Your guide to buying seafood in Australia: farmed versus wild….Plus recipe for salt and pepper squid!

I am often asked about seafood – where do I buy it from and what do I buy.

First things first. Like all food, not all seafood is created equal. Some seafood is wild (as nature intended) and some are farmed (in man-made hatcheries). And there is a WORLD of difference between the two!

Farmed fish are farmed in unnaturally crowded conditions which in and of itself breeds illness and disease. Farmed fish are commonly dubbed the battery hens of the ocean. In addition to their unnatural environment, farmed fish are fed an unnatural diet of soy pellets (which are often genetically modified), fire retardants (WTF?), wheat byproducts, antibiotics (due to rife disease epidemics in crowded conditions), feather meal, and a heap of other unnatural ingredients. In addition colour dyes are injected into farmed salmon to give them that pink colour. Unsurprisingly the micronutrient content of farmed fish pales in comparison to wild fish especially in relation to the omega 3 /6 balance (farmed fish are low in the anti-inflammatory omega 3s and too high in the omega 6. This imbalance promotes inflammation which is the root cause of all modern disease). Unhealthy diet and conditions makes for unhealthy fish which in turn makes for unhealthy humans who then consume the fish.  

So here’s a potted summary of what you should know and to this end I would like to pay special thanks to my favourite fisher fellow MK for all his invaluable advice:

- All ocean trout sold in Australia is farmed. Avoid it. Sad, I know.

- All non-tinned salmon sold in Australia is farmed other than the 100% wild sockeye salmon from The Canadian Way. The Canadian Way also sells wild tuna, halibut, and wild black cod, lobster, prawns, scollops, salmon roe and smoked salmon (all 100% wild). And all with an unparalleled omega 3 to 6 ratio (I have the independent lab tests if anyone is interested. Basically their salmon has a omega 3 to 6 ratio of 10:1 and the tuna has a ratio that’s even better of 11:1 – so very anti-inflammatory!! Nowadays most people eating a typical Western world conventional diet would consume foods that have an omega 3:6 ratio of 1:20 which is very pro-inflammatory. If you aim for a diet of 1:1 or even 1:2 then you’re doing well). 

The Canadian Way products are sold at various stockists AND they also home deliver! Please sure to tell the owner David I referred you. Note- I don’t get any commissions or kick backs at all from promoting this company. I only advocate businesses whose products or services I personally use and trust.

There are a plethora of certified organic salmon on the market. Don’t be fooled by the certified organic label. They are STILL farmed fish. And a farmed fish is never going to be as nutritional as a wild fish. A certified organic label doesn’t avail you of an obligation to do your due diligence. Read more here about my views on organic certification.

 -  Tinned salmon sold at the supermarket is wild if it says wild or wild caught. Make sure your purchase tinned salmon that is in brine as opposed to industrial seed oils like canola oil or vegetable oil which are highly processed, high in inflammation-promoting omega 6s and basically toxic to the human body (but that’s a whole other discussion).

- Some King prawns and Tiger prawns (Australia only) are farmed. So you will need to ask if they are wild versus farmed! Farmed prawns also taste vastly different and this is reflective in their cheaper price.  Crystal bay and Vannamei prawns are two examples of farmed prawns so avoid those. You'll very rarely see a farmed prawn sold raw.

-  Oysters and mussels are filter feeders so even though they are technically farmed they are literally as good as being wild. There is literally no truly wild oysters sold in Australia. NZ mussels are best as the colder clean water lends itself better to their needs and high dissolved oxygen. 

- Fresh tuna sold in fish shops is mostly wild caught then kept in floating pens and fed a mixture of pellets and fresh pilchards. So it's tantamount to being farmed. The exception is the tuna from The Canadian Way as discussed above. Tinned tuna sold in supermarkets is wild. 

