We are big fans of good sushi- we really enjoy it. However, we’ve run into an alarming trend lately that is rather deceptive. It seems like time after time, when we ask about the salmon being wild caught or farm raised we get a bumbling, sad-faced answer that it is the latter. Salmon is some of our favorite sushi, but farm raised salmon is fed genetically modified corn and soy and we don’t approve of that; that’s not natural, fish aren’t supposed to eat corn!
Beyond that, farm raised salmon are artificially colored to attain the pink flesh. And that’s not all, according to this article on http://www.purezing.com/living/food_articles/living_articles_7salmon.htm about farm raised salmon, there is a litany of turn off’s including depleted nutrient levels and high antibiotic distribution.
Farm raised salmon is considerably cheaper than wild salmon so there is financial incentive of participating sushi restaurants to pull a fast one. What’s lame is that I’ve yet to come across the salmon labeled as farm raised. So you may think you’re eating wild salmon like you have so many times previously (before farm raised salmon became so ubiquitous), but it’s likely that you’re not.
I’ve even asked the sushi chef at a popular health food store that sells prepared sushi if the salmon was farm raised or wild. I assumed it would be wild because of the setting I was in: I was wrong. That set off some alarm bells. How frustrating, now when we eat sushi, more often than not we are only ordering off of half of the menu because of a simple question and a heinous answer.
-Chris
