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It is the third most consumed type of seafood in America and it has been compared to bacon in terms of how bad for your health it is. If you haven’t heard by now, farmed tilapia is really not good for you. The reasons why vary and go way beyond the fact that it lacks much in the way of nutritional value.
The non-fishy, mild tasting white fish is incredibly cheap and easy to breed and sell, which is where its problems lie. The vast majority of the tilapia sold in stores and restaurants today comes from overseas where its mass farmed in dirty, putrid conditions.
Fish are grown in crammed, disease ridden conditions that lack any sort of oversight or regulation and bacterial diseases, like salmonella, flourish. To keep the fish alive and infection free they’re pumped full of antibiotics.
Experts warn that this irresponsible widespread practice could lead to antibiotic resistant strains of salmonella and sicken a lot of people. In addition to antibiotics, tilapia are also pumped full of hormones to make them grow bigger and faster.
Methyltestosterone is one such hormone that’s fed to young ones who are in the sexless stage of life because it inhibits the growth of reproductive organs in the fish. This effectively amounts to a sex change and renders them male, which is desired because males grow larger faster.
The effects of these hormones on human health are said to be low but not enough studies have been done on them. Furthermore, emerging research shows that methyltestosterone could be highly toxic to the liver.
One of the most alarming things about farmed tilapia is the diet they’re put on. In China there are hundreds of thousands of operations where fish are given feed that consists of duck, pig, and chicken waste. They’re fed this because it’s much cheaper than normal fish food.
Not only is that absolutely disgusting, it leads to even more antibiotics being fed to the fish to keep them disease free. Finally, if all of the above is not reason enough to avoid eating tilapia, it’s considered to be worse for you than bacon.
A Wake Forest University study found that farmed tilapia contains high levels of omega-6 fatty acids and low amounts of omega-3 fatty acids. Omega-6s may lead to or increase and exacerbate existing inflammation in our bodies when they are consumed in excess of omega-3s, which are good for our hearts and brains and decrease inflammation.
While Omega-6s aren’t bad for you per se, they become bad when they aren’t balanced out evenly by omega-3s and eating a serving of tilapia gives you unbalanced levels. According to Floyd Chilton, the director of the Wake Forest Center for Botanical Lipids and Inflammatory Disease Prevention, this leads to “omega-6s are converted to pro-inflammatory messengers that orchestrate diabetes, stroke, heart disease, arthritis, and even Alzheimer’s.”
Part of the reason why they lack healthy omega-3s is down to their unhealthy and nutrient lacking poop diet. Plus, they’re often raised in cramped pools which contributes to them being fattier than their wild counterparts.
In addition to what is mentioned here, there are several other issues with farmed tilapia that are better covered in the accompanying video. One scary statistic that stood out through all of the details is that a farm raised fish is exposed to 10 times more cancerous organic pollutants than a wild one.
When you consider that in light of the fact that they are often fed animal excrement, it drives home the point that tilapia and farmed fish in general should be avoided at all costs.
Will you still be eating Tilapia?
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