Love that description, Scott. Same shape as boneless chicken breasts, too, and about the same amount of excitement to eat (none). Come to think of it, when my son was younger, he called just about any light color flesh/meat “chicken”. We thought it was cute, but guess he was on to something.

I think you are right about the farmed tilapia, too. I’ve never been aware of wild tilapia, only farmed.

Farmed tilapia are just piscine chickens.

Also, after reading Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World, by Mark Kulansky), I’ve had pangs of misgivings about being on the consumer end of modern fishing industries, even those deemed ok (for today, but what about tomorrow?). Between how dangerous it is for the workers, to the shifting regulations that are often manipulated and flouted, to the environmental destruction, the huge scale of modern fishing worldwide is changing the ocean’s fishing stock at an escalating pace. My instinct is to back off fish and seafood, at least most of the time, to ease the pressure on on fish stocks. While fish can be a great food, it isn’t essential.

Which brings me to the issue of omega 3s. Lately I’ve become more persuaded that massive amounts of Omega 3s aren’t necessarily needed, *if* omega 6 consumption is low enough (it’s high in the Standard American Diet and many “healthy” diets due to high grain & soy consumption, grain-fed livestock, and PUFA vegetable/seed oils). High consumption of PUFAs in general seems to be very problematic for inflammation, cancer, and CVD (& other modern diseases). Perhaps it’s better to get the ratio of 3:6 right at lower levels (by avoiding PUFAs from grains, grain-fed livestock and industrial vegetable/seed oils) than to try to balance the ratio at higher consumption levels.

The very foods that increased in consumption during the 20th century have much higher PUFA content, replacing traditional foods that naturally had lower PUFA content, at the same time diseases of inflammation and impaired immune function rose to ever higher levels. Industrial vegetable/seed oils in liquid or hydrogenated form (cottonseed, soy, corn and others seeds replaced low PUFA beef tallow, butterfat, and moderate PUFA lard. Grains and many seeds are high in PUFAs. Additionally, consumption of animal products with naturally higher PUFA content went up (chicken and turkey) as consumption of lower PUFA animal products (”red” meats like beef, lamb, and pork, etc.) went down. Plus most livestock went from pasture and/or range eating with only a small amount of grain supplementation to confined and/or indoor environments with high grain consumption, further bumping up the natural PUFA content in the tissues. So perhaps high omega 3 consumption seems great, in the context of a still high omega 6 consumption pattern, but isn’t needed in a more traditional pattern. I’m still working through this, though, because there doesn’t seem to be a lot of current data on this, mainly historical data with non-industrial populations.

But for a quick craving, all I need is a sushi joint and an order of “saba”. Yum.