 Fish really is a double-edged sword. Wildcourt fish is one of the most nutritious things we can put in our bodies, yet farmer-aged fish is literally toxic. Fish has every single vitamin, mineral, element, and fatty acid we need to nourish ourselves. There were groups of indigenous people, native tribes, or hunter-gatherer ancestors that subsisted completely off the fish, and they were just as healthy, if not healthier, than the tribes that were eating mammal meat. The Masai indigenous to Africa were cattle herders, and they would consume meat, milk, blood. There was a tribe near them called the NERS, that were a fisherman tribe, which were actually taller than the Masai. The difference between a fisherman tribe and a tribe that consumed land animals might have been the plant food availability. As fish are sometimes lower in caloric nutrition, although they have just as many vitamins, they would have had to obtain more energy from plant foods if they were consuming more fish. There was a skeleton comparison done between Florida coastal Indians and other First Nation Indians that consumed buffalo and mammalian flesh, and they were both found to be an excellent and perfect skeletal health. Now, there's a difference between consuming an oyster or dipping some crab legs in butter and gutting open a fish and sucking down some swamp-flavored murky water. Those things apply to our modern lives. We have to find what's the most approachable way to incorporate this almost nose-to-tail, complete nutrient profile of the fish eating. This can also explain why some people eat fish, but they're not so healthy. When you're eating a scallop, you're not eating the entire scallop, you're just eating the muscle part of the scallop. These vitamins regulate cell differentiation through gene expression. This process is how every cell in your body is made, essentially, and how your body regulates making cells. So if you don't have these vitamins, your body can't dictate what cells to make properly, and it also can't make adequate amounts of these cells. If you could put an importance on this process in regards to things you're putting in your body, it's at the top. These things like antioxidants, scavenging, free radicals, curcumin, turmeric, cranberry, all that stuff is literally insignificant. It doesn't matter at all if these vitamins aren't present in your diet. This, to me, is the biggest issue in almost the world right now, is the lack of understanding of the importance of these vitamins. Vitamin A is found predominantly in the liver of the fish, although it isn't small amounts in all tissues of the fish. It's important for skin health, mucosal lining of the intestines, the retina of the eye. Pretty much every cell in your body needs vitamin A to be healed properly. Vitamin B is, again, concentrated in the liver, but throughout the whole fish as well, it's crucial to nervous system function and involved in the metabolism of every single cell. Vitamin C and vitamin E are antioxidants. Most people aren't aware that these are even in animal foods. Vitamin C is usually concentrated in glands, and when you cook the meat, you do lose some of the vitamin C content. Vitamin E is concentrated in the fatty tissues of high quality animals, and this is really where food quality ties in, because if the animal wasn't fed a proper diet, it's not going to have vitamin C and vitamin E in significant amounts in its tissue. What's also going to happen is it might have a high omega-6 content, which is inflammatory. So not only are you reducing the anti-oxidant content of the food you're eating, you're increasing the inflammatory aspects, which results in more reactive oxygen species. Reactive oxygen species being excess oxidation in the body, so again, consuming farmed fish is a double-edged sword in this way. It's likely lower in antioxidants and much higher in inflammatory omega-6. Vitamin D3 is unique in a sense that fish is the only real source of it most people have. This ties back to food quality. In order for a cow to have vitamin D3 in its tissue, it needs to be on pasture. These fish are eating algae and certain things that are increasing the vitamin D3 content of their flesh. In those Nordic and Scandinavian areas where they didn't have sun in many parts of the year, this fatty fish might have been a way for them to get vitamin D3. I mean, if you ate two pounds of mackerel per day, you could get a few thousand IU of vitamin D3, although that would be a miserable and disgusting diet. Vitamin D3 is mostly associated with calcium metabolism. When you go in the sun, your body stimulates hormones that signal your body to mobilize as well as absorb calcium. I think vitamin D3 is one of the biggest issues in America right now outside of the context of diet. I