Labeling on foods can often be misleading, vague, or complicated for the uninformed. I feel that this is a way that food companies can be dishonest by perhaps changing the serving size to be half the portion, making it seem that the fat content is half as much. Food labeling can be like a shell game where if you don’t pay attention to the wording and amounts, it is easy to believe whatever the food companies wish one to believe in order to purchase their products.

It appears to me that the US government (FDA) that regulates the food companies, have more rights than the consumers buying their products. Unless one becomes well versed in the product labeling, which most people are not in my opinion, it is very easy to think that we are purchasing and ultimately consuming healthy food products where in reality we are not.

I am in favor of total transparency on food labeling, as to what the nutritional values are, what actual ingredients are included naturally and what is chemically added in the process of preparing for resale. Then let the consumer decide for themselves if they want to purchase a product that is loaded with whatever additives or preservatives. There is a reason why the shelf life for some processed foods is literally years. Why would I think otherwise that these same chemicals would not end up “preserving” something within my body that should not be preserved?

I have a relative who is a food chemist. Years back he shared with me that one of the most common food colorings, called carmine is a natural red dye also labeled as cochineal extract, E120 or natural red 4, that comes from the female cochineal bug. Even if crushed bugs are not toxic, I think consumers should be able to find this fact more easily than having to research every ingredient for alternative names.

I read food labels constantly when I shop. I choose to monitor how much sodium and other additives are in foods that I purchase and prepare. Anything frozen, processed, prepared in advance or in a can are often the worst for us as they are at least loaded with salt as a natural preservative and often other chemicals to add shelf life. I have dabbled in the organic food labels also. These can be misleading also as there are various classifications for what can be considered as organic. One really has to take the self-responsibility to pursue the due diligence if one wants to better manage what they consume.

References:

https://recipes.howstuffworks.com/food-science/carmine.htm

https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2012/03/22/organic-101-what-usda-organic-label-means?page=1

I write often about topics that affect our health and well-being. Additionally, I teach and offer lecture about qigong, tai chi, baguazhang, and yoga. I also have hundreds of FREE education video classes, lectures and seminars available on my YouTube channel at:

https://www.youtube.com/c/MindandBodyExercises

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Jim Moltzan

407-234-0119

www.MindAndBodyExercises.com

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I try to pursue a healthy and nutritional diet, with salmon as a source of protein, fats and other vitamins. I do eat salmon 1-2 days per week. Choosing to purchase hormone-free, antibiotic-free salmon from either my local grocer (Publix) or Costco which both claim to sell these types of fish. I recently reviewed an article regarding salmon, that seems very relative to today’s current public debates over what is considered healthy or not. Or how, big corporations have become demonized (sometimes rightfully so) for promoting food or healthcare products with questionable health benefits. I have previously known about most of these issues that the article brought up, but thought it would be good information to share to a wider audience. We only have so many options for our food products, so we need to be even more diligent in reading labels and doing the research on foods in question.

The article I chose to review is entitled “Salmon – The way they live, the food they eat, and the effect on us” by Douglas Frantz and his wife Catherine Collins. Both authors seem to have strong journalism credentials where Frantz was a managing editor at the Los Angeles Times and where he shared a Pulitzer Prize as a foreign correspondent at the New York Times. Later he was chief investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and an assistant secretary of state in the Obama administration. Collins was a reporter and foreign correspondent for the Chicago Tribune and also a contributor to the New York Times and Los Angeles Times. She later became a private investigator where she specialized in international financial fraud. I could not find any personal reasons or information as to why these two chose to investigate the salmon industry.

The article attempts to bring some light onto the discussion of how salmon consumption has been promoted by doctors and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) for its health benefits. The authors state that there often exists false marketing of salmon, as being a certified-natural product, organic, sustainable, and naturally raised. The USDA has no approve definition of what exactly is organic salmon. Sustainability comes into question when we learn that salmon are carnivores that feed on other fish. In order to farm salmon on a large commercial scale, salmon need their diet supplemented from other sources that require more acquisition of proteins from larvae, algae or bacteria. Natural is questionable as the ground fish feed used to sustain the salmon, contains chemicals and antibiotics. Salmon are farmed in crowded cages for years that have parasites within them.¹

Salmon comes to the US mostly from far away. A whopping 90% of our salmon is farmed Atlantic salmon, raised then and then flown in from Chile, Canada, Norway, and Scotland. The remaining 10% is mostly wild-caught Pacific salmon commercially harvested from Alaska. Alaska is one of the few places that wild salmon are still fished commercially.¹
 
I think that Frantz and Collins offered a fairly neutral stance as far as presenting the information. One can debate this as being more or less sensationalized depending upon your viewpoint on this particular issue. I did not get the feeling of sensationalism however it is quite sobering to hear that farmed salmon have their own health risks of disease, parasites, and predators. In 2020 the government of Norway reported that 52 million fish died before harvest and in 2019 the figure was 53 million. The government of Scotland reported the mortality rate for farmed salmon quadrupled between 2002 and 2019. And in 2019, Newfoundland had more salmon died in cages than were harvested.¹

The authors do report that there are some positive tentative actions being done to hopefully move to change the salmon industry to being more reputable in regard to natural, organic, and sustainable. This would include a contest of some sort, by a collaboration of governments, academic researchers, nutritionists and the private sector, with the goal of enticing fish feed companies to develop alternatives to the existing feed products.¹ This issue of how to feed the salmon that will eventually feed humans seems to be a major issue in regard to sustainability, and at what cost?

This article does give many insights at how far the salmon industry has veered off from years back where salmon were not farm raised with chemicals and antibiotics. Going back to the late 1700’s and the Industrial Revolution, the decline in salmon consumption was due to waste being dumped directly into rivers and streams. By the mid-1800’s, the salmon population was reduced further by commercial fishing. Additionally, construction of dams and mills destroyed fish habitats and blocked salmon rivers.¹ The authors do not come off as experts in the field of nutrition but rather as experts in investigative reporting as noted in their background information.

There is is good and bad in everything (yin and yang) and it is our individual responsibility to research what food or healthcare products with questionable health benefits, we consume or use.

References:

¹ Frantz, Douglas, and Catherine Collins. 2022. “Salmon. (Cover Story).” Natural History 130 (7): 22–27. https://search-ebscohost-com.northernvermont.idm.oclc.org/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=sso&db=aph&AN=157318533&site=eds-live.

² Wikipedia contributors. (2021, May 2). Natural History (magazine). Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_History_(magazine)

https://www.verywellfit.com/salmon-nutrition-facts-calories-and-health-benefits-4106641

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I write often about topics that affect our health and well-being. Additionally, I teach and offer lecture about qigong, tai chi, baguazhang, and yoga.

For more info, contact Jim Moltzan at info@mindandbodyexercises.com, 407-234-0119 or through my site at http://www.mindandbodyexercises.com

www.Amazon.com/author/jimmoltzan