Is Your Fish Color-Finished? By Kelley Herring
If you think eating farmed salmon is a good way to get your protein, think again. Farmed salmon can do you more harm than good. Artificial color is one reason why.
Because wild salmon dine on crustaceans, plankton, and algae, their flesh takes on a beautiful, rich pink-red hue. But farmed salmon - fed toxin-rich fishmeal, corn, soy, and other foods not in their natural diet - have an insipid color that's unappealing to consumers.
So what's a salmon farmer to do? Simply pick a hue!
Using the Hoffman LaRoche Salmofan - a kind of artist's wheel - salmon farmers pick the "perfect shade" (Carophyll Pink) to color-finish their second-rate salmon.
Of course, the dye is derived from petrochemicals. But Hoffman doesn't have a corner on the market. Agricultural behemoth Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) and others create coloring agents with methods that include growing red yeast on corn byproducts and gene-cloning utilizing E. coli.
Artificial color is just one of the harmful aspects of farmed salmon. To read more about it, check out my article "Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is."
If you haven't made the switch to real fish - wild fish, that is - the time is now. Wild fish is widely available and is surprisingly affordable. Try SuperTarget, Whole Foods, or VitalChoice and start eating real fish today.