Is Canned Fish a Safe and Nutrient Dense Option?

Is Canned Fish a Safe and Nutrient Dense Option?

Producer Potts  0:15  

Okay, can we talk about canned fish? I know thanks to Nutrivore and learning from you that it is actually a safe option for me. And it’s affordable for me. However, I was looking at the Nutrivore Scores and some can fish is more nutrient dense than fresh. And other times it’s less. Is it getting too far in the weeds If I always pick the highest score? Or do I get enough of the benefits coming from seafood just like my canned tuna? 

Dr. Sarah  0:53  

So I think the big picture was one of the things that was a surprise to me from the Nutrivore Score calculation. So briefly, the Nutrivore Score is a measurement of total nutrients per calorie 33 nutrients go into that calculation. So because it’s just math, it’s an objective way to understand the nutrient density of foods. And one of the things that I found really surprising was that the nutrient retention in canned foods is so high, that there are some canned foods that are actually more nutrient dense than their fresh counterparts. But even when they’re not, I mean, they’re, they’re in the same range, like the difference is not meaningful. So your question of am I getting too far in the weeds? If I’m comparing the neutral score of canned versus fresh, we’ll talk about what’s cool in canned fish. But yes, that is too far in the weeds like to look at the Nutrivore Score of broccoli, raw versus broccoli boiled, without salt versus broccoli boiled with salt, like you can look up all of those new diverse scores on the website at Nutrivore.com/search. And you can, you can get super nerdy with it. But those differences are not meaningful in terms of meeting our nutritional needs, which is the goal of nutrient poor, or in terms of how that food is going to benefit our health. What matters is that fish is a really important, like health promoting food that has especially like long chain omega three fats that are harder to get enough of from other foods, that there’s a huge wealth of scientific evidence showing that eating more seafood reduces risk, especially if cardiovascular disease and neurodegenerative disease like Alzheimer’s disease and like age related cognitive decline, so efficient such a healthy food to consume. So whatever food you like, and is convenient for you, and is affordable for you, like that’s, that’s the fish to consume. So getting into, like, if I cook it this way, it’ll have more nutrient density. If I eat it candidal have less or more, it really doesn’t matter. It doesn’t even matter what type of fish you’re eating, they’re all beneficial. And there’s even studies looking at white fish. So I think we have this idea that fatty fish are the most important. from a health perspective, nope, lots of benefits to white fish as well. And there’s even studies looking at the benefits of farmed fish. So it doesn’t have to be wild either, farm fish have all the same benefits of wild fish, because they have all the same nutrients. So yes, it is really getting too far in the weeds to be looking at that comparison. But there is just to just just be like a nerdy, nerdy nutrient poor right now. The reason why some canned fish is quite a lot more nutrient dense than fresh is it’s always the canned fish where the bones are small enough that they’re in the can and you end up eating the bones. So it’s like a canned salmon with the bones it sardines. It’s those fish that are more nutrient dense, canned, compared to like roughly the same or maybe you know, like a very small difference. And it’s because of all of the extra nutrients and minerals, some collagen that we’re getting from the bones because the counting process makes the bones soft enough to eat like I think a lot of people don’t even know that they’re eating the bones when they eat. 

Dr. Sarah  4:23  

Yes, it’s too much in the weeds. However, if you like and fish with the bones like I used to, I thought the bones were the best part. So if I would make canned salmon salad when I was a kid, I would eat the bones first and then make the sandwich salad with the rest of the can because I thought the bones were so tasty there. Why canned fish is such a fantastic source of calcium. It is very specifically only those canned fish where you’re eating the bone so think sardines, salmon, mackerel. So fish were like the bone is the bone is in they can. And if you pay the extra money for the boneless, skinless flays, you’re missing out on that nutrition granted, if that’s the only way you like it, then you’re benefiting from that nutrition because you’re eating it. So. So like, again, it’s, it’s, you can get those nutrients from other foods. Dairy is our most concentrated food source of calcium, that if you don’t eat dairy, can can fish with the bones is very, very similarly, calcium dense plus you’re getting all of that other special nutrition that that seafood has. So that is kind of like your next best source of calcium.

