I wanted to share some thoughts about tilapia since a study just came out suggesting that it may not be a"healthy" fish, because its ratio of omega-6 fatty acids to omega-3 fatty acids was too high.
A few years ago I was looking for information on the fatty acid content of tilapia. It was nearly impossible to find. I did manage to find a tilapia researcher, Kevin Fitzsimmons, who makes a living helping countries develop tilapia farms for economic development.
He told me that the fatty acid content of tilapia varies from farm to farm and it is dependent on the market the tilapia are being sold to. For example, tilapia grown to be sold in China is actually very lean, because the Chinese like to make soups with their fish. Tilapia sold in the United States is very fat…because like everything else, Americans have to have fat, juicy, oversized portions of it.
So if an American researcher took a sample of American tilapia from just one farm, that had been fattened up to make the American consumer happy…OF COURSE this is what she would find if she analyzed the tissue!!!
We do the same thing to livestock. We fatten them with omega-6 predominant grains, then we complain that they're not good for us. I find it interesting that we mess with nature like this, then point the finger at nature when the food supposedly becomes a problem.
It's probably hard to do, and maybe that should be one of my projects, to find out what kinds of feed are given to tilapia at which farms. Maybe there are better ones out there who just didn't know they needed to promote their superior feed.
I would not interpret this finding in a completely negative fashion. Tilapia is a non-fishy tasting fish that has much potential for getting people who don't eat fish to even try it…once in awhile, a tilapia filet is fine. And in the meantime, maybe tilapia farmers can work to improve the quality of the food they feed their fish, so it contains the fatty acid balance that makes it a perfectly fine food choice.