Farm-Raised Salmon Better Than Wild?

I can’t help but post a photo or two from breakfast.

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Not that I think the photos are spectacular, but oh the colors! They’re so pretty together! The turquoise! The pink!

Breakie eats: Great Harvest cinnamon chip toast with a wee bit of real butter, Morningstar “sausage”, and Earthfare House Blend coffee (yup, a repeat of yesterday 100% – hey, if it ain’t broke…)

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I had a toasted turkey sammie but the darn toaster oven in the office must be broken because it only toasted the top half. Grr. My sandwich still tastes better warm and half toasted than cold and not toasted at all. I added a dabble of dijon mustard and wow! I have to say I’ve forgotten how darn good mustard is! Only 10 calories and a whole NEW flavor!

On the side, I had some marinated kale. All I can think when I eat this stuff is uamami. But not just like “umami”…it’s more like “uuuuuuuummmmmaaaaaaammmmiiiiiiiii.” (thought with a happy smile)

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Fran Costigan, an amazingly kind and talented woman and my baker for the goodies I won at the online bake sale, contacted me yesterday to let me know my goodies would be delivered around noon. Sure enough, at 11:45 hubby called to say they were there! I was so excited but sad to be trapped at work with 6 hours before I could try the goodies first hand.

Luckily, sweet hubby dropped some goodies off to me!

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I had a mini organic Chocolate Cake to Live For (I MUST try this recipe very soon) with a spicy Chai ganache

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…and an organic almond anise nibby biscotti with some Tulsi Sweet Rose Tea.

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Ok, ok, so I had FIVE pieces of biscotti. This stuff is addicting, I swear! But the best part? Fran tweeted to let me know they are totally healthy and made with whole wheat flour and maple syrup. Yay! Sounds like I need to get Fran’s cookbook, no? I’ve already been trying to make more and more healthy substitutions in my baking and Fran seems to have some great tricks up her sleeve!

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I let the oven do the heavy lifting today after work dinner-wise.

I found this white sweet potato at Earthfare. I didn’t even know they existed, but it seemed like something good to try.

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Earthfare had Meyer lemons on sale today, 4 for $1. Score!

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I seriously let the oven cook EVERYTHING tonight. Though slower, I love how the oven let’s me work on other things while it works.

I held a little photo shoot (post coming next) to photograph my goodies from Fran. So fun!

The final result (shot with a little extra exposure kicked in):

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Roasted salmon with dill and fresh squeezed lemon, roasted asparagus with tarragon, and roasted white sweet potatoes with maple syrup and cinnamon.

Hubby really liked all the food, as did I. His fave – the asparagus. My fave – the salmon and the potatoes. Hubby said the potatoes tasted apple-y to him. Interesting, no?

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So tonight whilst picking up groceries, I noticed the farm-raised salmon was on sale while the wild alaskan wasn’t. I asked the guy about the fish. I’ve talked about why I like wild better than farm-raised before, but tonight, the fish guy said that they’re starting to move towards farm-raised. He said that wild isn’t as good because of oil spills and pollution in the ocean. After confirming that the farm-raised salmon was not dyed, I decided to just go ahead and get it. Sheesh, who knows which one really is better? It seems like there are so many factors to the quality of fish that can’t be gleened from the label “farm-raised” or “wild.” I say trust your fish guy – he knows more about the fish than you do and should be able to make good recommendations for you.

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I did a play on this roasted asparagus recipe by Rachael Ray.

Dill Lemon Roasted Salmon

by me

Serves 2

Ingredients:

  • Two boneless salmon filets (mine were about .8 lbs total)
  • 1 lemon
  • about 1 tsp dried dill
  • 2 tsp – 2 tbsp EVOO
  • salt, pepper

Directions:

  1. Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees F
  2. Place salmon on aluminum foil-covered baking sheet (I didn’t put non-stick spray down first, so the skin stuck to the aluminum foil once done cooking, which was ok since I was able to remove the part we wanted to eat really easily – it actually turned out to be a neat trick to remove the fish from the skin! lol)
  3. drizzle EVOO over salmon and rub into fish.
  4. Sprinkle fish with dill, salt, and pepper.
  5. Roast salmon for 18-20 minutes till fish is flaky and cooked through.
  6. Serve salmon with lemon halves. Squeeze lemon juice on salmon while still hot.

Roasted White Sweet Potatoes with Maple Syrup and Cinnamon

by me

Serves 2

NOTE: This cooks well with the salmon since they cook at the same temp. Just be sure to start the potatoes well in advance of the fish.

