Sardines For Health

Probably this is old news to many, but little fishies can pack a punch, even compared to more valued species. And not just for containing soya sauce or illicit liquids. There’s good old oily-fish Omega-3 involved, but also a lot of other factors to consider. It’s worth looking into.

Size & Habit

Besides the Omega-3 content, there are a lot of other things to select fish species by.

Some, like mackerel and tuna, are quite a large fish. In general, these larger species are a bit more prized for some reason, making them high-value species. You or I would find it difficult to use a 50kg mackerel or tuna, let alone have the room to process one. You don’t want to be bothered with kilos of fish so rather than a whole fish, you’d buy this at a fish market or supermarket deli, which has a few drawbacks. (See further down…)

And there’s another thing too – migratory patterns and longevity. Longer-lived fish have more time to absorb the pollutants in the oceans, and migratory fish are bound to cross large bodies of polluted water. Sad but true these days, but we have to consider this. Mercury accumulates in longer-lived species, and the pollution from Fukushima is still leaking and crosses many migration paths so it too will accumulate in a fish the older it is.

So there’s the handling, and the pollutant levels to consider with larger fishes.

Smaller species generally stay in shallower waters, and often closer to landmasses, so they may get a lot of pollutants. But in general they’ll excrete a lot as well so perhaps accumulation won’t be as much of a problem. Smaller species also are generally faster breeders and thus if managed properly they may have a slightly lower footprint.

Some short-lived fish are freshwater denizens. The smelt we get here in Australia and New Zealand are of that kind I believe. They’re also quite commonly netted at 3-5 cm size and fried up as a delish dish we call “whitebait,” and in that they’re an excellent source of beneficial nutrients.

Marine or freshwater, these smaller species tend to be more plentiful, are easier for a consumer to process at home, and often end up in tins or as pickled fish.

Authenticity, Cost, & Availability

Now we come to the drawbacks – and some hard truths. Because much as it seems right that we should choose a “quality” fish species and buy it fresh, this is probably not be the best choice for a number of reasons. Species sold at fish markets and the deli counter are generally perceived to be of high value. So they’re overfished and that affects the marine ecosystems they’re in. So there’s the ecological angle to consider.

There are also reports that when tested, as much as 30% of fish species in the deli were found to be misidentified. The most common reasons are – A) genuinely not being able to tell one species from another closely related one at the dock or processing plant – and B) the next major reason is that one fish fillet looks much like any other once it’s scaled/skinned, even to a trained eye.

Also important for us to note is that if the seafood processor can’t tell a $20 fish from a $40 fish once it’s sliced, diced, and packaged, and the person at the deli counter can’t tell them apart either, and it’s obvious that most customers just go for the name on the label and also can’t tell the difference – then what’s the real reason for buying it? Slightly better appearance and presentation? Nutrients such as Omega-3 – that may or may not be in the species you actually got served to you?

Or is it just that you get the nagging feeling that expensive must be better and have more nutrients? Not necessarily – so those high prices are just another drawback of larger, higher-perceived-value, species.

There are freshwater species that are just as valuable nutritionally. It’s a bit easier to get accurate species identification for fish such as trout, perch, tilapia, etc, since you can usually track them end to end from the fish farm to the market to the kitchen.

What I’m saying is that you shouldn’t pay a premium for something that *might* be skipjack or whatever. There are sometimes cases of pure dishonesty, but those generally involve the highly-valued species – there’s not much point mislabeling a catch of small species of whitefish if they’re all about the same price. So you’re more likely to get tilapia if the label says tilapia because there’s no profit in mislabeling rainbow trout and selling them for tilapia prices.

A SMALL HOME TRUTH
No-one bothers to fake smelt, sardines, or anchovies.
Most tinned fish is just as loaded with nutritious components as most fresh fish.

I think there’s something in that for all of us, people …

The Bits That Hold Benefits

The greatest health benefit of the smaller fish is that they’re generally consumed whole. You get all the fish, organs and all. So if you must use fresh-caught high-priced fish, maybe get some fish soup bits, heads and bones and so forth. They’re generally cheaper and the nutrients you’re after are in those bones and organs. Then add some smaller quantities of the more expensive filleted fish to your broth to cook, serve the fish portions in a bit of broth. You easily double or triple the nutrition without doubling or tripling the cost.

The other thing is that sardines, herrings, or kippers at breakfast aren’t a terrible drain on the budget nor too much of a change of dietary habits. I’m not recommending that every breakfast has to be kippers or sprats or whatever. Once or twice a month is good – if you also make a broth once a month, and have tinned mackerel or tuna in a meal or two as well.

Rollmops and Bismarck herring are a tasty feed too and smoked cod or kippers make a delicious kedgeree and put fish on the table. Get fish and chips every so often. Suddenly you’re having one or two fish meals a week. And THAT’S the benefit of using a range like this – rather than spend a fortune for one or two fish dinners a month, you can spend the same amount and get 6-12 fish-based meals. AND know that you’ve done your bit to reduce over-fishing key species.

Why Mention All The Different Angles?

You may have noticed that I’m a bit ambivalent about which species are “best.” That’s because we’re overfishing the ocean for prized species and destroying marine ecosystems doing so. As the example of one third of such “valuable” species being mislabeled shows, we can scarcely tell the difference anyway, and when there’s so little difference between ecologically expensive caught species, and freshwater (or marine) farmed fishes, we shouldn’t choose our seafood based on status factors.

Please choose wisely – we really should include more seafood and less red meat in our diets, but we also really should have a very light footprint across a broad range of foods rather than putting immense pressure on only one or two species. Food should be a pleasure and a medicine. (That’s the father of medicine, Hippocrates, talking there in that last line.)

The bottom line is that seafood has been a commodity that was traded inland far from seaports, caught in freshwater streams and rivers, not only because it was a supplemental source of protein, but because it was realised that it seemed to confer some health benefits. Fish has been shown to increase desirable properties in brain tissue and so, even the supposed myth that fish is a brain food seems to have a foundation in fact.

Note that this is for fin fish, not seafood in general. If (say) octopus confers any advantage in health, that’s not a time-or-science-proven thing yet. The thing is that many old sayings and folk wisdoms are proven out by science eventually, and it stands to reason – our forebears may not have had scientific training but they did have – they relied on – their powers of observation. So to include fin fish (and oily fin fish in particular) in your diet should be accepted as good nutrition. And as the rest of this article says, tinned sardines offer as much benefit as fresh fish, at a cost that’s acceptable.

PS: Yes, the use of “Different Angles” was a shamelessly awful pun to do with fishing. Because if you can go angling sometimes, it’s a good way to get outdoors and a good way to get some fish for dinner. And yes, I’m also angling for you to share this post and to make a donation to help me with the costs of the site. Please consider doing both – it’s a few minutes and the price of a cup of coffee, and helps get these words out to a wide audience. And you get my bad puns thrown in for free…

PPS: About organ meats…

When we came to Australia we ended up on a station in the North-West of Western Australia, and the local people around took a shine to us, because we were all avid listeners to all their bush lore. One of those wisdoms concerned the goanna, the Australian monitor lizards, which they sometimes hunted for meat. The liver of the goanna was only for men, they said.

And a few weeks later we got invited to their quarters on the station because someone had hunted a goanna and we were invited. Us? We were in, definitely. Having been here long enough to become acclimated to pretty much anything, bush tucker was something we enjoyed when invited. So the portioning-out of the animal was done, and mother, who was always a bit of a rebel, asked for some of the liver.

The women shook their heads, the guys too – but they gave her enough to get a taste, and by the time we got home mum was in the throes of some kind of reaction to the meal.

Way way later I found out that the lizard’s liver contained some kind of enzyme or something that was recognised as being deleterious to women and could cause allergic reactions…

What I’m saying is – sardine organs are known to be safe, and no doubt the organ meat of most fishes – but always do some research…