- Most barramundi in Australia is now farmed. So you will need to ask if they are wild versus farmed! All farmed barramundi are harvested at the same size (40-45cm) so if they're larger than that it’s typically ok to assume that they are wild. They aren't typically the freshest fish to eat anyway. The netting process and remoteness of where they live means they could be weeks old by the time they even get to the fish monger. Plus you'll always pay a 'name tax' for this national fishing icon.

- Herring, pilchards, whitebait, sardines and anchovies are all wild and will never be farmed. They're cheap and the equivalent of a briny superfood. Head and stomach can be eaten easily. 

- There is a plethora of other farmed seafood on the market. If you're not sure, always ask! By law they must answer you truthfully if you ask them outright. I always gauge their level of honesty by asking them about their salmon and ocean trout because I know for a fact that they will be farmed so if they answer that they are wild, I politely smile then bolt out the door.

- Try to buy the whole fish as opposed to fillets. It gives you a better indication of freshness. Inspect eyes and moistness of the skin. If the lips and face look even a little dehydrated then opt for something else. Buying whole fish means that you can ask the fishmonger to fillet it for you and ask them to put the head and frame in a separate bag for you to take home to make a stock (say tuned for my upcoming round of bone broth classes so you learn how to make a stock easily and most deliciously!).

And what about sustainability?
 

This has become a pressing issue for many people. Line caught fish are by far the most sustainable type to buy as opposed to net caught fish (although anchovies school together so when they're netted there is zero bycatch).

Where do I buy wild seafood?

From any old fish shop that I happen to pass by on my travels and simply walk in and say “Hey! What’s wild and what’s farmed?” I have 2 shops that are local to me that I typically go to: Bondi Road Seafood and the seafood counter at DJs at Bondi Junction. I’ve built up a good relationship with them over the past decade and I trust what the managers tell me. They don’t bother pushing any type of farmed fish on me and will offer me the freshest wild fish. I typically buy snapper, ling, deep sea perch, oysters, mussels and sardines.  I always avoid salmon and ocean trout at fish shops (and at restaurants). If you live close to the fish markets or better yet catch your own fish then I want to marry you!

I always have a stash of frozen salmon fillets (esp. the tails as they are much cheaper!) and frozen smoked salmon from The Canadian Way which I pull out if I don’t get a chance to make it to a fish shop. And my fridge has a stash of salmon roe which we eat as a condiment to our eggs most mornings and sometimes as pre-dinner appertiser on cucumber rounds with home-made mayo or cream cheese. Kids LOVE this! Easy way to get some nutrient-density into them.

How often do I eat seafood?
 

I recommend eating quality seafood at least twice a week.

One of the many mistakes I made when I transitioned to a traditional wholefoods diet (from a macrobiotic vegetarian one) is to forget about seafood. I was so hell-bent on getting my iron levels up and building back nutrient stores that all I bought was red meat, red meat, and even more red meat.  And I see many of my clients in my health coaching sessions also not eating anywhere near enough seafood when I look at their typical meals. There is nothing wrong with grass fed and finished read meat. I eat it about 3-4 times a week. But we need a BALANCE of land and sea animals as there are nutrients in sea foods that are not as abundant in land animals eg omega 3 and iodine. Broth and organ meats are also required to balance out our mussel meat intake. To read more about some of the other common pitfalls I made when I first started on a paleo / ancestral / traditional wholefoods diet (pick whatever name floats you boat!) click here.

But even when I started making a conscious effort to eat more seafood I STILL keep forgetting about it and when I reflected back over what I had eaten I realised I only ended up eating it very sporadically. So what I now do is to assign 2 nights of the week as my seafood nights. So I always know that on Tuesdays and Fridays its seafood night so I better get to a fish shop or defrost some frozen fish. I need idiot-proofing sometimes! I do the same with organ meats (every Wednesday) and that way it’s all sweet. Many of my clients also adopt this method. Having a routine is like wearing a uniform. It takes the stress out of wondering what to cook.

