So, I read the recommendations of eating oily fish twice weekly and I wondered if smoked salmon is too unhealthy to count. I wouldn’t have access to naturally smoked salmon and I’m pretty sure they use chemical processes to give it the flavour.
Also, what about tinned tuna?
Cheers

Smoked salmon – probably the healthy oils are reduced or gone! Best is line-caught. Tinned tuna (or salmon) from a healthy source (look for the source and the omega-3 content – higher is better) would be fine

Motherofwhippets: You don’t say which country you are from, but UK guidelines are *at least* two servings and *up to* four servings a week for adults. Also to emphasise small fish over large fish to minimise nasties like mercury. Wild fish may be richer in long chain omega-3s and vitamin D than farmed.

As I understand it tuna is cooked before canning so much of the beneficial omega-3s are lost. As regards smoked salmon, there is an article on the Harvard Medical School website entitled ‘Does smoked fish contain omega-3 fats?’

There are no iffy ingredients in Lidl UK lightly smoked salmon fillets (raw refrigerated) nor Aldi UK smoked mackerel fillets (cooked refrigerated).
Other canned oily fish include sardines/ pilcharda, herring and salmon. If rhey are cooked in the can some of the omega-3s end up in the water or tomato sauce so eat that too.

While it’s true that the larger oily fish like tuna are apex predators and therefore have eaten lots of other fish in their lives, do we have any reliable figures for mercury and other contaminants ? I hear mercury builds up in the system like lead compounds so it’s a safe bet you want to limit your sushi intake. Fresh sardines are sold in good supermarkets like Waitrose in the UK and they eat only plankton so the risk is reduced.

Dollygrip: My understanding is that contamination varies by species/ subspecies, size of fish and where the fish is caught. Similarly the amount of vitamin D and long chain omega-3s vary substantially, for example between farmed and wild salmon.

UK healthy eating guidelines (National Health Service, Food Standards Agency) are based on the best available evidence and recommendations of other key agencies, such as the World Health Organisation or European Food Safety Authority. Where I can’t access – or don’t understand! – the published research I default to these experts. Currently they recommend limiting intake of the largest fish species. More information is on the websites of relevant agencies.

Your post made me think that it would be interesting to compare the weight of fish consumed in an ‘average’ serving of sushi, fresh tuna steak or canned tuna lunch.

Eating sushi frequently would go against several of the UK’s healthy eating guidelines: eating a wide variety of different foods, choosing wholegrains over refined ones, limiting intake of large fish.