 mg/dL at the one-hour mark, my fasting blood sugar starts to climb. This is how I learned that low-fat vegan was a bad diet for me. My A1c went from 6 to 7.8 in less than a year.

Too much dietary advice for diabetics is, at best, mythology.

One should just stop eating fish as far as possible. Between all the worlds ocean ecosystems being in trouble and the risk of ingesting heavy metals it is just not worth it.

There's a geopolitical issue regarding countries with ample farm land and islands for instance with moatly sea resources though.

About their recommendation: one thing I never understood was, how can we at the same time say we are overfishing and that people should eat more wild fish?

It's been a while since I read "The Perfect Protein" by Andy Sharpless, but IIRC their argument is that it's not just fish, but particular populations of fish. Some wild fish are fine to eat - others are either at risk or are keystone species that shouldn't be wiped out. Also the method of fishing makes a difference as well. Hence the contrasting advice.

Those are good points. I guess it's still possible to tilt things in the wrong direction, but we can always adjust.

I wonder if anchovy and mackerels are overfished. I'm not sure as we don't see them often on the table and there's few reports outside of California.

In this specific case, even if they wouldn't be the best food source in general, they would still be better than salmons (which we eat plenty of) in terms of food efficiency.

This notion of shortcuting the production cycle is really intersting to me. If for instance instead of drinking milk we'd get equivalent nutriments from straight eating grass based products, that would open a lot of ways for improvement.

I don't know about nutrition and overfishing, but mackerel are incredibly tasty to me.

They're giving advice based on that's good for the individual, which can be at odds with what's good for the collective.

Not all fish are overfished. Even salmon isn't overfished in all regions.

We can't. The fishing fleets are on a path to totally wiping out Herring in the Baltic Sea for example. So the article misses the point on that front too. The government of Sweden is doing nothing while the population collapses.

It's the same story on the land. It's healthier and better for the environment eat lower down the food chain.

A science-based book on the topic is How Not to Die by Dr. Michael Greger, which review nutrition studies related to a range of terminal diseases. Primarily plant-based diets come out as being best for longevity.

Folks who study longevity specifically reached the same conclusion that a 95% to 100% plant-based diet was good for longevity.

https://www.bluezones.com/recipes/food-guidelines/

Sardines are awesome, they make boneless skinless fillet now which substitute well for tuna (I seem to always get a bone stuck in a tooth so prefer no bones despite being tasty).

That said, sushi from sardines seems dicey.

Fishing in the wild without restocking the fish population is simply a form of poaching.

Restocking could have the same effect as replanting trees: numbers stay the same so it absolves the industry.

But the ecosystem is still getting worse as it gets devastated by the constant churn and artificially restored new areas are not as diverse as the original one.

I'm pretty sure wild fish restock themselves by reproducing, it's more about finding the equilibrium it converges to and not overfishing.

In Vietnam, marine wildlife sanctuaries help enormously. Fisherman are banned from fishing in certain areas, but can fish with great success around those areas. The protected areas allow stock to be replenished. It’s the goose that laid the golden egg phenomenon.

Overall, this suggests that farmed salmon loses some nutrients compared to the wild fish it eats and that we're better off eating a more varied diet of the wild fish species that are fed to farmed salmon, such as sardines, mackerel, and anchovies.

Big salmon (I say that in a somewhat tongue-in-cheek way) seems to have a chokehold on all food suppliers. I swear salmon makes up 90% of the fish I see sold almost anywhere apart from a specialised fishmonger. I find it really wierd

Salmon is tasty

It's because almost all other fish tastes kinda bad except for trout, which is basically salmon. This is the market catering properly to the buyers.

This is such a narrow-minded view. The reason you think that is because you're from a country that lacks fish culture, where very few fish dishes are served. In Japan or Italy, they eat every single type of sea creature that could possibly exist and they eat them fresh and its a big part of their culture. In japan, there is sushi of every single sea creature that can possibly be eaten. Salmon is one option. So your view that salmon is the only good fish is completely cultural.

I'm from the UK and despite being an island we have no fish culture. We used to have more, but the supermarkets that have a total chokehold on our food lives have severely limited the variety (and freshness) of fish available, making us squeamish about foods that were an integral part of our culture (eels, cockles, smoked fishes of many kinds). This is a horrible horrible loss to the diversity of our diets and to the populations of the few fish people still eat (cod and salmon).

The lack of fish culture that makes you state such an opinion is most likely caused by unsustainable, monopolistic supply chains that have shaped culture, it is not an objective fact.

