Would you eat gray salmon?
So I have a question for you. Would you ever consume salmon? That is gray. The answer is no. Right. Well, what if I were to give you gray salmon that has used food dye to make it look pink? Would you consume it? Well, chances are you are. If you’re consuming farm-raised salmon and in a recent post, I talked about the healthiest food that you could possibly eat is salmon, but I really made a big distinction between wild-caught and farm-raised now, just because they’re similar, it doesn’t mean they’re the same, but today I want to focus just on one big difference. It’s the coloring.
Farm-raised salmon vs. wild-caught salmon
Now, the way that they make, farm raves salmon pink is they use something called a synthetic ASTA’s xantham. That is a pigment compound, which also appears in nature and in nature, natural assets, and then has huge profound health benefits. But the synthetic version, there’s never been any credible safety studies to show that it’s safe for humans.
The dangers of farm-raised salmon
The reason I’m bringing that up is because there has been a lot of research on synthetic antioxidants and the danger is that they can actually increase your risk of cancer. So since this is also a synthetic antioxidant, you should just realize that there are no safety studies. And the problem with this situation is if someone does find a problem with this in some study, it’s going to take probably 20 years before it’s taken off the market. So certain companies have synthesized this compound, out of petrochemicals and they even sell different shades of pink.
So they have this color wheel very similar to you going to the paint store and trying to find the right paint. You have these different colors on this chart. It’s called a SAML fan, and you can pick a choose the color pigment that you want. People will definitely spend more money on salmon if it’s dark-colored pink. And also they do this with egg yolks to make it look really like a golden yellow-orange. That’s also produced by these synthetic they’re called carotenoids. Also, chicken is also dyed because if you don’t have, the nice pink flesh color, people might not eat it.
So this is just another reason to get wild-caught salmon, pasture-raised organic eggs, and buy organic chicken that is not colored not to mention flavored. Yes, they also flavor chicken because it’s so bland. But the next time you are in the grocery store, look at the back of the label. When you buy chicken, it’ll say chicken with natural flavorings, okay. They actually put chicken flavoring to make the chicken tastes more like chicken.
Benefits of natural pigments
Now I’m doing a really big deep dive on any oxidants phytonutrients and doing testing with plants on how you would spike certain phytonutrients or pigments and plants. And you can do it with certain nutrients in the soil. You can do it with different types of lights. So it’s a fascinating subject because there are a lot of health benefits from some of these pigments. So I just want to run down the list of all the great benefits of a natural Asda xanthan.
First of all, it’s 50 times stronger in its ability to counter oxidation. It’s 20 times stronger in handling free radicals. And what I’m comparing is this synthetic version. And like I said before, it has profound benefits on humans for your eye, your brain, your heart, and your immune system. It gives you UV protection with your skin. It even has anti-inflammatory properties, so it can do a lot. So the salmon get asked for xanthan from krill and shrimp.
And the krill and shrimp get it from micro-algae. And so microalgae are just loaded with this pigment. just as a side. what’s fascinating about, this compound and micro-algae are that when algae is stressed, whether its heat or cold or a lack of food, they eat up a lot of this. it’s called accumulation, but in a hyper mode, then they can actually live up to 40 years in extreme environments. And I’m talking about extreme, cold, extreme heat in environments where there’s no food or water, it’s a fascinating protective survival mechanism. So there are profound benefits for humans from consuming this compound.
But of course, when you get it from farm-raised fish, it’s not going to be the same. That chemistry is completely different. And one last point about nature. It always comes as a complex, with at least five other carotenoids. But when you synthesize it in a lab, it only comes in one form. So other than the obvious reasons not to consume farm-raised fish, like they’re fed GMO, soy, and corn, this synthetic version of Astra xanthan, could potentially be a problem if anyone decides to do the safety studies.
