Tilapia is one of the most highly consumed fish in America. A new research from Wake Forest University School of Medicine relived that farmed raised tilapia has very low levels of beneficial omega-3 fatty acids and, perhaps worse, very high levels of omega-6 fatty acids. The researchers informed that the combination of these two could be a potentially dangerous food source for some patients with heart disease, arthritis, asthma and other allergic and auto-immune diseases that are particularly vulnerable to an “exaggerated inflammatory response.”
Researchers accounted that in the United States, tilapia has shown the biggest gains in popularity among seafood, and this trend is expected to continue as consumption is projected to increase from 1.5 million tons in 2003 to 2.5 million tons by 2010. The fatty acids that tilapia contains is considered as detrimental. The study said that for individuals who are eating fish as a method to control inflammatory diseases such as heart disease, it is clear from these numbers that tilapia is not a good choice.
Floyd H. “Ski” Chilton, Ph.D., professor of physiology and pharmacology and director of the Wake Forest Center for Botanical Lipids, explained that tilapia is easily farmed using inexpensive corn-based feeds, which contain short chain omega-6s that the fish very efficiently convert to AA and place in their tissues.
