The Hemp Connection:
barramundi

We know that most of you who originally come to inCYST are looking for help with your infertility, your acne, your weight, and/or your depression. We take that seriously and we hope you find our information helpful, meaningful, and relevant.

That is our immediate goal.

We also have a much bigger picture in mind. One reason we believe you're having so much trouble with your hormone balance, is that you're living on a planet that has been so badly mistreated that it has trouble supporting healthy balance within all of you. Because of that, one of the most important things we hope to communicate through our mission, is that our choices have effects far beyond us, and those choices that best benefit the earth, have the most potential to resolve the more personal concerns that initially introduced you to us.

From the very beginning, I've believed that to the best of our ability, our recommendations for food and lifestyle are consistent with what you might see on a green living website. I've also been very aware that, with PCOS affecting 1 in 10 women, the shopping habits we culture have potential to collectively influence what kind of food is available for everyone on the planet to eat.

Because we are so pro-omega-3, we cannot ignore that the type of seafood we recommend must be sustainable. Earlier in the week a Huffington Post article reported that 40 species of fish (including one that is very popular in sushi) are on the verge of extinction, largely due to overfishing and pollution…reinforcing how what we do at inCYST needs to keep all of you healthy and keep the planet healthy enough so that goal #1 is even possible.

So I was super excited to receive an email yesterday, Earth Day eve, from our inCYST contact in Nashua, New Hampshire. I've come to know Pat Hunter and her counterpart Kristen Rioux through planning events to promote their new PCOS support group.

We had planned an event which was to occur on April 1, but which we have since rescheduled to the fall. The problem was, we had received a generous donation from Australis, producers of the high-omega and sustainably farmed barramundi, which we had intended to serve at lunch so that the women coming to our event would have an opportunity to try this fish. We didn't want to waste the food and we wanted to be sure that Australis was happy with their inCYST experience, so Pat and Kristen arranged to have two barramundi promotions in their employee cafeteria.

We thought Lent might be a nice time to try this, since most people are eating more fish then anyway. But we knew that New Englanders love their cod and wondered if they'd be open to something new and different. (We even joked around that a fun marketing tag line might be"Give up cod for Lent!")

I heard from Pat and Kristen yesterday and it turns out the fish was so well accepted they are now working to make it a regular menu item for their employees.

This is a change with potentially far-reaching effects. Anyone eating barramundi at work is more likely to think of it to prepare at home. The more demand for this fish increases in local stores, the more likely it is to start showing up on restaurant menus. And the more barramundi that is bought, the less stress and strain on other fish populations that may not be healthy enough to provide our demand for more seafood.

So thanks to Pat, Kristen, and especially Australis for making it so easy to give a new audience an opportunity to try a new, sustainable (not to mention tasty) food choice, and encourage its popularity to take hold, we are very enthusiastically celebrating Earth Day at inCYST.

If we've gotten your curiosity up, please check out the Australis website. Farmed seafood has a terrible reputation, but this operation has a whole lot of thought put into it. They have gone to great pains to describe their farm in detail to answer any questions you might have. You might be surprised at what you learn.

Happy Earth Day to all. Be kind to yourselves and the world around you…you depend on each other for survival!

It's really become important for us to partner with like-minded companies in order to do all the work we aspire to do.

When Pat Hunter, Hillary Wright, and I present in Nashua, NH, we owe that event's existence to St. Joseph Medical Center. Kristen Rioux has been instrumental in developing our flyer, and providing marketing insights that helped to create a great event with potential to reach a lot of women.

In addition, Australis is donating the barramundi we're serving for lunch. If you're not familiar with barramundi, please check out their website. It's a sustainable farm-raised fish with a very high omega-3 content. I love it because its flavor is very mild, which makes it acceptable to many people who just cannot tolerate the distinctive flavor of salmon. The Australis people like to call it"sustainable sea bass" because its flavor is reminiscent of that species.

Stonyfield will be donating samples of their vitamin-D supplemented yogurt for our snack break. If you have read inCYST intern Sarah Jones' blog post about yogurt, you will remember that not many yogurts even have vitamin D. Stonyfield is one brand that does have a variety, and we're looking forward to showcasing it in Nashua.

Lent is a good time to remind all of you, Lenten-practicers or not, that even though salmon is a nice source of those omega-3’s, it’s not the ONLY source. Don’t bore yourself out of one of the most important nutrients your PCOS needs by focusing on only one fish!
Omega-3’s gain entrance into the food chain at the very bottom, with algae. The smaller fish eat a lot of algae. Bigger fish eat the smaller fish, which is how they get THEIR omega-3’s, and so on and so forth, up the food chain. (Whales defy that, they get their omega-3’s from krill, but they’re technically mammals and unless we live in the Arctic circle we don’t eat them so they don’t count in this blog post.)
Anyway, my point is, ANYTHING that comes from the water has omega-3’s in it. You don’t just have to eat salmon. In fact, it would be better if that wasn’t all you ate in the seafood department, because if we all did that… we’d wipe out the salmon population. There just aren’t enough for all of us to do that.
Any seafood has omega-3’s, and when you’re eating seafood, provided it isn’t fried in an omega-6 fat, your dinner plate overall is likely more anti-inflammatory than it would be if you ate poultry or meat.
Here’s a list of the omega-3 contents of a variety of seafoods for you. Remember, it’s about the balance of omega-6 to omega-3 fats, so total omega-3 is not all that matters. Salmon is nice, but for many of you it’s expensive. It’s also summer-seasonal, which means eating it in the winter is not really a sustainable practice. It’s better for everyone involved, including the fish, and the planet, if you vary your choices.
Barramundi… prawns… catfish… they’re all beneficial to your health.
Gumbo, sushi, calamari anyone?
http://www.heartfoundation.org.au/SiteCollectionDocuments/FishOils-table.pdf

We had a great interview with Josh Goldman, CEO of Australis this morning. Australis is the company that farms barramundi, a mild-flavored fish that is very high in omega-3 fatty acids.

If you've got the idea that it's always best to eat wild caught fish, consider listening to this interview, as it challenges some of the mantras in the debate and may answer some of your concerns about the safety of farmed seafood.

As promised in the interview, here is the legend of the barramundi, a love story told by the Aboriginals for whom this fish is a part of their culture and has been for generations.

Splashing in the billagong two lovers having fun

Ebony skin streaming under water fall.

Yungi and Meyalk sat together drying off in the sun

Their love was forbidden by tribal law, still they answered each other's call.

Creeping out during a corroboree, they ran hand in hand; love had won.

Following bush trail to the sea they knew they must fall.

They made spears to ward off angry tribe; seeing death must come.

Yungi and Meyalk threw themselves into the sea; they became barramundi fish and fooled them all.

Some spears struck their backs as they swam away; legend has it the spears became spines on the barramundi's back still visible today.