For reasons I can not understand in the least, farm-raised salmon, all pink from dye and jam packed with PCB’s, continues to be a dollar or two more expensive than wild caught salmon. For the life of me, I can not figure out why. And farm-raised Atlantic salmon is even more expensive than the other type of farm raised. They are honestly charging more money to feed you something that will kill you, and if that wasn’t crazy enough, people are apparently paying it.
Why? Because it is pinker?
Also, I had salmon for dinner- I made a dijon crust with panko and dijon mustard and parsley and dill. It was tasty, as were the brussell sprouts and sliced tomatoes.
Laura W
Are you new here?
(Turkey, spinach, feta burgers from natural food butcher counter with yummy fresh asparagus. Very satisfying. Prolly all the mayo, huh?)
Zifnab
Fish is too god damn expensive as it stands. I already spend $8-$10 per pound on the wild stuff. I can’t imagine buying farm raised if it’s even more overpriced.
Evinfuilt
Down here in Texas the wild Alaskan Salmon has been only slightly pricier than the farmed Canadian (Pacific), but the Atlantic farmed is the priciest of all.
Been no struggle in getting the tasty, healthy Alaskan.
Eric K
I don’t know what you pay on the East Coast, but out here in Oregon farm raised stuff from BC is about half the price of wild from Alaska
Death By Mosquito Truck
Thanks for making me prolong my hand injury so you could have salmon any damn way you wanted.
Tonight, I’m making pork chops, whipped potatoes, corn on the cob and fried yellow squash. Well, I’m supervising the cooking, at least..
Keith G
Hmm-mm. Farm raised salmon from China that spent their entire miserable life swiming in their own crap mixed with the foggy ooze of run off. Yum.
Skepticat
Just returned from the store (North Shore of Boston), where wild salmon is $12.99 a pound and farmed salmon is $5.99 a pound. I salivated over, but didn’t buy, the wild salmon. And thanks for ruining my appetite for the cheap stuff I did buy.
Comrade Stuck
I only eat, (almost only) Sockeye Salmon which is by far the best tasting and is always wild. When the season comes, I will pack my freezer with it, and only buy farm raised when it runs out.. They are in trouble I think, from overfishing and diverted water from agriculture.
Tonight it is a pork steak seasoned with garlic and onion powder and Olive Oil, with boiled green beans and tater chunks.
DarrenG
Salmon prices vary wildly by season and location, particularly for wild-caught.
I’ve also wondered why people pay for the bad farm-raised, color-added, tainted-to-all-hell crap from South America (not all farm-raised is horrible; some of the Scottish farms produce lovely product). I’ve even met many chefs who still don’t understand salmon worth a damn.
A nice variant of the dish you did that I’ve used for many years is to reduce some unsweetened soft apple cider to a syrup, add some Dijon mustard and dill, and use that as a glaze for grilled salmon.
Sockeye season is a wonderful thing, and seems to be lasting unusually late this year.
Keith
Must be a while since I bought farm-raised, but it used to be MUCH cheaper than wild Alaskan (fresh, at least). Whereas I may pay $12/lb or so for Alaskan king salmon, I recall Atlantic only being about $5/lb.
OTOH, wild Alaskan *canned* salmon is damn-cheap.
John Cole
I only eat wild salmon. Health officials state you should only eat 8 ounces of farm-raised salmon every month it is generally so packed with toxins. Look, I’m overweight and nowhere near the kind of shape I should be in, I like an occasional cigar (although I have not had one in probably a year), and I’ll die early before giving up my Hola Fruta, but why the fuck would I eat anything that health officials feel the need to say “Don’t eat too much of that. It will poison you.”
Jeebus.
freelancer
Suckers. Avoid fish, eat crab, lobster, and shrimp.
srv
Which has more mercury?
Comrade Stuck
@srv:
Farm raised. They feed the salmon remnants of other predatory fishes that concentrates it in the FRS,
JGabriel
Obviously there will be variations in operation costs, but farm-raised salmon would be more expensive to raise since they have to be fed, as opposed to wild salmon fending for themselves. That may explain some of the cost difference you’re seeing.
