Do you mean farmed salmon? Aka 'fish' meat which, due to crap the fish are being fed resembles more pork than wild salmon? Not even talking about the amount of antibiotics, growth hormones and god knows what other chemistry pumped into them to get as much $$ as possible.
2 of the most healthy fish to eat on paper are pretty dangerous these days - tuna due to buildup of mercury and other metals since it is a relatively long-living predator (you can't avoid this), and farmed salmon due to stuff above. Maybe a proper wild one is still OK to eat often (and priced accordingly), but farmed ones are generally subpar food I try to avoid.
Farmed fish can be on par with wild fish (healthier in some ways, less nutritious in others) depending on the farming methods, which have improved since the old days.
Farmed salmon is really fucked up. We used to catch ones which broke out from freshwater farms (mostly accidentally) and depending on the time of year the flesh would be grey (they feed dyed meal before they go to market) and they all had weird extra fins and deformities..
I'll eat it, I know where it comes from at least though.
If you're going to eat salmon anyway (and lots of people do), it's much less destructive to eat it factory farmed. This actually goes for every single fish.
To all the negative commenters -I stand corrected about antibiotics/growth hormones.
But I haven't heard anything about the crap they feed them, which does affect the meat you eat. Some quote from huff post:
"Eating fish is good for you, but that nutritional value is diminished in farmed fish. Farm-raised salmon have been shown to have an unhealthy high fat content and higher levels of PCBs. A recent study warned women, children, and adolescents against eating farmed salmon because salmon feed contains harmful pollutants" [1]
I understand that wild salmon and farmed salmon are vastly different in appearance, texture, taste, smell, and provenance. Wild is considered to be the healthiest by a lot of measures. Yes, I even remember the "microplastics in your fish" submissions here on HN. I've mentioned that I've worked at sushi bars, including ones offering wild-caught salmon, even with pamphlets at the counters advertising the virtues of wild caught over farm-raised. You are preaching to the choir here. :)
>I would have expected that lack of colouring as well for lab-grown salmon meat.
In my comment, I wasn't referring to lack of coloring. I was referring to lack of fat. In fact, more fat means less color overall, and I'm saying that's desirable. Why? Because in my experience, wild-caught salmon sushi doesn't sell as well, even in areas where patrons have higher than average disposable income and higher than average health consciousness.
This is the same issue you often see with grass-fed steaks vs. industrial steaks. Grass-fed steak is healthier for you by a lot of measures, and depending on your pallette, tastes better. I love my grass-fed steak. (I love my BeyondMeat and Impossible Burgers too.) But many people find it to be too "gamy" and that includes the handful of chefs I know. They aren't putting it on menus. Most people are unaware that "grass-fed" beef is actually "finished" on grain instead of grass in order to offset what would be and even more gamy taste than they're getting.
Now, I'm not saying that wild-caught salmon is gamy, but it does have a distinct taste, and is comparatively lean. Farmed salmon is like that dramatically marbled USDA prime steak. It's practically a different fish, it's a less healthy fish, and arguably a less ethical fish too, but it's what people most often choose. Imagine two ham and cheese sandwiches, but only one has mayo. Even people who think they don't want fattening mayo still prefer the sandwich with mayo. There are more analogies I could give with butter or lard or beef tallow. I don't need to prove this, just look at Paula Deen.
Wildtype, as the name implies, and as the pictures indicate to the discerning eye, is trying to me more like wild-caught salmon. There's a niche for salmon sushi rolls, a sub-niche for wild-caught salmon rolls, and a sub-sub-niche for people who want a lab-grown version of that. The point of my earlier comment is that I would rather see them target a market that's one less level of niche deep, and that's the theoretical holy-grail marbled looking high-fat farmed-style "USDA Prime" kind of lab-grown salmon, which I would rather eat, and I expect most other customers would rather eat too.
I just want to finish this comment with a disclaimer that I in no way mean to belittle the pioneering folks behind Wildtype, nor disparage any health, environmental, or ethically focused enthusiasts here who are really excited about this. It is exciting and great that Wildtype and other companies like this are doing what they do. I feel that it's important to say it, because my previous comment seemed to have struck a nerve, and that wasn't my intention.
There's a kind of a compromise going on here. Wild Salmon stocks are limited and were it not for farming demand would outstrip what's available. Apparently the tradeoff here is "dead zones" in the ocean unfortunately.
Of course, as I say, the farmed salmon is not the same fish as the wild one. The flesh is dyed pink. The flavour doesn't benefit from the wild salmon's varied diet, and the texture isn't developed by all that swimming upstream.
There is a very wide variance in the quality of farmed salmon too, to the point where you really can't be sure what you're eating unless you actually know the farm it's coming from.
I've heard it said that farmed salmon carries little of the health benefits of wild salmon. Personally I'd prefer to just pay a lot to eat salmon very rarely than to eat farmed salmon frequently. But everywhere you go there is otherwise indiscriminate demand.
What turned me off farmed salmon was this study on chemical contaminants http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/Dec05/salmon.ssl.html. Key phrases "Consumers should not eat farmed fish from Scotland, Norway and eastern Canada more than three times a year" (for other origins its generally six times).
Its worth noting that you can get wild-fishery salmon too (though generally all Atlantic Salmon is aquaculture).
'Plenty more fish in the sea' as they say. Salmon's unique, sure, but I'd rather buy something I am fairly certain is from a wild fishery.
2 of the most healthy fish to eat on paper are pretty dangerous these days - tuna due to buildup of mercury and other metals since it is a relatively long-living predator (you can't avoid this), and farmed salmon due to stuff above. Maybe a proper wild one is still OK to eat often (and priced accordingly), but farmed ones are generally subpar food I try to avoid.
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