The Perfect Protein: What Kinds of Fish Should You Eat?

To enhance your environmental wellness – as well as your own wellbeing – you need to eat more fish. Often, you may find yourself thinking “I really should include more fish in my diet,” but just hankering after “more fish” isn’t enough; you need the right kinds of fish. This is the ethos behind Andy Sharpless’ new book The Perfect Protein, which contains an innovative concept for preserving ocean life, beating the obesity epidemic on land, and feeding the world by shifting diets to the best fish.

 

According to Sharpless, who’s also the leader of Oceana (not the nightclub but the largest international organisation focused solely on ocean conservation), ‘The world’s industrial-scale commercial fishing fleets have basically over fished the oceans. That comes down to fishing above scientifically recommended catch limits, destroying nursery habitats for young fish, and catching non-target species and discarding them at sea—by-catch.’ So if you want any healthy fish to improve your wellbeing, you need to know which ones to indulge in, which to enjoy now and then, and which ones to avoid so that there are still fish in the oceans in 10 years time.

 

1. Stay small with sardines and anchovies: One rule of thumb that’s easy to remember is to stay small and eat little fish. These little guys reproduce really quickly, meaning that, in most cases, they are an abundant, strong, and fertile part of the food chain. In fact, if we were to manage these fish well, Sharpless asserts that we could could feed millions of people sustainably and healthily. He adds, ‘The lower down on the food chain, the smaller your footprint on nature. If you can develop an appetite and taste for them, you’ll have a lot to choose from, they’re cheaper, and they’re better for nature.’

 

2. Munch on mackerel: Wild mackerel is rich in omega-3s which is absolutely vital for your brain and heart health. As wild Atlantic mackerel is low in contaminants and toxins, it’s both a strong choice for you and the environment. You’ll notice that Sharpless keeps recommending “wild” and not “organic” mackerel, and there’s a reason: you should be wary of organic seafood. While some organic fish farms exist, they are yet to be certified by the proper authorities. Therefore, don’t take the risk, but look for healthy wild picks listed in reliable seafood guides.

 

3. Opt for oysters, mussels, and clams: You can enjoy shellfish until your heart’s content, be they farmed or wild. These shelled beauties help improve water quality, and tend to contain fewer contaminants due to the fact they don’t live that long. However, if you’re after scallops, you’ll need to find diver-caught or day-boat-caught scallops, as these ones have been caught with a minimal impact on the environment.

 

4. Shun shrimp: Sharpless argues, ‘If you want to be a responsible seafood eater, you have to say good-bye to shrimp.’ In shrimp catches, there tends to be other things going on in the net too. In fact, US statistics show that, per pound of shrimp caught, there is roughly five pounds of non-shrimp species in shrimp catches. Sharpless notes, ‘Much is dumped out on the deck, damaged, injured, killed, or discarded at sea.’ If you’re thinking of just going for farmed shrimp instead, watch out: farmed shrimp has been found to contain pesticides, banned antibiotics (even the ones that could cause cancer) and bits of insects.

 

5. Forgo farmed salmon: Here we’re back to our golden rule; eat wild seafood. Roughly a third of all fish caught are turned into fish meal or oil and, of that, 81% goes to farmed fish like salmon. To produce just one pound of farmed salmon, you need five pounds of wild fish – that’s just not a good footprint to have on the planet. Moreover, farmed salmon tends to be full of parasitic sea lice, which require high-dose toxic chemicals before they’re eliminated.

Categories: farmed salmon, farmed shrimp, Fish, food chain, Healthy, perfect protein, shrimp, shrimp catches, stay small, sustainable, wild

How Important Are Wild Foods To The Survival Of Humans?

Communities who live in rural locations often gather their vitamins and minerals from foods that are grown in the wild. Now, doctors are saying that the diet and nutrition habits of those who forage for foods such as roots, leaves and wild eggs could be vitally important, and something that we could all learn a lesson from.

 

These types of wild foods are often overlooked when considering the serious topic of maintaining a healthy diet for all, but they could be vital to wellness and wellbeing. When there are times of food insecurity, these types of food remain as a constant – a food that can be accessed by many.

 

A recent conference on Forests for Food Security highlighted the importance of these natural kind of wild foods, and emphasised the important role that these could play in bringing adequate nutrition to millions of people in food crisis. Unfortunately, as well as being vital, these food sources are also under threat, and it is important that they are recognised as important to wellbeing so that they can be protected for future generations.

 

Wild foods include nuts, mushrooms, leaves, fruits, roots, animals and animal products and eggs. Research carried out in Tanzania into the use and effects of wild foods showed that whilst these contributed just two percent to the amount of energy required in the daily diet, they contributed more than 30 percent of the requirement of vitamin A, 20 percent of the requirements for vitamin C, 19 percent of the iron requirement and 16 percent of calcium.

 

This shows that despite not being enormously helpful for dealing with problems of food shortages in terms of starvation, wild foods can be vital to help people maintain adequate nutrition when food is scarce.

