Eating lower on the food chain may mean massive nutritional gains for humans.
Thanks to the fatty fish’s dense nutritional profile, consuming salmon has generally been considered essential to a healthy human diet. But eating like salmon may very well be the actual key to health beyond the famed Mediterranean diet.
A new peer-reviewed study published in Nature Food journal challenges the perception that simply eating salmon is the healthiest choice. Instead, the analysis, which was conducted by researchers at the University of Cambridge, Lancaster University, University of Stirling, and the University of Aberdeen, found that eating what salmon typically consume — small wild fish such as mackerel, anchovies, and herring — is more nutritionally beneficial to humans.
The study, titled “Wild Fish Consumption Can Balance Nutrient Retention in Farmed Fish,” used data collected in Norway’s fish farms and examined why farmed salmon fillets lacked the same quantity of nutrients that wild salmon generally contain — averaging a loss in six out of nine nutrients, including calcium, iodine, iron, omega-3, vitamin B12, and vitamin A. Amounts of calcium, in particular, were found to be five times more plentiful in wild-feed fish fillets. Eating lower on the food chain, that is, consuming what salmon feast on, can help humans get these critical vitamins, minerals, and fatty acids directly from the source.
The study calls for reallocating one-third of food-grade, wild-feed fish for direct human consumption. This means not using these fish as food for farmed salmon, which are not as nutritious for humans, but creating human-grade food from these little guys and allowing wild salmon to thrive in their natural habitats. The end result would ideally add more nutrients to the human diet and increase wild seafood populations, meaning there would be abundant nutritious and well-fed salmon in the seas and eventually on our plates.