Though one would think harvesting the farm-raised salmon would be much cheaper than fishing for wild salmon, the latter is a one time cost and might not equal the cost of feeding.
OTOH, maybe there was just a surplus somewhere and your market managed to get a cheap batch.
.
JenJen
OT, but anyone watching MSNBC? Not only is it excruciating listening to Chris Matthews discuss issues involving the Entertainment World, but WTF happened to Dan Abrams??
He used to be super-hot; now he just looks like an aging douchenozzle, with his trendy-grey hair and carefully-groomed “stubble”. Is it just me?
maya
But only buy Kosher.
Big City Mary
Never cared for Salmon, where ever it was from. I like dark, oily, boney fish, preferably Spots (fried) from the coast in NC (served with crowder peas, collard greens, sliced tomatoes and hushpuppies.
But I did just witness an incredible line of thunder storms across the Hudson River from lower Manhattan with much, much lighting and wind and just the hint of a rainbow. And the temp dropped 17 degrees in 30 minutes. Is nature something or what?
And I am baking a pork roast and fixing steamed mixed vegatables and maybe a starch, can’t decide yet. It will be edible but certainly not memorable!
Laura W
I, too, only eat the yummy wild salmon I get very fresh at the whole foods market here, but I had NOTHING in the house today for lunch (except three different kinds of protein shakes: hemp, whey, rice protein. WTF?) so I had one can of albacore. And I could hear my acupuncturist screaming at me to feed it to the cats. He’s got a scary anecdotal story about a friend of his who had mercury testing before and after a couple cans, IIRC, and mercury levels were off the chart.
So look what I just found.
Frightening! I have probably eaten 8,003 cans of albacore in my life, thanks to my dad’s deep sea fishing fetish. At least I had my mercury fillings removed and replaced over a decade ago.
I often wonder how so many of us are still alive.
Of course, the dead probably wouldn’t be commenting on a blog on a Friday night.
Where’s BOB?
linda
@JenJen:
i’ve always gotten a very weird vibe from him; and i will never get over the fact that he’s the son of floyd abrams, a pre-eminent authority and defender of the first amendment. although there was that unfortunate turn as attorney for judy miller…
DarrenG
@JGabriel
It’s more an issue of fixed versus variable costs. Farm-raised tends to have very predictable harvests, and so the price doesn’t vary much except as demand fluctuates.
Wild-caught, on the other hand, has seasonal and type catch quotas that are set by the U.S. and Canadian governments (and probably the EU for the Eastern Atlantic) based on estimates of population sizes. This year the quotas have apparently been very high, which drove down the prices for wild salmon. Next year? Who knows.
@John & others
Don’t lump all farm-raised salmon together. I don’t disagree with you in general about preferring wild salmon, but farm-raised fish from Canada or Europe is often quite good, and a very different product from the grocery store crap which mostly comes from South America or Asia, where it’s raised in much less regulated conditions.
Salmon trivia:
The two main factors that affect the flavor and texture of salmon are fat and hemoglobin content, which are directly related to how far and how cold they have to migrate to their spawning grounds. This is what makes Northern Alaska sockeye so tasty — they have the longest, coldest migrations of all salmon.
Conversely, most farm-raised stuff hasn’t actually migrated anywhere in generations, and so has little or no fat or hemoglobin, which is why they have to dye the damn stuff pink. They’ve basically reverted to trashy river trout species rather than true salmon.
Martin
And yet people pay $5 a pack to not breathe fresh air.
Hint: marketing works because people are stupider than sheep, and even when their stupidity is revealed are happy to marinade it in freedom and independence in order to make it palatable again.
plaindave
OT too: I noticed Dan’s new look immediately. Adds age, thus gravitas. And Dan was sliding out of sight. Not a terrible idea at all.
Laura W
@JenJen: I am but I was too busy freaking out over my mercury levels.