would say 99% of the population is vitamin D3 deficient. Omega 3 is found in higher concentrations in fatty or fish, as are all the fat soluble vitamins. As you can imagine, animals store fat soluble vitamins in their fat. So when we're eating mackerel, when we're eating herring, sardines, anchovies, the nutrient content is substantially higher. The belly of the fish does contain more fat. So if you have a salmon belly, it will have more omega 3 than the leaner parts of the fish. Omega 3 is being anti-inflammatory, crucial for brain function. We have iodine as well, which is necessary for thyroid function as well as function of all tissues. Females actually require a higher iodine intake as female breast tissue requires around five milligrams of iodine per day. If you guys want to know more about any of these vitamins, I will link some videos at the end on omega 3, iodine, as well as a general one explaining all of these. High fish consumption equals low heart disease. The countries with the highest fish consumption, Hong Kong, Japan, Spain, France, South Korea, had the lowest rates of heart disease. And this is a very easy explanation. When you consume higher amounts of fish, you have a better omega 3 to omega 6 ratio in the diet, which reduces oxidation. And oxidation of cholesterol, particularly LDL cholesterol, is what eventually leads to heart disease. Now, in addition to reducing inflammation and oxidation, you have vitamins in this fish, vitamin C, vitamin E, that add to reducing that oxidative stress. It's an understatement of the role of fish and how important it is to get quality animal foods in your diet. This isn't specific to fish. This is specific to quality animal foods that have a low omega 6 to omega 3 ratio. That's a pretty compelling argument for the health benefits of fish, but the negatives of fish are a little bit stronger, unfortunately. There's a great documentary. Farmed Norwegian Salmon, World's Most Toxic Food. One time I ate two pounds of farmed salmon. I felt like I was going to die. Obviously, people have different tolerances to the toxins and the high omega 6, the body's ability to remove those oxidants from the body. Me, I felt like I was going to die for two days. It was miserable. Another experience I had with farmed fish were these oysters. And I smelled the outside of the oyster. I smelled a little bit like sewage and I was like, okay, these might be bad, but let me open them up. I'm assuming it can't be much worse. I opened up this oyster and oh my God, it was like opening a tunnel to like New Jersey sewage system. It was one of the most disgusting things I had ever smelled in my life. There's definitely some unfortunate things associated with what we're doing now with our fish supply. In this documentary, they compared the fat content of wild salmon to farmed salmon. Wild salmon had 5 to 7% fat and farmed salmon had 15 to 34% fat. The issue with this is fat is where they store the toxins and omega 6 if the feed has a high ratio of omega 6 fatty acids. So you have this super toxic unnatural fat content fish. It's completely nuts. There were also cod in that documentary that mutated to have their mouth stuck open. Normally, this type of mutation caused the animal to go extinct because they couldn't eat. If they went to eat a fish, it would swim out of their mouth. But since they're being fed this pellet feed, they're just sucking it down. And it took eight generations of proper feeding to get those cod back to normal. The reason fish are toxic is because of these next few things we're going to talk about. Ethoxyquin is an antioxidant used as a food preservative that they put in the fish feed. They need to use this because of how rancid the fats are in the feed. And it's mandatory that you wear a hazmat suit and a respirator while handling this chemical. The chemical damages your liver and kidneys when you consume fish that has it. So I can't imagine what would happen if you actually weren't wearing a suit handling this stuff. Dioxin is a general term that applies to 419 pollutants associated with manufacturing processes such as herbicides, paper mills. The Baltic Sea is actually so polluted with these dioxins that a lot of European countries aren't allowed to sell fish from that sea. The reason the Baltic Sea in particular is so polluted is because it's a sea that doesn't empty out frequently. It takes many many years for it to restore its waters. The feed they're giving these fish is composed of rancid, wheat protein, soy fat. It's just horrible for the animal. We feed this to cattle and pigs too. The issue with feeding animals this poison is they get sick. Then you have to dump antibiotics in the water. Seeing these people dump barrels and barrels and barrels of antibiotics in the water