Fish
For each one: how to use it, the best version, how to prepare it, what it does, and where it goes wrong.
SalmonThe same omega-3 as the sardine, in a fish most people will actually eat. Where it came from decides what you get.Read on
How to use it
Twice a week as a main. Cold smoked over a salad, or hot out of the oven.
The best version
Wild caught, from Alaska or the northern Pacific, fresh or frozen. Farmed salmon eats what it is fed, and that decides its fatty acids; a wild fish eats its own food.
How to prepare it
Low and slow. Fifteen minutes in an oven at a hundred and twenty degrees gives you a fish that still glistens; a hard sear dries it out and drives the fat out of the flesh.
What it does
Marine omega-3 has been studied at scale. Across 13 randomised trials with 127,477 participants between them and a mean of five years of treatment, the risk of myocardial infarction came out at a rate ratio of 0.92, death from coronary heart disease at 0.92, and cardiovascular death at 0.93.
Watch out
The trials handed out capsules, not fish, and the gain per person was small and measured over five years. Salmon is good food rather than a treatment.
Hu Y, Hu FB, Manson JE. Journal of the American Heart Association, 2019.
The pink of farmed salmon comes out of the feed and says nothing about quality. Wild salmon is pink on its own because it eats shellfish.
SardinesSmall, cheap and low down the food chain. You eat the bones too, and that is where the calcium is.Read on
How to use it
Out of the tin, on sourdough, through a salad, through pasta. Fresh on the grill when you can get them.
The best version
Tinned in olive oil or in water, with skin and bones. A brand that says where and how it was caught. Sardines in tomato sauce taste good, and you are eating the sugar in that sauce as well.
How to prepare it
Nothing. Open the tin, onto bread, lemon over the top. If the taste is too strong, start with the ones in olive oil rather than the ones in their own juice.
What it does
Marine omega-3 has been studied at scale. Across 13 randomised trials with 127,477 participants between them and a mean of five years of treatment, the risk of myocardial infarction came out at a rate ratio of 0.92, death from coronary heart disease at 0.92, and cardiovascular death at 0.93. The reduction grew with the dose.
Watch out
Those trials handed out capsules, not fish. What was measured is the compound, and the fish is the cheapest and most complete way to get hold of it.
Hu Y, Hu FB, Manson JE. Journal of the American Heart Association, 2019.
Salt. A tin can hold a serious share of your day, and it is on the label. Rinsing them helps, and costs you some of the taste.