Categories: foods, survival, wild

Wild, Small, Local: Your Planet-Friendly Guide to Seafood

According to Bill Clinton, ‘putting in place effective, conservation focused, scientific fisheries management in the 25 countries that control most of the world’s seafood catch…is – relatively speaking – a practical, inexpensive, and quick way to make sure our planet has lots more nutritious food in the future, when we’ll really need it.’ But why is fish such a sustainable food source over, say, meat? And why should you be including more of it in your diet?

In The Perfect Protein: The Fish Lover’s Guide to Saving the Oceans and Feeding the World, Andrew Sharpless and Suzannah Evans write that dish is ‘the one animal protein that’s rarely mentioned in the endless reports about big agriculture and hunger crises.’ However, this protein packs more of a punch for your wellbeing that any other; fish is low in cholesterol, full of omega-3 fatty acids and brimming with nutrients like riboflavin, iron, and calcium. That’s your bone, brain, blood and heart wellness boxes ticked right there!

Sharpless and Evans explain, ‘Fish and shellfish are integral parts of our diets, and they should be. And they don’t come with the massive baggage of industrial pork, poultry, and beef, animal proteins that produce tons of waste and pollution, destroy thousands of acres of land, use huge amounts of water, and are often too costly for the world’s poorest people. The modern industrial agricultural system has mechanised food production in a way that’s nothing short of awe inspiring for sheer effort. But we’re paying a huge, often hidden price. And our planet may not be able to conceal the true costs of agriculture much longer.’

‘Seafood is also the only food with which we still have – mostly – the same hunter-trapper relationship as early hominids cracking open clamshells,’ the authors add. ‘We may be evolutionarily disposed to enjoying seafood, but as our population has grown and grown, our collective appetite for wild-caught seafood has outstripped the oceans’ ability to provide it — and there’s no question that we can’t afford to decimate all wild seafood.’ So what can you do to keep seafood in your diet, without damaging the planet? Sharpless and Evans advise, ‘Eat wild seafood. Not too much of the big fish. Mostly local.’

Categories: Local, Seafood, wild

How to Eat Wild Game Safely

When looking at the food landscape, it quickly becomes clear to people who want to eat organic that doing so can be a challenge, especially given how loose the definitions are when it comes to applying the organic label to a product. When it comes to meat, though, it doesn’t get more organic than wild game. While farmed game meat is also a healthy option, being lower in saturated fat and calories than meat from domestic animals, the presence of human input raises the question of antibiotics, growth hormones, and other contaminants that the FDA has been notoriously lax in policing.

 

How to procure wild game can be another question: the options range from the convenient but questionably provenance option of purchasing online to the time-consuming task of hunting and fishing for your own. In between these are the premium online meat providers (with premium prices), trusted butcher shops, and hunter connections who supply the (relative to farm-raised) minuscule supply of wild game meat on the market.

 

If you’re going to get meat from non-USDA inspected sources (and if it’s not processed on a commercial scale it probably isn’t) you need to either have a supplier you can trust or have a knowledge of what to look for. Of course, given the unknown steps that go between harvesting the animal and the dressed meat that winds up in your kitchen, there’s a lot you have to leave to trust even if you inspect the meat thoroughly when you get it. Given these considerations, the only real way to be sure you’re getting absolutely safe game is to harvest it yourself. If this isn’t possible, then use only meat from farmed game for rare/medium rare preparations.

 

The safest way to use wild game you haven’t harvested is to cook it thoroughly in low and slow preparations. Another approach is to make it into sausage. The sausage should not only be made with care to avoid introducing microbes into the mince, it should then be given a good hot smoking to make sure the internal temperature reaches safe levels. Canning, if done carefully, will also do, but improper processing can cause growth of the microbes that cause botulism. Jerky has also been known to cause problems when the smoking temperatures weren’t high enough to kill the bacteria.

 

If you have the time and the inclination, the best option is obviously to go out and harvest your own game. This of course assumes that you can efficiently take down your quarry, keep it cool, and dress it either in the field or in a convenient location. Below are some tips for making sure that your harvested meat is safe:

 

Make sure you know what human-affecting conditions there are in your quarry in the area you’re hunting in, and make sure you know how to identify them in the animal while it’s alive and in the carcass. Common sense dictates that a sick-looking animal probably won’t make for good eating.

Try not to get a gut shot. If you do, don’t gut the carcass when you butcher it since the spilled gut contents will ruin any meat it comes into contact with.

 

Wear gloves while dressing the carcass, and separate the innards from the rest ASAP.

 

Cool the meat quickly. It’s better to field dress on site and store in a cooler than drag a carcass any considerable distance on a hot day.

 

Use a separate knife or saw to remove the head. This is for deer and the like. You don’t want any neural matter contaminating the meat just in case the animal had any wasting disease.

 

Keep the meat clean. Cut away any hemorrhaged tissue, try to avoid bacterial contamination as much as possible, and wash the cuts thoroughly after butchering.

 

Lastly, when in doubt, throw it out. And if you wouldn’t eat it yourself, don’t feed it to your pets—remember that they can be affected just as much as, if not more than, you by certain parasites and infections.

 

Brandon Peters is an entrepreneur, writer, lover of the outdoors, and amateur cook. He enjoys the kind of eating experiments that you can live through.

Categories: animal, diet, farmed game, game, game meat, meat, nbsp, nutrition, wild, wild game