Fish farms contribute to the depletion of ocean fisheries. About 60 percent of the catch of wild fish is now being used for feed by the aquaculture industry worldwide. It takes three pounds of wild fish to produce one pound of farmed salmon. Thus, the total fish catch has been declining for years now due to over-fishing.

Fishing consumes fossil fuel energy. Commercial fishing is very energy intensive; it may require as much as 20 calories of fossil fuel energy to produce one calorie of food energy from fish. This is a ratio which makes fish 50 to 100 times as energy-intensive as production of plant foods, even when those plant foods are produced under standard Western agricultural methods. At best, then, fish is merely less damaging than other forms of meat production.

Unlike cows and chickens and all that, fish don’t breathe the same air we breathe, they breathe water, and if that water is polluted with industrial waste I can’t quite understand why you’d want to eat that fish. Even saltwater fish can be sketchy, since they may have been sprayed or irradiated to preserve freshness during the trip from deep sea to market.

First, a disclaimer. I don’t believe the body is a hyper-sensitive finely calibrated machine waiting to be pushed out of sync. I believe most people are unhealthy because they eat horrendously, never exercise, and dislike their lives (disclaimer no. 2: I never exercise). If you generally eat OK, I don’t think it’s necessary to obsess over your health. I think we’ve evolved into creatures that are just happy for a full plate of food, hopefully ethically prepared. My problem with macrobiotic, raw, fruitarian, etc (I won't even deign to discuss Atkins, the Zone, etc.) diets are that they are not based in politics or ethics; they are based on American-style self-indulgence. When we have so many more pressing problems (like, um, the approaching apocalypse) to focus on, it is morally indefensible to obsess so much over what goes in your stomach. Stop obsessing!

Fatty acids.

I’m not going to pretend that fish isn’t good for you – it can be, if you can find clean fish (see below; good luck). It’s got all those things that, honestly, vegetarians tend to not get enough of – especially omega3 fatty acids (aka “brain food”). The omega-3 fats, abundant in cold-water fish such as salmon and halibut and other northern marine animals, confer a number of health benefits, including supporting heart health, protecting against cancer, and boosting the intelligence and vision of young developing brains whether in utero or in childhood.

But housecats are probably filled with omega-3 fatty acids too. Perhaps yo mama is too. If you’re against eating animals for ethical reasons, do you really think fish are treated so well and/or are such lesser life forms than cows and whatnot that your carefully reasoned ethical arguments about not eating “red meat” don’t hold? Well, read on, I’ll debunk all that, but we’re still on health. 

The thing with fish and omega3s is that they aren’t even the best source of them – four grams of flaxseeds pack 2,272 mg of omega-3s, walnuts also beat fish cold with 2,000 mg per few ounces, while tuna only contains 700 mg. But, it’s hard to get 4 grams of flaxseeds. It doesn’t come wrapped in sushi rice with avocado. A few ounces of walnuts are easier, but some people just aren’t going to snack on walnuts. So people get all into fish as this magic brain food, and it’s really just because they are too lazy to think of other ways to get their nutrients, like squirting flax seed oil into salad dressing, or eating walnuts in between meals. 

Antibiotics.

Most people now know that all those anti-bacterial products kill the good and the bad bacteria equally and thus create resistant strains of bacteria that are progressively scarier. And most people know about food animals like cows and whatnot eating lots of antibiotics to prevent them from getting sick from living in filth. But yay, there is yet more crap to know about antibiotics, and it relates to fish: pools in which farm fish are contained are so crowded that various antibiotics and other drugs are used in high concentrations to control bacterial, fungal, and other diseases that afflict the stocks. Of course, as problems get worse, the more drugs fish farmers (fish farmers! Ha!) will have to use in order to keep up the quantity needed to make a profit.

