We'll cut right to the chase: wild salmon is one of the world's healthiest foods for your brain, your body, your skin, your everything.
But before you run out to the grocery store and grab another salmon fillet or packet of smoked salmon, learn the interesting and rather shocking truth that not all salmon is created equally. And this matters in a big way, because it's your brain, body and health that will know the difference.
But first, in case you don't know some of the reasons why wild salmon is considered to be such an amazing health food, with some particularly noteworthy brain-specific benefits that you should know about:
- Numerous studies have all shown that eating wild salmon at least once per week significantly reduced the risk of developing both Alzheimer's and Dementia compared to those who did not. Wow! Talk about an easy (and tasty) way to significantly reduce my chances of developing mental diseases?!
- Wild salmon is high in protein, no carbs. Let's just say that you won't get fat eating wild salmon...
- Is one of the best sources of the all-important Omega-3 fatty acids on the planet, which has been shown to help with everything from reducing inflammation in the brain to lower bad cholesterol to improve mood and overall brain function to help regenerate nerve cells to improve skin to numerous heart & cardiovascular benefits to...the list goes on.
- Contains an essential fatty acid called DHA which numerous studies have shown helps reduce risk of cognitive impairments in general, as well as Dementia and Alzheimer's.
- Is one of the fish least associated (lowest in) trace environmental toxins such as mercury.
So now you know: wild salmon is one heck of a powerful brain food, body health food, and powerhouse of healthy fatty acids. It's obviously worth adding to your diet right away if you're not already eating it at least once per week (unless of course you have fish or seafood allergies or any contraindications, obviously). Ready to hit the grocery store? Not so fast...
We've been talking about WILD salmon. And preferably wild Alaskan line-caught salmon, which is generally available over 8 months of the year fresh, and the rest as "frozen at sea".
Here's where the problem comes in: most of the salmon you see on your grocery store shelves, including behind the counter in the seafood section, is FARM-RAISED salmon.
Yes, even that stuff called "Fresh Atlantic Salmon"...it's usually farm-raised.
Doesn't sound so bad, does it? Salmon raised on a nice little farm, frolicking with fellow salmon in a pure clean idyllic setting?
Nope, the truth is quite different, and quite unfortunate...unfortunate that most people just don't know how significant the differences are between real wild salmon and farmed salmon. From a health and taste and even environmental perspectives, there's just no comparison. We're talking two different animals here.
Let's start with a few factoids: that fresh-looking orange-ish farm-raised salmon you see in the grocery store? Guess what color it REALLY is: grey.
Yes, GRAY. Ewww! That color comes from a synthetic coloring...coloring that the manufacturer can tweak to these sickly fatty slave fish into something more appetizing looking.
They even use color swatches to determine and select the most visually appealing colors!
Okay, so it's grey fish that are synthetically colored to look appetizing. But it's still healthy, right? Time for more factoids:
- Farm-raised salmon are actually doused with antibiotics, and are often fed concentrated pesticides, to ward off the kinds of infections that can happen in the fish farm environment. They are even vaccinated as babies! How appetizing.
- Contains significantly higher levels of dangerous PBDE compounds, the flame-retardant additives used widely in electronics, than wild salmon. Yuck!
- Farmed salmon has significantly lower Omega-3 content than wild salmon, while containing significantly higher inflammatory (meaning not good) Omega-6 content.
- Farmed salmon is significantly fattier (in the bad way, not good fats) than wild salmon, largely because unlike wild salmon which get a lot of exercise swimming in the open cold oceans, farmed salmon have a lazy, couch-potato life of slowly idling around in crowded quarters, eating color-enhanced food to mask their sickly, fatty bodies from looking dead-grey. Mmmm...I'm getting hungry!
- Fish farms are bad for the environment on many levels (we won't go into that here, but feel free to do some research for yourself, it's fascinating), threaten the wild salmon population, and some now believe are contributing to antibiotic resistance in humans due to the heavy use of antibiotics in farmed salmon. Fire up that grill now, I'm famished!
- We could go on, but you probably lost your appetite for farmed salmon a while ago.
Just another example of the fact that real, organic, natural foods as nature intended them are better than artificial, mass-produced, chemical-laden, crank 'em-out-and-get-'em-to-market food attempts.
Ah, but there's hope: fortunately there's ready access to real wild salmon in most grocery stores nowadays (particularly ones that pride themselves on good selections of natural, organic foods and naturally-raised meats and the like), and it's a good thing that enough people now know the truth, the differences and care to make the right choice.
Oh, and then there's the matter of taste: we challenge you to compare farm-raised salmon to wild line-caught salmon.
Most of us who have found the magic of fresh wild salmon couldn't be paid money to take a bite of the farm-raised mush ever again, on taste alone. But when you combine the superior taste and texture of wild salmon with the knowledge of how healthy it is for your brain and body, it becomes something that you want to make sure you include in your diet as often as possible.
Some people even insist on eating it every day because of how it makes them feel (brain, mood, body) and look (particularly skin improvements), but once a week is all you need for the baseline benefits described earlier.
There you have it, the truth about salmon. I don't know about you, but I'm so hungry for real, fresh wild salmon right now, I'm heading to the store to buy a nice fillet right now and then throw that thing on the grill!
Good news: it's true. This is real. It actually works.
Let us know what you think, and what wild salmon does for you. Email us at: