The public are being encouraged to eat more wild fish, such as mackerel, anchovies and herring, which are often used within farmed salmon feeds. These oily fish contain essential nutrients including calcium, B12 and omega-3 but some are lost from our diets when we just eat the salmon fillet.
Scientists found that farmed salmon production leads to an overall loss of essential dietary nutrients. They say that eating more wild ‘feed’ species directly could benefit our health while reducing aquaculture demand for finite marine resources.
Researchers analysed the flow of nutrients from the edible species of wild fish used as feed, to the farmed salmon they were fed to. They found a decrease in six out of nine nutrients in the salmon fillet — calcium, iodine, iron, omega-3, vitamin B12 and vitamin A, but increased levels of selenium and zinc.
Most wild ‘feed’ fish met dietary nutrient…