David Wallinga, M.D., senior scientist at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, a specialist in environmental health policies, blames a weak regulatory structure and inspection program for unchecked use of antibiotics on fish farms. "By using antibiotics pretty indiscriminately as some fish farms may, we're creating conditions where we foster increased numbers of bacteria that are resistant to treatment with antibiotics. [This is] contributing to increasing numbers of people getting resistant infections that are hard to treat with antibiotics."

Mercury.

I guess everyone knows about mercury and other heavy metals and fish consumption, but in case not, here we go. 

Mercury is "bio-accumulative," meaning it becomes more concentrated as it is moved up the food chain. For instance, contaminants on the water's bottom are eaten by small fish that are, in turn, eaten by larger fish and so on until the final product — with its accumulated contaminants — lands on our plate. Farmed fish can ingest the same levels of mercury, PCBs, dioxin, and other contaminants as wild-caught fish. "The reason that one might think that fish farms would...get you away from that is because they're raising the fish on some kind of feed. But...some of these feeds...may be made up of other fish. So essentially you're creating an artificial food chain where you're feeding fish ground up parts of other fish that are bio-accumulating these contaminants even in a fish farm environment." That’s that Wallinga dude again. 

Eating wild-caught fish can also present the same problem with toxic metals. Dr. Wallinga cites coal burning as a major culprit in producing mercury and other contaminant by-products that drift into our water sources and mingle with the food fish eat. For specifics read "Brain Food," the Environmental Working Group's paper on this subject at www.ewg.org/pub/home/reports/brainfood/pr.html.

I just did some research online to back up my notes on fish, and I found the best headline ever, from the SF Chronicle: “Rich Folks Eating Fish Feed on Mercury Too.” HA!

Anyway, what does mercury poisoning do to you? Well, it attacks the brain and affects the entire nervous system, including contributing to behavioral problems and loss of intelligence in children. Recent studies link mercury exposure to impairments of immune and reproductive systems and cardiovascular disease. In one study, 720 patients were screened and 123 selected for testing, either because they were eating lots of fish or fish known to be high in mercury, or because they had symptoms of mercury exposure, including fatigue, headache, joint pain and reduced memory and concentration.

Of seven children in the study, all had too much mercury, except one who didn't eat fish. One child had a blood-mercury level of 13 parts per billion. She was eating two cans of tuna a week, within the guidelines recommended by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Her mother reported that she was lethargic, lost verbal skills and forgot how to tie her shoes. The researcher instructed her ill and high-mercury patients to give up fish for six months, or eat fish that doesn't accumulate mercury, such as salmon, sardines, sole, tilapia or small shellfish. Mercury levels fell dramatically in the 67 patients she followed in the study, with some taking more than 21 weeks to see reductions.

Oh, and look at this nutty Office of New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer page on how unhealthy fish in the NYC area can be! 
http://www.oag.state.ny.us/environment/fish_contamination_rivers.html (I like Eliot Spitzer, actually. He always seems to be up to cool stuff. Oh how wrong I was...) Anyway, I found pages like this for nearly every state.

So, yes eating fish in moderation and avoiding those that are known to be mercury-riddled can help. But how can you find fish that aren’t packed tight with antibiotics and all that crap? It seems impossible. And I’ve never seen a whole webpage written by a civil servant about “whether or not carrots in the NYC area are dangerous” or a “broccoli advisory.” Why don’t we stick with what we know is healthy?

Now, as I feel I have to say every minute, I’m an animal rights person through and through, but I’m not a huge fan of PETA. I went to their site to see their spin on the fish issue, and they had some OK info, but also some sloppily researched shite. Here’s a balanced view of the animal rights position on fish.

Sometimes people want to eat fish because they believe they don’t suffer as much as other animals. This is a nice thought, but it’s kind of like those people who think John Ashcroft was really trying to protect us from terrorism – it’s time to start living in the real world.

-Humungous fishing boats (“the bulldozers of the oceans”) use satellite communications to track their prey and then drop huge nets, sometimes many miles long. The nets snag animals of countless species, including dolphins, seals, and sea otters. An estimated one million sea birds every year become entangled in fishing nets and drown. Some fishing outfits use underwater explosives to herd dolphins away from tuna nets, causing extreme pressure to fish and making internal organs to shift, split, and even explode.