 I always have a stash of tinned wild fish in my pantry for school lunches or emergencies that I buy from the supermarket. Eg anchovies, salmon, mackerel, sardines.  These are in brine or extra virgin olive oil as opposed to industrialised seed oils. These are great to take camping, on picnics or day trips. Along with Westgold butter I think these are the only food items I buy from the supermarket nowadays! 

And what about the issue of mercury, dioxins and PCBs? 
 

Chris Kresser has written a couple of excellent articles on these issues which you can read here and here.

His bottom line is that it is more dangerous to avoid eating wild fish than to eat it due to any mercury or other toxins it might contain. This is because selenium found in fish protects against mercury toxicity. When I spoke to Sally Fallon (author of Nourishing Traditions and head of the Weston A Price Foundation) about this issue in 2007 she too seemed very relaxed about the mercury issue. I personally avoid the larger fish (eg swordfish) and opt for the smaller ones and try to buy from local Australian or NZ waters rather than from overseas with the exception of seafood from The Canadian Way which of course comes from pristine cold Canadian waters. Cold water seafood is always going to be healthier than warm water seafood.

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I thought I would ALSO share my recipe for
salt and pepper squid!
 

Salt and pepper squid

Ingredients:

Freshly caught wild squid

Lemon wedges for serving

Butter

Garlic powder

Chilli flakes

White wine

Unrefined salt

Cracked pepper

Directions:

Clean the squid by:

• Cutting the stomach lengthwise and removing the intestines including the ink sac intact

• Cutting above and below the eyes and discarding them but keeping the tentacles

• Running under filtered water

Pat the squid dry and liberally coat with butter, garlic powder, salt, pepper and chilli flakes.

Heat a large frying pan until very hot.

Add a splosh of white wine to the frying pan and immediately add the squid. Fry the squid on either side for approximately 15-20 seconds (no longer!).

Serve with lemon and home-made aioli.  
 

You also might like to try some of my other seafood recipes:

Steamed mussels with garlic, ginger and parsley

3 ingredient smoked salmon soup

Asian wild salmon salad with miso dressing

Why I Almost Cringe When I Hear The Term “Paleo”

I almost cringe when I hear the word “Paleo” being used to describe a food, business, product or a dietary philosophy.

It means so many different things to different people. While it’s original intention was to set the benchmark of what humans are biologically designed and not designed to eat there remains of course disagreement and controversy around the edges. Are we designed to consume dairy? What about grains? And should meat be lean? The paleo diet has certainly evolved and changed since its founder Loren Cordain’s first book The Paleo Diet was published, although strict adherents still exclude dairy and grains on the basis that these foods didn’t exist pre agricultural revolution. But to exclude an entire food group for that reason alone doesn’t make sense to me if the food in question is nutrient-dense, unprocessed, non-toxic, digestible for the individual and delicious. For me, certain dairy items readily tick those boxes so my kids and I enjoy and thrive on those foods. Ditto with small amounts of properly sourced and prepared gluten-free grains.

I am loathe to subscribe to any dietary labels. Instead I advocate an omnivorous diet rich in nutrient-dense whole unprocessed foods properly sourced and prepared. Some wholefood heavyweights like Chris Kresser in the USA call this “Paleo” for short as the aforementioned description is certainly a mouthful (excuse the pun). Fair enough!  But I still prefer to be descriptive and factual for the avoidance of doubt and apologies to those who find my verbosity offensive 

I’m not at all disparaging those who use the “Paleo” label to describe their dietary philosophy, products, TV shows or business. I always seek to ascertain what a person or business really stands for, regardless of their chosen description. This is why I’m not hung up on labels or organic certification for that matter.

Even if 2 people are in total agreement over what we are and aren’t genetically programmed to eat, each person is still going to tweak their diet to suit their digestive issues, taste preferences, goals, energy expenditure, the climate they live in and stage of their life. So it’s not surprising that there is no one exact size diet that fits all.  I think it’s more important that we don’t loose sight of the bigger picture- that if an individual can meet all their nutritional needs from cleanly sourced and properly prepared wholefoods- whatever they may be- then happy days for them! It’s just much harder to achieve this when whole food groups like dairy are excluded but it’s certainly not impossible.

