Today we're going fishing! Fishing for
information. Information about what?
Tilapia!
That's a fish that is becoming more and
more popular, and there are all kinds of
headlines about it- like this one: that it
is ‘worse for you than eating bacon’. Well,
let's look behind that headline, where is
this coming from? It's coming from a
study that actually looked at the fat
composition of tilapia and looked at the
relative amount of the two kinds of fats
that are important in our diet: the so
called omega-3 fats and the omega-6 fats.
Well before we get into that I want to
tell you about what that terminology
means, because we are seeing that more
and more often, especially in the lay literature.
In chemistry we like to use
models to describe molecules. This would
be a molecule of what we call a fatty
acid, and it contains a chain of carbon
atoms usually much longer than than this
one. If there is a double bond on the
third carbon- one, two, three- on the third
carbon from the end of the molecule we
call it an omega-3 fat. If the double
bond is on the- one, two, three, four, five,
sixth- carbon from the end we call it an
omega-6 fat. Now the Omega-3s are the
ones that we find in fish, and tuna, for
example, would be a great example. It is
very, very rich in omega-3 fats. These
omega-3 fats are protective in terms of
risk factors for heart disease. If
someone has high triglycerides, high
cholesterol, possibility for cardiac
arrhythmia, these are protective. Now on
the other hand, the omega-6 fats,
according to some studies, have
inflammatory properties, and that is not
a good thing, to cause inflammation in
the body. Therefore the thinking is
that the better the ratio of the omega-3s
to the omega-6s the healthier that
product is. Well it turns out that when
you look at tilapia which is now a very
very popular
fish, there's relatively little
omega-3 to the omega-6. The reason for
that is because of what the fish are fed.
In the wild, fish eat algae, and that's
where the omega-3s comes from. When they
are raised on fish farms, as tilapia is,
they're fed corn, they're fed soybeans,
those are very rich in the omega-6. So
indeed the ratio is not quite as good.
That is what prompted the silly headline
about bacon being better, because when
you look at the fat composition of
bacon there's actually a relatively better
ratio of the omega-6 to the omega-3. This
is totally irrelevant because the
omega-6 fats, aside from playing a role
in this ratio, have been independently
shown to reduce the risk of heart
disease by reducing the so called bad
cholesterol or LDL. So this business is
just silly to have this this headline
with bacon. Bacon it's full of saturated
fat and we know that that is not good
for us. So it's taking a smidgen of
information out of context and
making a big deal of it.
No, tilapia is not going to poison you
because it has less omega-3 fats than
tuna or salmon, and it has more of the so
called pro-inflammatory omega-6s. This
makes really no difference in the
context of the overall diet. There are also
some stories about tilapia being fed manure,
and that actually does happen sometimes
in Asia, particularly in China.
Tilapia will eat almost anything and
they can be fed pig manure and
poultry manure. I mean that's an
unethical thing to do,
shouldn't be done but unfortunately
sometimes it happens. It doesn't happen
on fish farms that are in North America.
So when there's a chance to make a
selection of fish to eat it is better to
choose tilapia that was produced in
North America than was produced in Asia. But
as far as this kind of headline goes
this is just nonsense. Any kind of fish,
including tilapia, is better for us than
bacon but indeed tuna or salmon would
contain relatively more of the
beneficial omega-3 fats.
Unfortunately I can only talk about this
in theory, I can't eat fish. I have an
allergy to it, and the only way that I
can handle fish is by playing with this
kind. But if it were possible to eat fish
I certainly would do it, 107 00:04:44,190 --> 00:00:00,000 although not this particular one.