-Incidentally, the suffering that fish endure in being caught is considerably greater than the suffering that they would endure by being eaten by a bigger fish (which is probably minimal). While fish may stop flopping around fairly quickly after being caught and hauled on board a shipping vessel, they can and do survive for an hour, or often several hours, before dying of suffocation. Imagine having your head held under water as you struggle for air. Now imagine that this continues until you finally, in desperation, gulp down water in your lungs, and pass out from asphyxiation. Now, finally, imagine that the period of time in which you are struggling for air lasts for an hour, or several hours, and the whole time you’re also being crushed by hundreds of your mates.

-Here’s a pretty good article about the “do fish feel pain” question from that great literary journal, Granta: http://www.granta.com/extracts/2040 . I like it because it’s obviously not written by an “animal rights crazy,” although I disagree with his fundamental point, which seems to be, “yes, it’s good that we’re troubled by the way we treat animals, but no, there’s no need to change that treatment.” Hmm. Anyway, as far as the fish feeling pain question goes, the scientific consensus these days is overwhelmingly that they do.

 If, after all this, you still insist on the occasional sashimi, please be polite and do not identify yourself as a vegan or a vegetarian, as it just makes the rest of our lives that much harder. Yeah, I bought used kicks off eBay that have a little bit of leather (vintage pink Adidas!) and I can’t stand the uptight is-this-beer-vegan-does-this-have-vinegar-because-you-know-vinegar-can-be-filtered-though-bone-char-I-can’t-believe-you-get-your-pictures-developed-you-know-gelatin-is-used-in-the-process crazy vegan police, BUT in this case the v.p. are absolutely correct – you’re not vegetarian if you eat fish, even 1x a month! And you should be vegetarian. Because if not, not only will you have submitted to pressure from The Man, but you will actually BE The Man. 

 

This is the way we do our smoothies. You can try out other, easier methods, but in the end you’ll come back to our proven formula.

-First, let some bananas get ripe. Then freeze them. You can peel them before freezing them, but they will get older faster and old, freezer burnt bananas are nasty, will ruin your smoothie, and you will never get your omega 3s!

-Buy some bags of organic frozen fruit, or freeze fruit when it comes into season and you buy it at your local friendly farmer's market. (bonus tip: to freeze fruit for easy smoothie-ifying later on, first freeze each piece separately on a tray, then toss them all into a big baggie. They won't stick together that way). I only like peaches in this smoothie. Jacob likes all kinds of weird fruits.

-Buy a small bottle of highest lignin flax seed oil. Keep it in the fridge or freezer, depending on how often you use it. You can also experiment with flax seed oil blends (orange flax oil, butterscotch flax oil, garlic-chile flax oil), but read the labels - some of these don't have a whole lot of essential fatty acids.

-Into your trusty blender, toss: 2 frozen, peeled (let them sit on the counter a minute to defrost, then peel) bananas, 1/2 bag frozen fruit, as much flax seed oil as you can manage to sneak in (I’d say about 1/4c), a big scoop of peanut butter or tahini or almond butter or chocolate sauce or whatever, and enough milk (we usually use soy, I like coconut milk best because vegans! need! fat! and it tastes the best) to make the blender whirr. You can also add vanilla or almond extract, maple syrup, vodka, cocoa powder, whatever.

-If, like me, you like a super thick smoothie (some would call it a “frosty”) then the blending of your smoothie is a serious technique to master. Add the milk first, then the solid ingredients. Pulse the ingredients to combine, resisting the temptation to add more milk, as this will make it more watery. Scrape down the sides with a spatula, and pulse, and scrape, and pulse, until desired texture is achieved.

-This will make a big smoothie meant for 2. I promise you won’t taste the flax. If you really wanted to be fancy you’d garnish it with chopped walnuts.