by Sandra Piddock

Created on: May 05, 2010

I love fresh salmon and tuna, and now that the barbecue season is here, a piece of salmon, cooked in a foil parcel with lemon or lime juice, fresh parsley and black pepper is top of my barbecue wish list. Here in Spain, salmon is more expensive than in England, because Spanish fish mongers only sell wild salmon. It's a price worth paying, beause the taste is far superior, and wild salmon is much better for our bodies than farmed salmon. Here's why.

Additives

Farmed salmon have various additives in the food they are fed, for various reasons. Imagine a swimming pool which is completely packed with bathers. While everyone may be perfectly healthy, there is inreased risk of infection spread, with so many bodies in such a confined space. This is the problem salmon farmers face.

A salmon farm is not a place to admire fish in their natural surroundings, it's a business venture, and the farmer will produce as many fish as possible. To guard against infection, fish are vaccinated as fry and routinely fed pesticides and antibiotics. Okay, I hear you say, we vaccinate our own children for health reasons - what's the problem? The problem is, we don't eat our own children and absorb residues of pesticides and chemicals, which is what happens when we eat supposedly 'healthy' farmed salmon.

Wild salmon are not fed chemicals and, while there are of course pests in the oceans which may affect the health of the fish, the concentration of both salmon and parasites is nowhere near as high as on salmon farms, thus reducing the potential for infection and the spread of infection.

Farmed salmon are also fed a dye to give their flesh a nice pink colour. Without it, they would be an unattractive grey. If you could see a farmed salmon in it's natural state, you wouldn't want to eat it. What have the farmers got to hide, we should ask ourselves. Wild salmon get their colour from the food they eat, not from synthetic dyes which may pose health risks to humans.

Fat content

Wild salmon are the nomads and athletes of the fish world. They'll swim thousands of miles in cold ocean waters, and leap in the mountain streams to get where they want to be. Farm salmon are a bit like big goldfish, swimming around in a crowded pool, eating the food that's provided for them, while their wild cousin has to hunt for his dinner.

Exercise builds lean muscle as opposed to fat in humans, and the same principle goes for salmon. Farmed salmon has almost 3 times the fat content of wild salmon, yet provides us with one third less of the Omega 3 fish oil we need for heart health and eye health, as well as general well being.

Wild salmon is natural food in its natural state, which is the healthiest food you can eat. Farmed salmon comes with a side order of pesticides and chemicals. That's why wild salmon is better for you than farmed salmon. What would you rather put into your body?

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