Now I’m too busy freaking out over Gerald Posner’s rubbery face. He’s got a Joan/Melissa Rivers look goin’ on.
Linkmeister
@Laura W:
The operative word there is “probably.” Do you really know?
Trollhattan
The opposite on my chunk of the left coast–farmed salmon is two or more bucks less/pound than run-of-the-mill wild (local chinook, “now twice-endangered”) and many bucks less than the more exotic varieties (e.g., Copper River). It sure has gone up though; used to be about three bucks/pound and now it’s at least twice that.
I still don’t understand paying six or seven bucks/pound for skinless, boneless, tastless chicken breast. We must be stoopid. Also.
Comrade Stuck
@Laura W:
He’s working on his next compliment to woo you.
Martin
Swallowed whole by a garage snake. In a week someone can go collect his bones.
Laura W
@Comrade Stuck:
What could possibly be a better use of his time, I axe you?
Comrade Stuck
@Laura W:
No argumente from moi’.
MikeJ
Copper river sockeye was $8.99/lb at Costco last week. Copper river king, back a few weeks ago when it was available, was $24.99 at Metropolitan Market.
fisher cat
I tend to get farm-raised salmon frozen in bulk from Wegmans, but I do keep an eye out for wild caught if it is on sale.
To me, the difference isn’t necessarily worth the price.
pika
Sorry to derail the salmon thread. But there is no Lily picture today, yet. I have become dependent. Please post one.
Death By Mosquito Truck
@Laura W:
You could skip all the hideous overtures by telling him you have Barack Obama’s real birth certificate in yer undies.
Seitz
My brother lives in Anchorage. My sister in law is a professor at the University of Alaska Anchorage. I’m a total salmon snob because of it. I refuse to buy anything but wild Alaskan salmon. I’ll even ask at restaurants, and if the server isn’t sure, I won’t order it. It tastes better, and farmed salmon is an environmental nightmare.
jl
I cannot stand farm raised salmon. The crud tends to turn a funny color when you cook it, the texture is weird, and it doesn’t really taste like Salmon. Other than that, and the fact that I read it has chemical crud in it, farmed salmon is just fine.
I’ve bought some supposedly healthy, non-chemically screwed up, environmentally sound farmed salmon from Scotland that is halfway between normal farmed and wild, as far as the phenomenology of eating it goes. Not sure if it is really safe to eat and environmentally friendly, so I stay away from even that when I can.
Farmed salmon is to wild salmon as tang is to orange juice. I stay away from it.
But maybe I am spoiled I grew up on pacific coast and Alaska, where in the past, when we still had oceans with fish, I was able ate the best salmon you could get, very fresh and very good. Alaska is good at protecting its wild fishery, which is hopeful for salmon eaters.
Phoebe
JenJen,
Dan Abrams looks like a cross between both Hardy Boys, with the facial expressions of the wee Monkee Davy Jones, so you cannot blame him for trying to crag up any way he can.
tammanycall
I’ve noticed in many local grocery stores the only wild salmon available is frozen or smoked, but fresh farm-raised is ubiquitous. If you’re an impulse or last minute shopper, you might opt for the fish you can prepare the moment you get home rather than the one you have to defrost.
Laura W
@Death By Mosquito Truck:
Jack, Jack, Jack.
You have just given new meaning to “foreplay”.
Dennis-SGMM
Well, hell. I was trying to figure out what I’d cook for dinner and what with my wife and son not eating pork or beef (Don’t ask) I figured that I’d pick up a piece of salmon and then sear it with a crust of pinon nuts and pepita seeds. Except that the grocery doesn’t at the moment have any salmon that isn’t farmed. You bastards.
So now I’m making shrimp with tomatillo and poblano chili salsa.
I may never eat salmon again.
Death By Mosquito Truck
@Laura W:
It seems to be a recurring theme for me today.
zirconium
Each year in late summer I have 30 to 50# of frozen, individually vacuum packed, wild Alaska red salmon fillets shipped overnight to me. I’m having some for dinner tomorrow night. It’s good.