Luckily, I have carribean heritage and a degree in Japanese and so I have exposure to good fish from other cultures. You know, people make fun of the fact that the British used to eat eels, but in Japan, eel is seen as the most premium, most delicious food you could possibly eat? It's more expensive than steak to eat at a restaurant, it's so sought after. Salmon doesn't hold a candle to eel.

I find it hard to believe you genuinely think almost all fish tastes bad. At the very least, you understand this is an idiosyncratic view, right?

I cannot imagine this being a common view unless you just haven't tried many fish varieties

People in the replies sure seem to have a hard time accepting that markets aren't personal. It doesn't matter what you think tastes good. What matters is that buyers where this observation is being made think that salmon and trout taste good and that other fish do not. This is a very common situation in the US. You don't need to be offended by it or talk aggro-defensively about how your fish culture is superior to someone else's. The rise of salmon consumption isn't a conspiracy. It's just a flavor profile that agrees with the masses.

Did you read my reply. You are objectively wrong and I explained now. Your fish culture is caused by the industrialisation of food, which is what makes you think only salmon is good. Your point would only be valid if salmon was universally nicer to everyone. Like salmon is some inevitable singularity of fish consumption.

Have you tried fresh halibut? I don't like fish generally, including salmon, but actual Alaskan halibut (not flounder deliberately mislabeled as halibut) is quite tasty, to me.

Fish fed to farmed salmon should be part of our diet, too, study suggests

is the actual title

And "leads to loss of nutrients" definitely makes it sound like "this is leeching nutrients from your body", not "there isn't a 100% transfer of nutrients from feeder fish to salmon to you"

For ~200k years, humans got food from hunting and gathering. You went out in nature and caught the food you could find growing wild there. That supported a global population of ~50M.

10k years ago we started figuring out how top make food ourselves (farming), and now we can comfortably feed 7000M.

But we still harvest the oceans like hunters and gatherers. I don't think this can or should go on. We need to farm the oceans!

See my comment above. Marine wildlife sanctuaries are very effective at replenishing stock.

Also, it’s not always realistic to farm fish. It’s not always possible. And the quality is often much worse given farming practices.

> Also, it’s not always realistic to farm fish. It’s not always possible.

That's completely true with current technology. I'm talking about the long term future.

It took 10k of farming before fertilizers were invented in 1913 and doubled food production.

Yes, much of the ocean is basically a desert due to a lack of iron. Low iron leads to low plankton which leads to low fish counts.

Ocean fertilization could 10x the number of fish, and possibly store some carbon also.

In East Asian cuisine, such as Japanese dishes, mackerel is a common ingredient. Grilled mackerel is delicious. Generally speaking, salmon is a fish with relatively low mercury content, much lower than that of tuna, making it a healthy choice among seafood.

Yes...but hunting/eating further up the food chain is a timeless way to demonstrate that you are further up the human social pyramid. Similar for more heavily processed & elaborately prepared foods.

It's not demonstrative - food from higher up the pyramid is actually denser in nutrients and taste vastly better in my mind (we're talking beef vs lentils, not plankton vs lion).

Plenty of counterexamples. I think scallops are probably the best tasting seafood if not one of the best tasting foods period and they're filter feeders. Shrimp is pretty good as well. Meanwhile, bear tastes pretty bad.

I quite like bear - tastes like a beefier beef. Depends on what the bear ate.

Statistically true. But are herring, pigeons, and rabbits meaningfully less nutrition-dense than large/dangerous/brag-worthy game?

... But if they are higher up the food chain they also accumulate far, far higher levels of heavy metals. This is true for meats and fish.

True, and I vaguely recall a case or few where people showed off their rich tastes (for swordfish steaks, etc.) until their nerves & muscles didn't particularly work together.

But, back during the formative millennia of human nature, that wasn't a problem.

is this a joke? yes, there is obviously a loss of energy and material as waste when go a step, just like in real ecological networks where one animal eating another does not absorb everything its body has to offer for nutrients

It's not a joke, because people continue to eat inefficiently higher up on the food chain.

We aren't so starved so as to have to prioritize eating efficiently, people will eagerly prioritize aspects of taste and eat inefficiently, and it's great that they can do that - it would be horrific and a symptom of unacceptable overpopulation if people couldn't afford to eat "inefficiently" and would have to resort at eating whatever as long as it has sufficient nutrients.

Animal agriculture is a major driver of climate change, so we are already at the point where food choices made a significant difference.

Thankfully, there are plenty of great tasting plant-based foods.

I’d be willing to eat more meat to reduce the population of carbon producing animals.

i’ll take my farmed salmon and you can eat what you want, including the bony and not very tasty feed fish if you so desire

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