Fish has always been touted as a healthy food, but when it comes to today’s farmed salmon, experts say that description couldn’t be further from the truth.
During the making of the documentary, “Fillet-Oh-Fish” by director Nicolas Daniels, an investigation among the Norwegian fjords that contain salmon farms found a layer of waste about 15 meters high, consisting of bacteria, drugs, and pesticides. And with the sea farms being situated in open water, it’s impossible to contain the pollution.
According to Dr. Joseph Mercola, “Today’s fisheries are faced with a range of severe problems, from overfishing to chemical pollution and genetic mutation from toxic exposures.”
Farmed salmon has been proven to be five times more toxic than any other food product tested. In fact, Norwegian environmental activist Kurt Oddekalv claims that today’s farmed salmon is one of the most toxic foods in the world, adding that the farming of salmon is “a disaster both for the environment and for human health.”
“I do not recommend pregnant women, children or young people eat farmed salmon. It is uncertain in both the amount of toxins salmon contain, and how these drugs affect children, adolescents, and pregnant women,” said Dr. Anne-Lise Birch Monsen, a biologist at the University of Bergen in Norway.
She adds that the contaminants detected in farmed salmon have a negative effect on brain development, are associated with autism, and that they affect other organ systems in the body’s immune system and metabolism.
Additionally, according to Living Traditionally, eating more than one meal of farm-raised salmon in a month can increase your risk of developing cancer in the future due to the cancer-causing chemicals and high levels of dioxins it contains. It’s also said to provide your body with higher levels of inflammation which leads to many diseases including cancer, diabetes, arthritis, coronary artery disease, and Alzheimer’s.
Now, more than ever, it’s incredibly important to not only be mindful of what we eat, but to know where exactly it comes from and what it contains. Our health — and lives — depend on it.