You’re right John, farm raised salmon is poison.
Delia
If you have a Trader Joe in your vicinity you can find quick frozen wild salmon for around $7.99/lb. I think it’s usually coho or sockeye. I buy it all the time.
And OT: Symantec just tried to block me from BJ, trying to tell me that this is a dangerous site and not to be trusted. Hmm. Maybe that’s right.
BombIranForChrist
I live in Seattle and the wild stuff is definitely more expensive. However, even the farm stuff is not as cheap as you might think. I have lived on the east coast and the west coast, and even though salmon here is a little cheaper overall, the only real benefit to living here is that you can go down to a shack on the side of the road, buy a whole salmon and filet it yourself for uber-cheap. Otherwise, I haven’t noticed a lot of savings for living in Salmon Land.
Jay McDonough
Panko is to breadcrumbs as Superman is to regular old earthlings
Laura W
Farrah Fawcett gets a Tribute Special tonight (tomorrow) on MSNBC at 1 freakin’ AM.
Michael Jackson…eternal energy vampire even in death.
Death By Mosquito Truck
They played MJ all day on almost every station here, even the country one. I had to listen to the metallica station to get a break. WTF is up with that?
Delia
@Laura W:
Is the Michael Jackson teevee land prostration fest still going on? I haven’t turned it on yet and was hoping the whole thing was over.
The only thing left to look forward to is a Lily report.
Comrade Stuck
@Delia:
I don’t know, but there is a virus trap comment (I think) #85 under a poster named Rob within the Romney thread.
And don’t nobody follow the links from it.
The Grand Panjandrum
Any red-blooded heterosexual male would pay top dollar for “wild pink stuff.”
OT: BTW I just got flamed by Jake Tapper on Twitter! I’m going to go smoke a cigarette it was that good.
beabea
Organic chicken breast sauteed with chopped jalapeno and poblano peppers, onions, hoisin sauce and cashews.
I thought it tasted pretty good, but given that I’ve just recently ventured into cooking after living off frozen dinners for the past decade, the bar is pretty low.
I love how in addition to astute political commentary and pet pics, you can get good cooking ideas and food advice here. And it’s good to know I am not the only person afraid of touching farmed salmon. I swear that stuff glows in the dark.
Dennis-SGMM
@Laura W:
And Ed McMahon got…?
Steve V
It seems that if there is some decent farmed salmon out there, then for sustainability’s sake we should try to eat that, no? The doomsday talk about wild fish stocks these days is pretty intense.
Laura W
@Delia: Well, at 8:39 pm EST, KO and Jonathan Alter moved off of Jacko and onto David and Bathsheba.
If you would’ve told me 48 hours ago that I’d be thrilled to rehash Crazy In Love Mark, I’d have gagged.
As it was, I found it refreshing.
I need help. Big Help. And as usual, Maher picked the wrong damn week to go on hiatus.
Laura W
@Dennis-SGMM:
A foreclosure! And YOU get a foreclosure! And YOU get a foreclosure!
KRK
There’s just nothing as good as wild Pacific salmon, preferably sockeye. I had the gastronomic good fortune to grow up with a stepfather who gillnetted for salmon in Washington and Alaska, and I got to spend two childhood summers working on the boat and making a penny a pound for everything we caught.
While I’m sure wild Atlantic salmon has its merits for folks who can get it, the farm-raised version is just sad. I remember reading an article in the mid-’90s about how farm-raised Atlantic salmon was especially appealing to the Midwestern palate. This seemed to be a particularly egregious slur on Midwesterners. As my mom always maintained, that farm-raised salmon “tastes like mud.”
I’ve got a friend fishing in Bristol Bay right now trying to make a living, so buy Oncorhynchus! Accept no substitutes!
JenJen
@plaindave: Sorry. I’ll take hot over gravitas any day. This is MSNBC we’re talking about, fercryinoutloud. ;-)
@linda: You know, I only learned quite recently that he’s the son of Mr. 1st Amendment. I was shocked, and didn’t believe it for one minute, until I consulted the Wiki Oracle.
