Wild Caught Fish

Nutrition is one of the single most important aspect of our health and wellbeing. If you don’t know what has happened to your fish before you got to the grocery store, it’s easy to reach for the slightly less expensive choice of fish. If you can save a few bucks per meal by choosing lesser quality (farm raised) variety rather than wild caught, why not?

According to Michael Pollan, author of best selling book, In Defense of Food, “Four of the top 10 causes of death today are chronic diseases with well-established links to diet: coronary heart disease, diabetes, stroke and cancer.”

Here are 3 reasons why spending a little more now, will save a lot more in the future. As always, God does it better than man.

1: Economies of Scale
Farm raised fish, much like any other animal raised on the premise of mass production, lacks the quality of wild caught. In nature only the strong survive, but on a large corporate fish farm, there’s no competition. No competition means a watered down gene pool further
weakened by the lack of external predators to sharpen the fish muscles and brains. So, we get lazy, unchallenged fish raised on the equivalent of government welfare.

Which fish would you rather eat: healthy fish swimming through the clean, natural, rain fed waters of the wild? Or a monoculture reared in a corporate aquarium, pumped full of hormones to prop up their weak immune systems? When you consider these two choices, it’s a no-brainer. Fish that are constantly sharpening their athletic prowess
and mental cunning to avoid being eaten by larger predators are a more potent source of protein and sustenance.

2: We are what we eat…(and what our food eats as well) In the wild animal kingdom, fish eat what they can catch or what is in their immediate ecosystem, like algae, protein rich insects or other wild fish. On a farm, the fish are fed whatever the “farmer” wants to
feed them. In some cases this means grain and corn, which spikes the fish's insulin level and causes them to store the carbs (from the corn and grain) as fat, which then adds bulk to the fish and makes them larger. Since the fish in stores are sold by the pound and not on a quality scale, the impetus is placed on size. However, feeding a fish something that isn’t found in its natural diet doesn’t necessarily make the fish healthier, just bigger. And as the average American belt size will attest, bigger isn’t always better.

3: Only the strong survive
In the wild animal kingdom, animals on the top of the food chain consume the animals on the bottom of the food chain. This, sometimes harsh, reality keeps the populations at the bottom of the food chain strong because disease and weakness are eradicated from within their ranks. The older, slower, perhaps less adept fish are consumed by the predators. Now that the weaker genes are out of the gene pool, the strongest, healthiest, most vigorous fish breed to create more generations of strong, healthy, vigorous fish.

On a fish farm all the natural predators are eliminated from the food chain, so the “culling of the herd”, or elimination of the weakest link doesn’t happen anymore. Every fish is fed and cared for, including the weak ones, which are then sold to the grocery store and
consumed by the consumer. Would you ever intentionally consume weak or sick fish? Neither would I.

When we get sick, the typical sick person doesn’t hold out and try to find the cheapest form of medication, they want to feel better now! Why then, do we allow price to determine which foods we “medicate” ourselves with on a daily basis? Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine, said “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.”

If cost truly is a factor, all you have to do is to make sacrifices in other areas, perhaps eliminate soft drinks, junk food, sugar-loaded designer coffees in order to free up the funds to invest in your single most important tool; your health. If you don’t believe that
food is all that important, consider this: “The human digestive tract has roughly as many neurons as the spinal column. We don’t yet know exactly what they are up to, but their existence suggests that much more is going on in digestion than simply the breakdown of foods into chemicals.”

Past generations spent more of their income on food, less on medical care and suffered less from modern diseases like coronary heart disease, diabetes, strokes and cancer. Nowadays it's just the opposite, we spend less of our income on food and more on medical care and in turn diseases like coronary heart disease, diabetes, stroke and cancer are more rampant than ever. Maybe we should learn a thing or two from our grandparents?

Sources: In Defense of Food, By Michael Pollan

Spice-Rubbed Roasted Wild Caught Salmon with Lemon-Garlic Spinach

Yield: 6 servings (serving size: about 4 1/2 ounces salmon and 1/3 cup spinach mixture)

Ingredients

Salmon:
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon ground coriander
1/4 teaspoon paprika
1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 (2 1/4-pound) skinless wild caught salmon fillet
2 cups thinly sliced onion
Cooking spray
Spinach:
1 teaspoon olive oil
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 (6-ounce) packages fresh baby spinach
1 teaspoon grated lemon rind
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
Remaining ingredients:
2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro
Lemon wedges (optional)

Preparation

Preheat oven to 400°.

To prepare salmon, combine first 6 ingredients; rub spice mixture evenly over fish. Place onion in an 11 x 7-inch baking dish coated with cooking spray. Place fish on top of onion; bake at 400° for 20 minutes or until fish flakes easily when tested with a fork or until desired degree of doneness.

To prepare spinach, heat oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium heat. Add garlic to pan; cook 1 minute. Add half of spinach; cook for 1 minute, stirring frequently. Add remaining spinach; cook 4 minutes or until wilted, stirring frequently. Sprinkle spinach mixture with rind and 1/4 teaspoon salt. Stir in juice; remove from heat.

Place salmon on a platter. Arrange onions and spinach evenly around salmon. Sprinkle salmon with chopped fresh cilantro. Serve with lemon wedges, if desired.

Lindsey & Daniel Crouch
True Balance Wellness