Here's my first rant of the year:
Which of these would you rather eat?
Salmon is my favourite fish and my go-to healthy dinner. For those of us lucky enough to live in the Pacific Northwest and B.C. in particular, we regard eating salmon as part of our culture, so much that I will never order salmon in a restaurant outside of the Pacific Northwest because it would be like someone visiting from Texas ordering barbecue in B.C. Besides that, the salmon may be Atlantic or as they like to call it to disguise what it really is-"farmed" salmon. Most serious restaurants in the Vancouver area will not serve Atlantic salmon and for good reason. A lot of farmed salmon is served on sushi, so be sure to always ask first.
That Atlantic label is deceiving. I once saw someone about to buy fresh Atlantic salmon in Costco and I said "You realize that's farmed don't you?" They replied that it was cheaper than the other salmon labelled "Pacific wild" and weren't willing to pay extra just because it was caught in the Pacific versus the Atlantic Ocean. After I set them straight, they bought the real salmon.
There is no way in the world I will ever eat farmed salmon again-I've tried it twice and all I can say is "YECHH!" I'm not going to go into all the reasons why, but the main ones are how the salmon are raised, what they are fed and their effect on "real" wild salmon. Most people from B.C. feel the same so the salmon farmers have decided to run a series of strong radio, TV, print and web ads which basically say that anything anyone says negative about farmed salmon is a myth and that those people are pig-headed and ignorant.
Really? OK even if I were to believe all their propaganda there is one point they never address and that is taste and appearance. To me, Atlantic (farmed) salmon tastes like salmon flavoured jelly and looks like it was mixed with some other kind of food to make the meat look like a white striped pale orange. Compare that to the red, robust, perfect taste of a wild sockeye-even one that has been sitting in the freezer for a few months and you'll see what I mean.
The good news for serious salmon lovers like myself is that people who don't know or care about the difference, buy the farmed and leave more of the wild for us.
There are lots of web sites out there that will give you their self interest side of the story (I have no interest in either, other than health, nutrition and taste) but this CTV article gives you an unbiased view. And every time I see the ad come on comparing how people who think farmed salmon are bad to a drunken teenager blaming the cat for wrecking the house when his parents return home, I become even firmer in my resolve against farmed salmon. It caused me to write this post and others as well.