As I’ve mentioned in a recent blog post, we can never hope for a complete reenactment of the diet and lifestyle of our Paleolithic ancestors. The best we can do is try to bridge the gap between our genes (our biology) and our environment (via our lifestyle factors) to inch a little closer to fulfilling our true potential. We can maximise nutrient- dense foods and minimise dietary and environmental toxins. We can move more like our ancestors because that’s how we are designed to function. We can sleep and rise more in line with the sun. We can punctuate our day with more rest and fun. We can train ourselves to breathe through our nose deep into our stomach. We can learn to manage chronic stress. And we can spend an appropriate amount of time in sunshine. Can we ever meet the vibrant health, strength, speed, height and beauty enjoyed by our Paleolithic ancestors? As a society, no, not until we close the gap between our genes and our environment. At a societal level, this is a lofty goal given how far we have fallen down the rabbit hole of physical and mental degeneration, but at an individual level it’s something each and everyone of us can strive for by making small and meaningful lifestyle changes each day. And the more you narrow the gap, the closer you move to vibrant health and happiness for yourself and your children and their children.

Check out what myself, Anthia Koullouros from Ovvio Organics and Leila Lutz from Momentum For Life had to say about the Paleo Diet in this article written by A Wholefood Lover’s Guide to Sydney.

This is not a paleo re-enactment

“We’re not going for paleo reenactment here. We look at things from an ancestral perspective to generate questions and hypotheses and give us some ideas about what may or may not make sense…”

– Chris Kresser

I read this quote recently and it really resonated with me. We can’t go back to live a replica of a paleolithic lifestyle and nor would we want to. We rely on our modern conveniences far too much – who would want to wash clothes by hand and give up every electronic device, to list just a few examples? So many anti-ancestral advocates use this line to argue that because we can’t go back it’s pointless to even try to push against the tide of convenience foods and other realities of our modern lifestyle.

The point is, it is useful to look at things from an ancestral perspective to better understand and appreciate what makes us tick, function and thrive, and what makes us fall apart. It is really hard to be happy when we are not functioning properly. And conversely life seems to flow more effortlessly when we are firing on all 6 cylinders.

When we understand our anatomy and physiology and can align to the best of our ability our modern lifestyle choices with our biology, we have greater potential to perform and function properly and reach our true potential. I say “to the best of our ability” because the foods we eat today together with the quality of our soils is a far cry from those enjoyed by our palaeolithic ancestors from which we evolved and from which our genes were set, the quality of the water we now drink and the air we breathe is inferior, our stress is now chronic, our lifestyle is far more sedentary and relegated to the indoors with artificial lights, and our length of sleep and its cycle is severely compromised. No matter hard how we try. But we still have the choice to align our modern lifestyle as best we can to more closely match what we are built for. We can maximise nutrient-density. We can minimise toxins. We can move and sleep more, sit less, spend more time outdoors in nature in sunshine and make attempts to manage our stress. We shouldn’t throw the baby out with our chlorinated bathwater in the name of our modern lifestyle.

Our children’s health is partly a reflection of our health at the time of their birth and partly a reflection of their diet and other lifestyle factors that impact them as they grow. So we need to invest in ourselves and our children for our collective well-being and that of future generations.  And that’s why I care. This is not a reenactment. It’s being consciously aware of whether our deliberations further our potential, our health, our happiness and that of future generations and the well-being of the planet or detract from it.

The catch phrase for my business “traditional wholefoods for a modern world” summarises where I stand on this issue- to strive to marry the best of both worlds- the wisdom of our ancestors with the conveniences of our modern, digital age. To unite them to create a new kind of homeostasis for the modern human.