makes you wonder what the hell we're doing. And this also results in a lack of nutrition of the fish because there's no nutrition in this feed they're giving them. The fish itself isn't going to be nutritious. It's essentially devoid of micronutrients and has inflammatory omega-6. Polyphosphates are preservatives added to fish that have water binding properties. A lot of the times fish is frozen on the boat. When you throw out fish it loses water. This helps the fish hold some of that water. It helps keep it fresh. The issue with phosphates is oxidation. When you consume phosphates it causes reactive oxygen species in your body. What we spoke about earlier and this is starting to make a lot of sense guys as to why heart disease rates are so high. 25% in the United States. If literally everything we're consuming is contributing to oxidative stress in the body to some degree it's pretty black and white. Sodium sulfite is the problem I have with shrimp and phosphates are usually added to shrimp as well. It's an industrial bleaching agent and was linked to deaths years ago and there's not too many testing and regulations done around all this stuff. If you go into a supermarket and try to find shrimp that doesn't have anything added I will commend you because I haven't seen any myself outside of a commercial restaurant fish market. PCBs are polychlorinated by fennels. They are industrial chemicals that were used from 1929 to 1979 until they were banned. They are associated with cancer, immune, nervous, endocrine system and mostly an issue with bottom feeders and as I said guys a lot of this stuff really is brushed under the rug. Something I don't actually have on here is the radiation from Fukushima and a lot of these other issues. I don't want to go too much into that it's a very sensitive topic but there are certainly concerns oriented around it and you guys can look into that. Mercury versus selenium. People are worried about mercury and fish. To my understanding mercury binds to selenium receptors so if the mercury content is too high and there's not enough selenium in the food there will be an issue but consuming more selenium doesn't alleviate this issue. The important thing is that you reduce the mercury content of the fish. Fish you shouldn't consume are like Mako Shark, Pilot Whale, Swordfish, King Mackerel. Those fish have higher mercury content than selenium. Fish lower on the food chain like Shrimp, Salmon, Mackerel, Herring, Anchovies, even Lobster and Cod are fish that can be consumed really without concern for most people. The concerns oriented around mercury don't really make a lot of sense to me when we have these populations that are consuming fish and they have the highest life expectancies. It's another one of those things that relates back to the idea behind vitamins being the most important thing but people are worried about putting turmeric powder and apple cider vinegar in their smoothie in the morning. They're kind of missing the big picture. Fish oils, oxidation of fish oils is certainly a concern and this applies to any non-fresh product. We're not just talking about fish oil supplements. We're talking about canned fish. We're talking about smoked fish, preserved fish. The quality is what we need to be concerned about because oxidation can vary drastically and all products are susceptible. There is testing that has been done on different brands and you can look that up but generally you get what you pay for. Cod liver oil and canned cod liver are things that I am a big proponent of because canned cod liver literally has all the vitamins and things you need that most people are deficient in. It has vitamin A, D3, vitamin E, possibly in smaller amounts depending on the oxidation. It has vitamin K2, omega 3 fatty acids and iodine. Cod liver is a powerhouse. It's a superfood and it's certainly better to have oxidized fish products in your diet that have nutrients than to not have them at all but this relates specifically to the person's individual ability to deal with oxidative stress. So you have to look at your whole diet. You have to see how it makes you feel and you know when you're consuming cod liver it's something that you're not consuming in an incredibly large amount every day. You only need about half a pound of liver a week to get adequate vitamin A intake and instead of taking cod liver oil in a small amount every day what you could do is just take a larger amount of cod liver oil once a week so your body can then deal with that oxidative stress throughout the week as opposed to every single day. So how should we be sourcing fish? I go to local Asian markets, fish mongers, sometimes I go to wholesale restaurant suppliers and I buy a 50 pound bag of oysters. Live fish is obviously the best from a