Forget Eating Salmon, Eat Like A Salmon

To get essential nutrients, a new study suggests that people should be eating as if they were salmon.

The study, published in the journal Nature Food, found that consuming the sort of wild fish on which salmon prey, such as mackerel, herring and anchovies, could be healthier than salmon itself.

Research shows that there’s an overall loss of essential dietary nutrients in the production of farmed salmon, so eating the individual fish that are fed to salmon is a healthier alternative.

Directly eating more wild “feed” species could ultimately benefit our health while also reducing the demand for finite marine resources.

Scientists analyzed the flow of nutrients from the edible species of the wild feed fish compared to the farmed salmon they were fed to, focusing on nine nutrients that are concentrated in seafood and essential to human diets — iodine, calcium, iron, vitamin B12, vitamin A, omega-3, vitamin D, zinc and selenium.

Most wild-feed fish met dietary nutrient recommendations at smaller portion sizes than the farmed Atlantic Salmon — including omega-3 fatty acids which are known to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease and stroke.

Compared to the salmon fillets, quantities of calcium were over five times higher in wild-feed fish fillets, iodine was four times higher, and iron, omega-3, vitamin B12, and vitamin A were all over 1.5 times higher.

However, despite the clear health benefits, the scientists noted that 24% of adults eat salmon weekly, but only 5.4% eat mackerel, 1% eat anchovies and 0.4% eat herring.