Fish: fresh or farm raised? Which is better?

[Alcoholiday]

which one? help!

[James Newman]

neither... Wild.... plain and simple fish. Depending upon the environment the farm-raised fish was raised in you are likely to get less nutrients from them. They are often raised in overpopulated pens with low quality food sources, prone to disease, and receive antibiotics...this is passed on to you. Wild Salmon, etc (I am not big on freshwater fish too much these days) will always be a better choice in my opinion. That being said, it is much more difficult to find in some areas and much more costly. You kinda have to pick your battles.......my hallucination is simply that the nutritional quality of farmed fish is not the same as wild fish either.

Newman

[Alcoholiday]

well, they don't sell wild here. It's either fresh or farm.

i get some from my uncle who fishes, but when that's out, i'm screwed.

[LisaS]

I don't get the choice - farm or wild I get - fresh or frozen I get - what is the choice between when you say farm or fresh?

[Q.]

Johnka and I have exchanged a number of posts with articles on this one, possibly some under General Health, in the past if you want to bother searching.

You could have fresh farm-raised but I buy frozen wild since I'm no where near the places they catch 'em. Until very recently, Wal-mart carried wild sockeye salmon caught in Alsake but now they've closed their fish market and only carried a product that is caught off of China's coast (I emailed them to find out where it's from). Still, it's affordable and I definitely think the flavor is better that farm-raised.

I used to buy Chiliean farm-raised because the S. American fish was less polluted but only buy wild now. If you are going to buy farm-raised, you can buy the lesser of the evils but you may have to ask where it was farmed.

[RobLL]

Just saw a short item, can't remember where, confirming other things I have read that wild ocean fish is likely to be the best. On the other hand, I find there is only so much I can do to follow the latest advice. You gotta pick your battles in this, as well as every area of life.

[Alcoholiday]

cool, i'll do a search for that, thanks Q.

wouldn't fresh have a higher mercury count than farm raised?

[LisaS]

stop doing that. fresh != wild
you can have frozen wild, frozen farm, fresh wild or fresh farm.

[twoolf]

Originally Posted by Alcoholiday

cool, i'll do a search for that, thanks Q.

wouldn't fresh have a higher mercury count than farm raised?

It depends on the species. The longer-lived fish, higher on the food chain, (such as tuna, shark, and swordfish) are the ones that tend to contain mercury. The process is called bioaccumulation.

There are a lot of issues that need to be addressed in modern aquaculture (fish farming), including environmental, health, and worker equity issues. As more and more people eat more and more seafood, proper fisheries management becomes more and more critical. But most people know very little about the issue. Read the section on Chilean farmed salmon from "The Wal Mart Effect," excerpted here: http://www.salon.com/tech/books/2006.../index_np.html

Then take a look at the Seafood Watch Program at the Monterey Bay Aquarium: http://www.mbayaq.org/cr/seafoodwatch.asp

The Seafood Watch Program deals primarily with the sustainability and ecological impact of different aquaculture practices, but there's a section on health as well (which is more applicable to the original question).

(And remember, fresh does not necessarily equal wild -- fresh just means it was never frozen.)

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Tom Woolf