They may be a popular comfort food, but your stomach, your heart,
and Mother Earth will suffer if you keep eating too many fish sticks. Not
convinced? Here's the fishy truth about your fried food addiction.
The trouble with a lot of fish sticks is that you don't really know if the
particular fish they contain came from a farm or from the open sea. Some brands have
adopted a labeling system that indicates whether or not farm-raised fish is handled
responsibly or whether an ocean-caught fish meets sustainability standards. Alas,
this system is far from perfect, and not all manufacturers have come on board.
For average consumers, this can mean real consequences. Farmed fish sometimes live
on a diet of subpar foods like soy and corn. They're also given an infusion of antibiotics
that producers rely on to keep diseases at bay. In the wild, predators eat sick fish, thereby taking
the danger of disease out of the environment. But in the closed environment of a farm,
larger predators aren't always around to clean the population. So when you are in the mood for
some fish sticks, be sure to read the labels to avoid the potential pitfalls of farm-raised fish.
The increased presence of antibiotics isn't the only issue with farmed fish. In the wild,
fish spend their days swimming around, hunting for food. They thus enjoy robust diets filled with
nutrients that make them strong and allow them to develop stores of omega-3 fatty acids. Meanwhile,
some farm-raised fish subsist on a diet that is the equivalent of rabbit food,
which doesn't provide the necessary nutrients required for building up those omega-3s.
In turn, humans who eat fish sticks don't get their required omega-3s, which are important for
things like hormone creation for blood clotting or anti-inflammatory benefits. Omega-3s also play an
important role in cardiovascular health and may help curb conditions such as eczema and lupus.
Simply put, you can't always tell a fish stick's nutritional quality just by looking at
it. To avoid any pitfalls, you should buy from reputable vendors and companies. In general,
it's best to walk away from brands if their origins are dubious. Or you can
seek out fish that have been caught in the wild and make your own sticks from scratch.
A platter of fish sticks, a side of fries, and an abundance of tartar sauce
is a perfect comfort dish for plenty of people. But there's a darker flip side to that comfort.
Greasy fried foods like fish sticks increase the likelihood of conditions like cardiovascular
disease. A 2011 study in the journal Circulation: Heart Failure indicated that women who ate up to
three servings of fried fish per week increased their risk of heart failure by almost 50 percent.
Another study published by Cambridge University in 2016 found that fried fish eaters who indulged
at least twice a week saw a 63 percent increased chance of experiencing a stroke or heart attack.
"You hear that, Elizabeth? I'm comin' to join ya, honey!"
On a related note, the trans fats in fried fish sticks contribute to weight gain and obesity,
two factors that can increase heart attack risk. There's also some evidence to suggest
that you may gain weight from eating trans fats even if your calorie intake remains the same.
While the total may vary depending on the brand,
fish sticks generally have about 9 grams of fat per serving, about 2 of which are saturated fats,
with more than half of the calories coming from that fat. It's recommended that a person's
daily caloric intake consist of 10 percent saturated fats or less, a figure based on a
2,000-calorie-a-day diet. Granted, you don't get as much trans fat from eating fish sticks as you
would from opening up a tub of butter and eating it straight out of the carton, but not by much.
According to a study by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health,
diets that are high in fat, especially trans and saturated fat, can increase
your risk of mortality by eight percent for every five percent increase in calories from
bad fats in your diet. The same study also suggests that trans fats increase
the risk of respiratory or neurodegenerative diseases. Not all fats are bad, though,
as mono- and polyunsaturated fats from the likes of flax seeds, walnuts, and non-fried fish help
reverse the risk of certain diseases. So again, the lesson here isn't to avoid fish entirely,
just to be aware of all the risks that come with eating fried fish sticks on the regular.
The use of sodium in food stretches back thousands of years. In the days before refrigerators were
ever even conceived, people cured meats in salt to preserve them. The human body
requires a little of this seasoning to ensure the proper functioning of muscles and nerves.
It also happens to just taste good, which is why so many people generously salt their meals.
Unfortunately, certain dishes like fish sticks can go a little overboard on the salt. Commercial
fish stick companies add anywhere from 240 to 430 milligrams per serving. According to
the Food and Drug Administration, low-sodium foods have 140 milligrams or less per serving,
which means many seafood companies are doubling or even tripling that amount.
Even more unfortunate than that is the fact that salt has been shown to contribute to
high blood pressure. Cultures that embrace a low-sodium diet generally
don't have issues with hypertension as they advance in years. So if you
want to keep your blood pressure down as much as you can, keep the salt at bay.
"Well, if you don't know anything about sodium now, I don't know what else we can do for you."
By the year 2025, the global antacids market is projected to grow to nearly $4 billion
and enjoy a compound annual growth rate of 4.5 percent. That's a lot of Alka Seltzer! Of course,
your diet contributes greatly to whether or not you need a little plop, plop, fizz,
fizz at the end of each day. And you can probably already see where we're
going with this: fish sticks count among those foods that cause digestive distress.
