Is the salmon on your plate as healthy as you think? This week, Kevin dives into the surprising truths about farmed vs. wild salmon, misinformation in the wellness industry, and why so much of what we accept as fact is actually simulation. With social media fueling the post-truth era, it's more important than ever to question what we see, hear, and eat.
Is the salmon on your plate as healthy as you think? This week, Kevin dives into the surprising truths about farmed vs. wild salmon, misinformation in the wellness industry, and why so much of what we accept as fact is actually simulation. With social media fueling the post-truth era, it's more important than ever to question what we see, hear, and eat.
Get-Fit Guy is hosted by Kevin Don. A transcript is available at Simplecast.
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Hello listeners, I hope everyone is doing well this week. This weeks’ episode is going to have a look at some differences in thinking around things we take for granted as truths, but are only localised. I will then try and draw a tenuous link to fitness to keep everyone happy!
There is this one account I follow on Instagram purely for amusement purposes. I could literally spend the rest of the episodes of this podcast just debunking their daily claims. I do find it curious though, that an account that basically posts mistruths, with no evidence at all. This being because there it isn’t possible to have evidence for something that is false…but this mistruth fitness/ wellness account has over 100,000 followers and the videos they post have tens of thousands of views. Many philosophers claim that we are now living in what they call the ‘post-truth era’. I would agree with this claim and argue that this has been brought about by societal mega-trends. According to figures from the UK Office for Communications (OFCOM), 67% of those aged 16-44 now get their news from social media with 56% of all age groups getting their news from Facebook, Instagram and Tik Tok. What is most frightening of all though, is that of those surveyed that get their news from social media, only 40% said that they were concerned it was accurate. No wonder we are in a post-truth era.
It does become very difficult though, first of all, I do not think the education system has been set up to teach young people how to think. Be careful with what you are hearing me say there. I’m not saying WHAT to think but HOW to think. By that I mean, where is deductive logic being taught? Where is it being taught how to analyse sources for validity? Where is it being taught to dig deeper before blindly reposting/ retweeting/ sharing? It used to be taught. My research for this episode tells me that logic and rhetoric were phased out in favour of things it was easier to standardise in testing. I can see it being a challenge to standardise someone’s ability to argue for their claims and defend their position. But I’m not sure dropping it was a good idea. Everyday, I see mistruths being shared. Some people with hundreds of thousands or millions of followers can just hit ‘share’ and spread this nonsense to their acolytes, who in turn hit the ‘share’ button and suddenly more people have false knowledge than have true knowledge. Plato would be turning in his grave.
This week, I decided I fancied some smoked salmon with scrambled eggs for breakfast. So, I go to the grocery store to get some. You would think that it would be super easy to find smoked salmon in Scotland, right? After all, the general consensus would be that Scottish Salmon is famous. I was about to discover something ‘unusual’. So, I head to the fish aisle and pick up the most bougie looking packet because that's the kinda guy I am. But I am also the Kinda guy who believes in using my eyeballs to read what packets say. And amongst the ‘word salad’ of Scottish, Award Winning, Oak Smoked and all that nonsense, it says... FARMED. Now, I wouldn’t eat farmed salmon because I know the balance of omega-3 to omega-6 just isn’t as good. I believe there are roughly 4 times the omega 6 when compared to wild salmon.
I also believe it to be the case that farmed salmon has to have the pigment that is found in crustaceans shells fed to it. This is because without that being done, the flesh wouldn’t be that lovely red or pink colour. This blows my mind; it's like we are eating simulated salmon. The fish industry knows that we know what salmon looks like, so they feed it things to make it fool us. I would call this ethically questionable on the grounds that you are using our senses to fool us; one thing is another thing. This pigment, which is called canthaxanthin, has now been restricted, or limited by the European Union due to evidence the pigments accumulate on the retina and affect eyesight. Not that the Salmon Industry care though, with Julie Edgar of ‘Scottish Quality Salmon’ saying about its use: “It’s appealing to the eye. People traditionally associate salmon with pink and red. There is no such thing as zero risk. We do know that there's a possible impact on the long term [on eyesight] but it’s impossible to quantify it.” Lovely, caring words there from people responsible for the safety of things I put in my mouth.