Ingredients:

  • 1 large white sweet potato, peeled, chopped into 1/2″-3/4″ pieces
  • about 2 tbsp EVOO
  • salt, pepper, cinnamon (to taste)
  • about 2-3 tbsp maple syrup

Directions:

  1. Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees F
  2. Place sweet potato pieces on a baking sheet. Drizzle with EVOO. Sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste. Toss to coat. Roast for 55-60 minutes or till just starting to brown and/or tender to your liking. Toss halfway through cooking.
  3. Remove potatoes from oven. Sprinkle with cinnamon to your liking (about 1 tsp). Drizzle with maple syrup and toss to coat.
  4. Serve and enjoy.

PS I totally gobbled up the rest of my mini chocolate cakes. Heehee They were simply to good to save for tomorrow. I’ve got biscotti on tomrrow’s eating agenda…perhaps some for breakfast and some for afternoon snacks? ๐Ÿ™‚

12 thoughts on “Farm-Raised Salmon Better Than Wild?”

  1. Honestly, Salmon is my absolute favorite food – I very possibly could live off of it.

    I had ALWAYS bought fresh, wild caught pacific salmon – never farm raised or even wild atlantic. However, just a few months ago I stopped at Fresh Market and they ONLY had farm raised and told me the same thing. I ended up researching it a bit and found the same things that you mentioned. For some reason, I had never considered pollutants and such in the wild.

    I’ve found some of the BEST farm raised *organic* salmon at this Healthy Home Market (i think that’s the name??) on South Blvd. It’s kind of a sketchy area, but just a few block down from me so I decided to try it out and was pleasantly surprised! It’s almost like a mix between Fresh Market, TJ’s & Earth Fare. They’re salmon always looks amazing though, I love it! ๐Ÿ™‚

    Reply
  2. I’ve always read that fish is a crap shoot. Farm or wild…it doesnt really matter. There is no way of controlling the amount of chemicals in fish. One should be leary of
    “organic” fish because fish can never be assuredly free of chemicals.

    Reply
  3. It’s a little sad that food is so complicated now, isn’t it? It’s salmon, it shouldn’t be this hard.

    I’m hoping to get some fresh fish–I’m in California so I’m hoping to head down to one of the local harbors about an hour a way, where I can buy fish and crabs right off the boat. But I think salmon season was cancelled this year. : ( Sad face.

    (Oh–and not sure where you are, exactly, but I get so tickled reading your posts with Fresh Market and Earth Fare mentioned! I grew up in Western NC and it’s such a reminder of home!)

    Reply
  4. It is sad that fish is such a tricky thing, but I think that the retail guys are over-playing the pollutants issue to sell the farm-raised because they have to move fish.

    It’s my understanding that there is no organic designation for seafood, farmed or otherwise so that’s just greenwashing. Secondly, farm-raised salmon can be fed anything and often is fed what salmon would never eat in the wild, like corn. Salmon has no business eating corn, especially GMO corn. Making sure it’s not dyed, or dyed by feed (as I noticed Costco’s farm-raised said) is a good start. I, myself, would stay away from farmed salmon.

    See: http://www.grinningplanet.com/2004/05-25/certified-organic-farmed-salmon-article.htm

    Reply
  5. The only farmed salmon I buy is from Whole Foods because I have done extensive research on just how their fish is farmed (what it’s fed, how and where it’s raised, etc) and nothing unnatural is done to the fish…. so I eat it in copious amounts and it’s by far the most delicious thing in the entire world!

    Reply
    • http://wakeup-world.com/2011/10/06/7-foods-experts-wont-eat/

      5. Farmed Salmon
      The Expert: David Carpenter, MD, director of the Institute for Health and the Environment at the University at Albany and publisher of a major study in the journal Science on contamination in fish.

      The Situation: Nature didnโ€™t intend for salmon to be crammed into pens and fed soy, poultry litter, and hydrolyzed chicken feathers. As a result, farmed salmon is lower in vitamin D and higher in contaminants, including carcinogens, PCBs, brominated flame retardants, and pesticides such as dioxin and DDT. According to Carpenter, the most contaminated fish come from Northern Europe, which can be found on American menus. โ€œYou can only safely eat one of these salmon dinners every 5 months without increasing your risk of cancer,โ€ says Carpenter, whose 2004 fish contamination study got broad media attention. โ€œItโ€™s that bad.โ€ Preliminary science has also linked DDT to diabetes and obesity, but some nutritionists believe the benefits of omega-3s outweigh the risks. There is also concern about the high level of antibiotics and pesticides used to treat these fish. When you eat farmed salmon, you get dosed with the same drugs and chemicals.

      The Answer: Switch to wild-caught Alaska salmon. If the package says fresh Atlantic, itโ€™s farmed. There are no commercial fisheries left for wild Atlantic salmon.

      Reply

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