@Laura W: Have you seen Kenny Loggins lately? I think he hired Melissa Rivers’ plastic surgeon.
Death By Mosquito Truck
OMFG, I know you didn’t just diss Kenny.
Phil Lesh
Fuck you, lady!
Laura W
@JenJen:
LOL! Where’s
FuckheadJack?No, I have not, as much as I would love to. I do have reason to believe, however, that Jack and Mrs. Jack will be seeing Kenny and Messina (!) in concert in August, IIRC. Provided he follows through on her one and only 20th anniversary gift request. Which he will. Because he needs the sex, clearly.
I remember how warmly this was received last time I offered it up, so let’s share the warm glow again, shall we?
MazeDancer
If you’re an environmentalist, farmed-raised salmon is best avoided. Farm raising salmon is an environmental blight. Parasites and disease drift from the pens harming wild salmon.
Further, this is like veal of the sea. What defines a salmon is its wild-running nature. These salmon are stuffed in crowded pens having a miserable, un-natural life. That’s why they have to be dyed.
Here’s a link to the Monterey Bay Aquarium Sea Food Watch list about farmed salmon:
http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/cr/SeafoodWatch/web/sfw_factsheet.aspx?fid=133
Steve
If you can ever find it, White (Albino) salmon is one of the best tasting fish I have ever had the luxury of tasting. Ive only seen it at Whole Foods one time and it was expensive as hell but it was the best tasting fish ive ever put in my mouth
KRK
@Steve V:
The sustainability of fish stocks is a serious concern, but the fisheries folks do watch the numbers pretty closely. But I fear we might be approaching the tipping point where climate change dooms the Pacific salmon regardless of harvest practices. No glaciers = no Pacific salmon.
Deborah
Where I live (western suburbs of Boston) the wild stuff is twice as expensive as farm raised. And while I have made wonderful wild salmon while vacationing on the left coast (the supermarket had the name of the fisherman each day) I don’t see the point of paying more for stuff they shipped across the continent than the local product.
My grocery store tried to find a decent supplier, and what I get there tastes pretty good. Both their butcher and their fish section are really good.
We had thai beef salad tonight, grilled steak marinated in ginger and lime over greens and veggies with a lime-garlic-fish sauce dressing for grownups, and everything in discrete sauce-free, lettuce-free piles for the shorter people.
Nellcote
How Cheney killed off west coast salmon:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/cheney/chapters/leaving_no_tracks/
no salmon season at all in Cali this year.
matoko_chan
Well …you know…Dr. Cole….there just ain’t no rest for the wicked.
steve s
.
Pretty much the only fish I buy is the canned stuff. Make patties something like
1 can salmon
1 cup bread crumbs
some milk
some butter
an egg
paprika, salt, pepper, garlic, dill, maybe diced onion.
And fry em up.
only problem is, they’re a little too dense. Any suggestions?
Death By Mosquito Truck
@steve s: Use light mayo instead of milk and butter, fry in olive oil.
Comrade Stuck
@Nellcote:
People focus on the warmongering torturer Cheney. But he and his pal tonto Addington were busy sewing all sorts of mischief all throughout the federal government. Things like your link on fisheries, and a whole lot of sabotage in federal regulatory agencies and their inner workings, especially environmental stuff and generally anything to increase the bottom lines of businesses. And that’s before we even get to no-bid contracting which was a whorehouse of broken protocols and likely laws.
I’ve often wondered if Cheney’s public wanking on national security stuff is just a ruse to divert from his domestic criminal enterprises while in office.
matoko_chan
ooops meant that for the non-seafood thread
my nominee–fresh wahoo fingers, dusted with seasoned cornstarch and fried in extra virgin….in the bahamas
;)
Nellcote
#67 that looks like way too many breadcrumbs. Try it with half that amount and through in a spoonful of mayo and a squeeze of lemon juice.
steve s
You know, that might be too many breadcrumbs, you guys might be right. Didn’t think of the mayo idea. Really never use it. It might make the cakes a little fluffier, you think?