quality perspective but realistically speaking fresh frozen and then canned. Wild is the most important. You know if it's not wild you shouldn't be buying it. I mean there are things like oysters and shellfish and certain things that are farmed that are technically wild. What I mean by wild is that it's fed its wild diet. It's not being fed corn, soy, wheat, crap and that there are no preservatives in it. If it has preservatives, if it has concealed oil in it be wary do it at your own you know understanding of the risk. I like shellfish. I like oysters, mollusks, clams, lobster, crab, mussels, scallops, sometimes crawfish are alive too. Squid aren't usually alive but the combination of shellfish being nutritionally complete and alive really seals the deal for me. I can buy a lobster, throw it in a pot of water and eat it and it's delicious. It's nutritionally complete on its own. Same thing with a clam, same thing with mussels, same thing with oysters, scallops. All of these foods are delicious on their own. They're nutritionally complete and they can be sold alive and fresh. Everything else after that becomes a little bit more difficult because although small fatty fish are deemed to be very nutrient dense, are you eating the guts? You know a lot of people might say that oh fish doesn't have a high amount of iron blah blah while you're not eating the liver, you're not eating the guts, you're not eating the organs that have a higher iron content. Anchovies, herring, mackerel, salmon, all of these are amazing sources of nutrition if you know you're eating it, no subtle essentially. The roe and the organs are what we have to keep in mind here. Can you buy fish roe on its own and use it? You can. Fish roe is always nutrient dense. Salmon roe is more nutrient dense per gram. What I mean by this is if you have a thousand calories of salmon roe and a thousand calories of herring roe, you're going to get the same amount of nutrients from each one. It's just the salmon roe has a higher fat percentage in the eggs so it's more concentrated. So whatever roe, whatever fish eggs you can get your hands on, that's a great source of DHA but a big issue is people are just looking at DHA when they look at fish. They're not looking at these other nutrients. The organs of the fish are, I mean, there's a really old video that I might link you guys at the end where I actually flayed open a fish and ate the guts. It's pretty nasty. It depends on what type of fish it is, the quality of the fish. Sometimes you might have this fish that has this super delicious sweet tasting liver. Sometimes you might have a fish that has a liver that tastes like pure iodine. So really depends on the species of fish, how fresh it is, where it's from. I personally like Norwegian herring and mackerel. I find that those taste the best especially compared to the Spanish stuff. And also the fish can really taste different every single time you have it. I remember one time I had three different mackerel and one was delicious, one I had to throw out and one was, you know. So leaner fish are okay to consume but if you're not consuming the belly of the fish or the organs of those leaner fish, you're not getting nutrition. Consuming lean fish can be a source of protein. Consuming lean fish's organs can be a source of vitamins but those tribes that were eating those types of fish would have had an energy source outside of it. Polynesians for instance, you can look up them using things like breadfruit, coconut. I don't know if they use taro or that's just something modern but there are plant foods that they use for caloric sustenance. A lot of these fish are also a great way to do a carnivore diet on a budget. Herring and mackerel are usually two to three dollars a pound in a fish market whole which equates to maybe three, four, five dollars a pound when they're filleted and I've gone down to wholesale fish markets and they will sell you mackerel for a dollar, a dollar fifty per pound if you buy it in bulk. I remember at one point I had like two eighty pound cases of mackerel in my freezer that I got for a hundred fifty bucks. You could literally eat wild fatty fish for twenty five dollars a week on the few dollars a day and it's one of the most nutrient dense things you can do. It's just pretty disgusting. I really don't like mackerel or herring enough to eat it every day and there might also be a genetic predisposition to being able to tolerate super high amounts of omega fatty acids. Touching on preparation, the First Nation Alaskans consume their fish raw, boiled, fermented, frozen as dipped in seal oil. He's happier than he was when he was up with the First Nation Alaskans. Nevertheless, there are many different preparations of fish shown throughout other tribes as well. The