Producer Potts  5:37  

 So it sounds like cheap canned fish is pretty great. Absolutely.

Dr. Sarah  5:41  

And it’s probably worth it since we’re talking about canned foods. People are probably twitching about BPA.

Producer Potts  5:52  

Yes and you have covered that in depth video, which I will make sure to link here.

Dr. Sarah  6:06  

So Cliff Cliff Notes, if you don’t want to go watch the big long video, you don’t need to worry about BPA. It’s fine. 

Producer Potts  6:11  

Right. Exactly. Exactly. So where can we learn more about the nutrient differences in between like Canna fresh and also, like, quality wise? Where can people go to learn that if they’re curious for that information for themselves without getting too far in the weeds?

Dr. Sarah  6:31  

So if you just applied Whoa, math, B math, and that’s pretty cool. I want to be a nerdy, nerdy Nutrviore or two. Yeah, go to the website, go to Nutrivore.com/search and just start searching up Nutrivore Scores. It’s fascinating. And what I find so fascinating, so just to give a little bit of context, there’s no, there’s no normalization of the score. So there’s no, there’s no like, we make the highest score 100 or 1000. And everything is kind of scattered in between. So just the math is the math. And you can actually learn all about the math there as well, there’s like a link to a site that explains all of the science that goes into that calculation. But the highest neutrophil score is 14,744, and the lowest is zero. So just to give you a sense of the spread, that being said, the median, so the middle is 180. So half of the scores are higher than 180, and half of the scores are lower. Wow. And what would be like a, like a perfect score, gentlemen, like, if you were to get exactly 100% of the daily value of each nutrient that goes into the score, is assuming a 2000 calorie per day diet, a perfect score would be like 164, like 100, or 165, something like that. So generally, we say like any score over about 150 is a food that is contributing more nutrients than calories to the overall diet. That’s kind of the cost that we draw based on average caloric intake, and like the essential nutrients versus non essential nutrients that go into the score. So when you see a score, like a lot of fish in the like six to 900 range when you see those scores, like yes, you might want to compare it to like these crazy, unusual, very low energy density foods or all the top foods, but compare it to 150 or 180. Right, those are more like, that gives you the context for understanding how valuable a food like canned tuna really is. So just to give like some context, if you wanted to just like peruse the entire Nutrivore score database, and just rather than search it and then find all the foods that have the word tuna in the description, you can just peruse that is a bonus for people who join my patreon at the Nutrivore  or nerds Tier or higher, so the $7 a month Tier or higher. And you can download like a table. It’s a 227 page table, I think of the entire like 8000 food, entire neutral score database. And there’s one version where it’s organized alphabetically. And then there’s one version where it’s organized by Nutrivore Score from highest to lowest log that is also just fascinating. If you really want to get into the weeds of comparing YouTuber scores, that’s the place to do it. If you want to just understand foods and you don’t like them, you want to avoid those weeds. In my book, there’s 700 neutral scores, it’s mainly Whole Foods and like really common cooking ingredients in one of the appendices. And there’s just one score per food there’s just There’s just one kind of tuna. skipjack tuna, which is the most common kind found, actually there might be yellowfin tuna too. I might be lying right now. But it’s, it’s, it’s easy. It’s an easy comparison. There’s just tuna, and not canned and baked and big, dry heat. You know, like it is not all of those differences that you’re gonna find, if you look at the entire database, there’s just broccoli comma raw, right? That’s it. There’s different types of mushrooms and different varieties of apples, but it’s just going to give you basically the score for the raw whole version of that food. And that will help you look like you want to get out of the weeds and just understand the relative value of these different foods. But also, we don’t want to only use the Nutrivore Score as our like only criteria for choosing foods and why is also laid out extensively in my book.