Betsy
You sure they’re telling the truth? I thought I remembered reading a year or two ago that a lot of so-called wild-caught salmon was in fact nothing of the sort.
Isn’t wild salmon not so great either? Since I don’t eat meat or fish I don’t follow it too closely, but I thought I heard somewhere that overfishing was a huge problem for salmon.
Betsy
Link to the NYT (not so) wild salmon story:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/10/dining/10salmon.html
Nellcote
#69 CStruck
In this case it wasn’t even a corporate bottom line issue, at least not directly. Cheney literally distroyed the livelihoods of so many fishermen and others just to get Smith re-elected!
The issue hits close to home as I live in a fishing community in Cali. Until this article came out, it was always a mystery why the EPA couldn’t declare the lack of water to be the cause for the 70,000 salmon die off.
Death By Mosquito Truck
@steve s: I dunno, was just trying to be helpful because I liked yer comments about Sanford.
Fern
@Betsy:
Overfishing is a huge problem for salmon, as is destruction of habitat (salmon streams).
Fern
@steve s:
I agree this might be a little heavy on breadcrumbs – depending on the kind of breadcrumbs. If you are using freshly make breadcrumbs, might not be as dense as if you are using dry, packaged breadcrumbs.
Anne Laurie
It’s marketed to people who are afraid of tofu, but who still want a low-fat flavorless protein source. In this context, “tasteless” is a net positive.
Laura W
@Anne Laurie: I think tempeh is grossly undervalued.
I love that stuff.
Especially with some sort of tahini drizzle sauce over it with fresh stir fry veggies.
Tahini Tempeh.
Yes, I’m a freak.
trollhattan
@Betsy #73
Western dams and water mismanagement have had far greater impacts on historical salmon runs than overfishing. Not that they couldn’t be overfished, but the Alaskan and B.C. salmon fisheries are very well managed (boy, that’s an odd thing to find myself writing). The other Pacific states, not so much.
As already posted, the California summer chinook run is shut down for the second year in a row.
Let salmon have a place to spawn and return to the ocean, and they’ll do very well, thanks. Deny that and….
trollhattan
@ Comrade Stuck #69
Agreed. If it weren’t for, oh, two wars, domestic spying, torture, juvenile tax cuts, bla bla, the main BushCo legacy would be their horrid resource mismanagement and inside dealing. Somewhere, James Watt must be grinnin’ like a jack-o-lantern.
Fuckers, all of them.
Evinfuilt
Wild Salmon caught in Alaska is heavily regulated, it is highly sustainable. That’s one of the reasons for the price jumping around.
The problem with farmed salmon is:
A) It pollutes the surrounding areas. no matter how much they try, its like pouring oil into the sea
B) Escapees cross breed with wild salmon
C) The salmon itself lacks all the oils/minerals that makes Salmon actually a health food (see post 21)
So buy your Alaskan Wild Salmon. Buy it frozen, it was most likely frozen right on the boat, its as close to fresh as you could ever imagine.
Zuzu's Petals
MazeDancer @61:
Great link to the MB Aquarium’s watch list. They really know their stuff.
Another great resource: their guides for sustainable seafood choices. Categories are “best choices,” “good alternatives,” and “avoid.”
They have a guide for each region of the country as well as an “all region” guide. And you can print out a cute little pocket-sized version too.
Two snaps up!
jl
Agree with above.
Alaska is very good at regulating its fisheries. Sustainable.
BC OK.
WA, OR, quasi-OK.
CA -total mess, due more to dams and stream pollution than overfishing.
Except I think salmon farms are pretty established in BC, so not sure what will happen there.
At least that is what I have read. The story in CA is sad. There are programs to restore and restock salmon runs in rivers that used to have them in central California, but looks like the CA wild salmon might go extinct before those are ready.
demimondian
@Anne Laurie: Although I eat tofu gladly, it’s low-fat only if the world is 6000 years old. Tofu contains about twice as much more fat per unit protein as chicken breast — a cup of tofu contributes about 11g of fat and about 20g of protein, whereas a cup of chicken contributes about 10g of fat and almost 40g of protein.