Greasy, fried foods squash out the good bacteria in your stomach,
thereby making digestion more difficult. Fish sticks also don't have a ton of fiber,
which causes your digestive tract to have to work overtime. Fatty molecules run large
on the chemical level, which means that your system needs more time to complete digestion.
And in a bitter twist of irony, fried foods can even contribute to overeating. That's because
despite staying in the digestive system longer than low-fat foods, you don't feel as satisfied
as quickly as you would with low-fat, high-fiber foods. It's safe to say that fish sticks equal
an uncomfortable clog in the system and a great deal of stomach pain after dinner.
If you're like the average person, you'll go on at least two diets this year,
at least according to a poll conducted by Love Fresh Berries in 2020. And over the
course of your lifetime, you may very well embark on a total of about 126 fad diets.
"I really want to lose three pounds."
It's also likely that the temptation from comfort food favorites like fish sticks will
lead you to abandon your diet after a mere six days. That's because ingredients like salt, fat,
and sugar, which fish sticks have in abundance, lead to plenty of diet-breaking cravings.
Furthermore, fish sticks come loaded with calories,
with some brands having 260 or more per serving. Compare that to a baked potato,
which has about 100 calories and about 16 percent of your daily fiber requirements,
and it's clear why something as small as a fish stick can ruin an entire weight loss plan.
And it isn't just the calories in fish sticks that pack on the pounds. Fish sticks,
or any fried food really, can cause serious inflammation. This can both contribute to
weight gain and make it difficult to lose the weight you already have. Inflammation
has also been associated with insulin resistance, another factor that packs
on the pounds and creates a layer of fat on the liver. If you guessed that these
factors create a viciously never-ending loop that keeps the weight on, you'd be right.
In general, one of the biggest contributors to the prevalence of bodily inflammation
is the food that we eat. And yes, that includes those greasy,
fried comfort foods we grew up loving, like chicken nuggets, french fries, and, of course,
fish sticks. Advanced glycation end products are a big byproduct of fried foods, and they're
known to be one of the sources of inflammation. Nearly half of all the deaths in the world are
caused by diseases known to arise from chronic inflammation, like diabetes, cancer, and stroke.
Chronic inflammation challenges the body in sneaky ways. The effects can start out as a whisper,
and only with time do they become serious enough to notice. Consider for example rheumatoid
arthritis in its early form, and you'll begin to understand how inflammation sneaks up on
you slowly and steadily. It may start out as just a bit of stiffness when you wake
up in the morning that fades away once you start moving. It's only when the disease progresses and
movement doesn't offer the relief it once did that you see inflammation's full effects. The
good news is that there are other foods like fresh berries and beans that can help heal inflammation.
"Cool beans."
It's estimated that 70 percent of the world's wild fish population has fallen
prey to overfishing and exploitation. Fish farming, or aquaculture, helps to mitigate
some of the issues caused by overfishing. They give wild fish populations a breather,
allowing them to go forth and multiply once again. Fish farms also supply seafood manufacturers,
including those that sell fish sticks, with the necessary stocks to keep their
businesses running. Alas, it's also important to note that fish farms,
particularly those that are housed in ocean waters, may do as much harm as good.
Farmed fish that live in ocean-based holding areas have a greater susceptibility to disease
and parasites due to the close proximity in which they're raised. Some farmed fish also escape
their ocean-based habitats and end up swimming free with the masses. One problem with this is
that some of those fish are the aquaculture equivalent of Typhoid Mary. Which is to say,
any disease that infects their pens eventually spreads to the wild fish population. Furthermore,
some of the treatments that farms use on sick and diseased fish leech into nearby waters,
shorelines, and farmland, causing contamination.
Suffice it to say, if you want to eat food that comes from sustainable sources,
you may want to toss your sticks made from farm-raised fish back into the proverbial waters.
Frozen fish sticks remain a go-to meal for those busy people whose days are filled up with way too
many things to accomplish in 24 hours. Many brands sell sticks that are microwave-ready, while others
require just about 15 minutes in the oven. But that doesn't mean that you don't have to take
care of them properly. Like all frozen foods, fish sticks can fall prey to bad freezer conditions.
And unless they smell really, really terrible, it's not always easy to tell if they've gone bad.
In general, fish that is starting to turn to the dark side will feel and
look different. It'll take on a suspicious gray color and become slimy to the touch.
While frozen fish sticks tend to stay frozen throughout their shelf lives,
it's not impossible for them to turn bad like any other fish. This can happen if your freezer
malfunctions or you have a power outage, and the fish then gets warmer in the process. Even
if your fridge kicks back on fairly quickly, your frozen snacks may no longer be edible.
And if your fish sticks come out of the freezer with a layer of ice crystals on them,
it might mean that they're a victim of freezer burn. Freezer-burned food can taste nasty,
even if it's not technically dangerous to eat. Considering how unhealthy fish sticks
can be in the first place, there's no reason to indulge if the taste has gone to waste. This
might be an obvious precaution when it comes to frozen food, but it's still worth the reminder.