Organic salmon - Really??? Is “Organic” more or less nutritious than conventional production?

Research Article on Impacts of Biodiversity Loss on Ocean Ecosystem Services  by

Boris Worm with 12 authors from marine institutes, including Portsmouth, claim fish stocks are collapsing and conclude that fishery decline is closely tied to a broader loss of marine biodiversity. If true, this would mean a loss of omega 3 fatty acids and trace elements for which fish and sea foods is the richest source on the planet. Such a loss to the human food chain would exacerbate the alarming rise in mental ill health.  This rise is being attributed to the increase in omega 6 and loss of omega 3 fatty acids in the diet. Brain disorders have now overtaken all other burdens of ill health in the EU. If this increase continues, the outlook for civilisation and peace is bleak.

However, this claim was disputed by Scottish National Party’s Shadow Fisheries Minister, Richard Lochhead, who labelled the claim that

I am not at all certain what the Soil Association has to do with fish stocks insofar as their business is with soil use, avoidance of artificial fertilisers and pesticides. However, it could be argued that their interest would contribute to the health of the rivers and estuaries and would thus contribute to the health of the marine food chain.  It seems politicians do not realise that the marine food chain starts in earnest in the estuaries with the trace elements being washed down from the land into the warm, estuarine shallows and the sea. The way in which the rivers, and hence the estuaries, have been allowed to be polluted by industrial and city waste is incomprehensible. At the beginning of last century, the bar men in the east end of London would go down to the Thames in the morning to collect buckets full of oysters to put on the bar free for their customers.  Today people eat crisps fried in saturated fat and get excited if a salmon is spotted in the Thames.  A whale swam up it and died.

Recently the Soil Association has been talking up “Organic Farmed Salmon”. The Elm Farm Research news letter exploded with mirth about the Soil Association's attempting to take over accreditation for organic salmon.  I suspect the SA want accreditation put their way to make more money. Now how on earth can you have organic salmon and, in any case, what would it mean?  Have they been fed organic fish meal or organic corn oil?  Trawler-caught fish that is unsuitable for human consumption, offal and the like is used as feed for salmon.  How can you certify that this medley of stuff is organic?  Doubtless the SA wants to get in on the act of omega 3 rich sea foods. 

The public is under the impression that, because it is organic, a food is more nutritious. Not a bit of it. You can have genuinely organic sugar, and saturated fat and you could also have organic trans isomers in your food.   Some of the organic chicken analysed in the laboratory for a Channel 4 TV programme had the highest fat content. hitting between three to four times the amounts of fat calories compared to protein in the thighs.  People think they are buying a protein- rich food. In reality, they are likely to be buying a fat-rich product. 

The amount of fat in farmed salmon varied from 6% to over 21% making a mockery of the Food Standard’s Agencies recommendation to only have two meals of oily fish a week. The alleged problem is that the pollutants are in the oil or fat of the fish.  Two meals of Tesco’s 21% fat salmon would be the equivalent of seven or more meals of Morrison’s 6% salmon. The 6% was similar to the wild salmon from Alaska. 

Moreover, some farmed salmon are being fed vegetable oils to reduce the pollutant load.  Whilst the Soil Association would have a problem certifying the wild caught food, they would have no problem certifying the vegetable oil to feed the farmed salmon and make them oily. Organic as it maybe, analyses showed that, in some, there was 5 times the amount of omega 6 in the farmed salmon compared to the wild.

But hey! wait a minute. Is it not the case that we are eating too much omega 6 and not enough omega 3 and is not Joe Hibbeln at the NIH USA, publishing the evidence based notion that this concentration on pushing omega 6 is behind the rise in mental ill health by tipping the 1 to 1 balance on the brain to something between 10 and 20 to 1?  Is this not a good reason for us to be eating more omega 3 rich foods such as the sea foods?  So the salmon, whether organic or not, fed vegetable oils will be adding to the omega 6 load and suppressing the omega 3.  Ah, but it is organic!

I have every reason to support the organic movement for the sake of the soil and its health. But being organic per se is not a guarantee of better nutritional value of a food as the example for the sugar and the salmon clearly demonstrate.

What is needed is intelligent and evidence based assessment of nutrient value of production methods as for intensive versus free range versus genuine extensive husbandry: genetically modified and non GM foods.  Such monitoring may show organic food to be more, or perhaps less nutritious. Who knows?   However from a simple analysis of the (1) calories from protein compared to fat or (2) the omega 6 to omega 3 ratio, (3) anti-oxidant (4) sugar (5) B vitamins(6) trace element content, the organic label is inadequate as a claim for better nutrition. David Thomas described the loss of trace element in vegetables over the last several decades. We do not know if organic foods were less or more likely to loose such trace elements. They should be better but we need hard evidence. Trace elemens is the one area in which organically produced food might score.

A proper survey to include the natural wild and increasing extensive rearing of animals, could be a major step forward in guiding the consumer to genuinely nourishing food.

See:

Hibbeln JR, Ferguson TA, Blasbalg TL. Omega-3 fatty acid deficiencies in neurodevelopment, aggression and autonomic dysregulation: opportunities for intervention.

Int Rev Psychiatry. 2006 Apr;18(2):107-18.

Hibbeln JR, Nieminen LR, Lands WE.  Increasing homicide rates and linoleic acid consumption among five Western countries, 1961-2000. Lipids. 2004 Dec;39(12):1207-13.

Thomas D.  A study on the mineral depletion of the foods available to us as a nation over the period 1940 to 1991. Nutr Health. 2003;17(2):85-115. 

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