Alright, so far we have a health concern from the pigmentation used to fool us into thinking we have the same salmon as we could fish out of a river and we have a less optimal omega 6 to 3 ratio. Is there anything else about farmed salmon that should concern us? Well, yes, there is…ethics! Farmed Salmon live out their lives in pens containing up to 100,000 fish. This means they are constantly bumping into each other, causing painful skin lesion. On average, 40% of them die before maturity. Those that do get to maturity are often subject to cruel deaths, with their gills ripped out while still conscious, resulting in a painful and cruel death. Undercover footage in Scotland, found that over 60% of the farms were employing methods of killing that caused unnecessary suffering, including farms certified by the Royal Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. On these farms, fish were left to suffocate out of the water for over 3 minutes, the guidelines are a fish should be out of the water for a maximum of 15 seconds. The same farms were caught on drone footage by whistleblowers hiding and removing tonnes of dead fish just hours before a politician's visit.
All this blew my mind because if I were asked previously if I thought salmon was a health protein, I would absolutely have said yes. I had no idea that line caught Atlantic salmon was banned in Scotland and that all the Scottish Salmon sold in the supermarkets is farmed. Yes, it says it on the label, but realistically how many people read those? And how many are like me and are extreme skeptics who will go and fact check everything they see, hear or read? So, I have definitely decided that I will not be buying any of this salmon and I will be checking with any breakfast spot on the provenance of the fish before having a salmon and cream cheese bagel. You can get non farmed, line caught, wild salmon here in Scotland, but its not Scottish, you can get Alaskan Salmon. But then I open up the can of worms on the climate change/ carbon footprint situation.
So, what is the point of this week’s episode? Well it’s to provoke thought about what the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard calls ‘Simulacra and Simulation’. For those of you that enjoy ‘easter eggs’ in movies, in the scene in the film “The Matrix’, when Neo is in his apartment at night and Morpheus messages him to say ‘follow the white rabbit’, the book Neo gets from his shelf is a copy of Simulacra and Simulation, which the films directors had made essential reading for the crew. I’m not sure how it would have gone, because even as someone very used to reading these very abstract ideas and the way philosophers write, it’s very heavy going. But the gist of it is: current society has replaced all reality and meaning with symbols and signs, and that human experience is a simulation of reality. The simulacra that Baudrillard refers to are the significations and symbolism of culture and media that construct perceived reality, the acquired understanding by which human life and shared existence are rendered legible. I would argue for the case that something like the farmed salmon being fed pigment to trick us into the assumption it is no different from wild salmon is what Baudrillard called second-order simulacra, which are symbols of a non-faithful representation to the original. Here, signs and images do not faithfully show reality but might hint at the existence of something real that the sign itself is incapable of encapsulating.
A few weeks or so ago, I responded to a listener email that made the claim that clients are responsible for due diligence on what they get in the gym. My push back on that is that you can’t expect a non-sophisticated user to understand the data, even if they have it. So, the onus is on the entity giving us the information to make it clear and be transparent. I think this falls under the scope of the same argument. No one has the time to walk round the supermarket checking labels and reading academic white papers and government reports. Therefore, the companies are responsible for ensuring that they are not creating a simulacra of reality. It’s really very dystopian that we are living in a time where there are more simulated items than real items because it is cheaper for companies to make fake representations of real items than it is to continue with the real items themselves. I would further argue that it fails on ethical grounds. You shouldn’t be misled into thinking what you have is a real item and not a copy.
To me, wellness and fitness is about making healthy choices. It’s very reasonable to assume salmon would be a good choice for health. It is. But farmed salmon? Less so. So what is the answer? Well, since these companies aren’t going to stop and you aren’t going to start doing deep dive research into what’s on your plate, I don’t know. But it is a good place to start just having the conversation.
As usual, if you have any questions or would like to just say ‘hi’, please email me at getfitguy@quickanddirtytips.com
Get-Fit Guy is a Quick and Dirty Tips podcast. Thanks to the team at Quick and Dirty Tips Morgan Christianson, Holly Hutchings, the director of podcasts Brennan Goetchius and Davina Tomlin. I’m your host, Kevin Don. If you have a question for me, leave me a voicemail at 510-353-3104 or send me an email at getfitguy@quickanddirtytips.com. For more information about the show, visit quickanddirtytips.com, or check out the shownotes in your podcast app.