fermentation is an interesting one. Every single tribe consumed a variety of fermented foods, especially fish. In Africa they might have put the fish out in the sun to rock for a week. In Alaska they might have buried it under a log for a year. The context guys here is if you're consuming only fish, raw, boiled, fermented, frozen, you have to understand why they did each of these things. Raw fish might have been consumed for the antioxidant properties, the vitamin C, certain prized organs might have been consumed raw. Boiled was just their preferred cooking method. I've actually boiled fish versus roasted fish and boiling it isn't bad. It's pretty enjoyable. Fermenting the fish, obviously if you're only eating fish, you're going to start doing some funky things and the purpose of fermenting fish is for its vitamin K2 content. We didn't put vitamin K2 here. Vitamin K2 is contained in the fish's liver to some degree and vitamin K2 is key for calcium mobilization as well as the amount of calcium in both the organs as well as skeletal structure. But vitamin K2 is usually inherent to fermented foods, especially for fermented animal foods. Frozen fish they consumed as like a treat, almost dessert and dipping it in seal oil was their way of getting a higher fat ratio on a diet of the fish. For cooking temperature on fish it's almost pretty universal. You want the fish to be 120 degrees Fahrenheit internally and then when you take it out of the oven it will go up to like 125, 130 and you should have a fish that is not overcooked. I use a thermapen. It's an instant read thermometer. It's really important to have it instant read if you're sitting there with the thermometer in the fish for like 10 seconds you start losing your mind. Lemon butter sauce is my favorite thing to do with fish. So all I do to make a lemon butter sauce is I squeeze some fresh organic lemon juice. I put it in a pan and I put it on a medium heat and you just start melting cold butter into the lemon juice. It'll form into an emulsion of a sauce and you just pour that on your fish. You can put in a whole stick of butter there and that will be how you get your fat. So if Frankie Boy was stuck eating fish for a couple of weeks that's probably what he would do. It's a very easy very delicious pretty much carnivore zero carb way of eating fish. I remember when I had my jaw surgery I actually was eating lobster bisque and clam chowder for about a week and what I did essentially was I boiled up a bunch of lobster and clams. I took the meat and pureed it with a ton of raw cream, raw butter, high quality animal fats. One major thing to keep in mind is making sure to vary your sources of fish. Obviously someone consuming only farm raised salmon versus someone consuming 15 to 20 different types of wild caught fish that's drastically different. When I eat fish guys I'll go to an Asian market I'll buy a pound of like six or seven different types of wild fish and I'll do that. That by you know just logic is reducing my chance by location of having some sort of contaminant in the water and of course sticking to the lower food chain fish is another principle there. Seafoodwatch.org is a great resource for knowing what seafood is bad and what seafood is good. It has every species of fish. If you look up salmon on seafoodwatch.org there's literally like 30 different locations probably more than that where you can see what the rating of the salmon is from a pollution perspective. Of course this is only applicable to the food you have access to you know you can't just go on that website and look oh these are the best I'm going to get those you have to go to your fish market see what you have and then look it up online and see if it's good. If you guys have any more questions about this I did a video carnivore in the supermarket where I did touch on fish a little bit I've done videos in the past on bacteria and parasites if you want to understand how that applies to fish as well I'll put all of those resources at the end of this as well as in the description outside of that thank you guys for watching if you enjoyed the video please like subscribe hit that bell icon and share the video we just recently started carnivoreforum.com as well as my perfected health podcast so guys please be sure to keep an eye out for that down below in the comments is also my patreon that's a great way to support me as well as get personalized one-on-one question support my amazon shop is down below guys there's probably some stuff that will help you cook some fish fillet some fish whatever it may be I'm on Twitter guys I'm on Instagram if you do want to reach out to me for one-on-one consultations you can send me an email frank a to final at gmail.com or contact me through the form on my website below