Yukoner
The best, the very best salmon in the world, is Taku River sockeye. When really fresh, say no more than a few hours fresh, slice very thinly, apply a tiny touch of wasabe and eat. No need to cook. Otherwise buy fish caught yesterday and fill your freezer. Cook a salmon on the BBQ every other day for a month or maybe two. Smoke the rest at weekly intervals until next season. Repeat. Life is good.
Irony Abounds
Its sucks being on a low fat diet, it just sucks. I don’t really like fish, and when I do get salmon or shrimp it is probably farm raised crap so I’m killing myself in a different way.
iamhbomb
@DarrenG:
Farmed salmon isn’t actually died pink – almost no salmon flesh is actually that pink colour (there are a few that are genetically unable to deposit the pigment that makes them a colour other than ivory). It gets that way from their diet. While in the oceanic phase of their lives, salmon eat a lot of small shrimp and krill. That prey contains a natural pigment called astaxanthin . What salmon farmers do is feed the fish pellets that have either astaxanthin or canthaxanthin (a pigment which can be found in carrots). Both of these pigments can and are synthesized for a lower cost than harvesting them naturally. If trout get feed that contains either of these, their flesh becomes that pink colour too.
As for salmon recipes, I like to put a tomato-based salsa on a fillet and bake it at 350 for about 15 minutes. Tasty and simple as possible.
Howard
jl
@iamhbomb: If an expert on salmon pigment comes back here, the farmed salmon I see on the left coast is always a kind of bright orange-pink color, and gets pale when you cook it (and, IMHO, the washed out color matches the pasty tasteless flesh). Is there something different, and if so, what?
Thlayli
@Laura W:
Note the stuff at the top about children and reproducing women.
For adult males, the benefits of the Omega-3s outweigh any damage the mercury might do.
DarrenG
@iamhbomb:
I was imprecise in my language above when using ‘dyed.’ Thanks for the clarification;
I was aware that they didn’t actually soak the meat in dye, but feeding farm-raised salmon pigmentation pellets to get the meat close to the same color it would be on a wild diet is what led to the court case that now requires most markets to add the “color added” label to farm-raised fish.
@jl:
What’s different is that instead of the meat getting its color and texture naturally through diet and swimming, the fish farmers feed them pellets of one or both of the chemicals iamhbomb mentioned — this is what gives the raw meat the orange-red color in the store, which doesn’t survive heat. See my post @21 for details; to get salmon that looks and tastes right when cooked, there’s no substitute for sending the fish on a long, cold swim.
Jason
@Skepticat: Yeah, I just got back from the Erie Wegman’s: a “blowout special” wild something-salmon at 16.99/lb (!), and farmed salmon at 4.99 a pound. So the fishmonger’s screwin’ you, John.
mario
dammit!
It’s Brussels sprouts!!
Always dissing Belgium. Give ’em some love, show some respect.
is there really dye in the salmon?
eeew
iamhbomb
@DarrenG:
Oh, I can’t believe I wrote “died” in that post. Oh well, we’re being bombarded by Michael Jackson stories – I blame that! Anyway, when farmers feed the fish those pellets, they’re getting the same pigment that they do when eating small crustaceans in the wild, especially if the pellets have astaxanthin, which they have discovered to be more effective than the canthaxanthin. I agree that wild caught salmon tastes better – by far – than farmed. I think it comes from doing so much more work and getting a greater variety in their diet. Kind of like how “free range” beef or chicken tastes better. I suspect the variety in the diet is the key. Though looking again at what you wrote in comment 21 above, I can certainly see that what you said about the length of their commute would enter into it. Those North Alaskan Sockeyes taste great. I wish people hadn’t made it so hard for the fish to reproduce and survive in the wild, then we wouldn’t need farmed. I have had farmed salmon a few times and I never noticed that it lost its colour in any significant way when I cooked it.
Howard