When it comes to eating fish, many of us have gorged on a decadent salmon, halibut, cod, or mahi-mahi dish, but have you ever heard about tilapia? This mainly freshwater fish is actually quite popular throughout Asia and Africa, and it is one of the most consumed fish in the United States. It's actually cheap, easy to cook, and you can create recipes like garlic butter oven-baked tilapia, parmesan-crusted tilapia, and tilapia with cilantro lime cream. If that all sounds good to you but you've never tried tilapia, here is the truth about tilapia. Intrigue is the first step to new and abundant tastes.
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00:00Not all fish are created equal, and one of the types you've probably heard a lot about is tilapia.
00:05It's definitely not one of the highly sought-after types of fish,
00:08and you've probably heard that it's bad for you, for various reasons. But how much of it is true?
00:13Today, tilapia is fished, farmed, and raised all over the world. But according to Berkeley Wellness,
00:18the fish originated in the Middle East and Africa, and was once known for being a food
00:22fit for a pharaoh. According to the Southern Regional Aquaculture Center,
00:25depictions of tilapia have been found on the walls of ancient Egyptian tombs,
00:29suggesting they weren't just an important part of diets around 3,000 years ago,
00:32but they were important enough to be immortalized. And if you're familiar with the biblical story
00:36about Jesus making just a few loaves of bread and a few fish into a meal for 5,000 people,
00:40the New York Times says scholars believe those fish were most likely tilapia.
00:44Some tilapia farms raise fish in cramped and crowded conditions that allow disease to spread
00:49quickly. Some farms, likewise, aren't all that concerned about what they're dumping
00:52into surrounding waters. According to the Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch,
00:56avoid tilapia imported from China if you want to keep away from fish raised under those types
01:00of practices. If you're looking for tilapia that have been raised under responsible,
01:04environmentally-friendly conditions, look for some from Peru and Ecuador.
01:07And according to the Ocean Wise Seafood Program, tilapia from Mexico, Indonesia,
01:12and Honduras are also eco-friendly options, along with fish farmed in the U.S. in a recirculating
01:16aquaculture system.
01:18It's really important from a food security standpoint that we start developing sustainable
01:21ways to develop aquaculture as a food production mechanism in the United States."
01:26In 1988, World Fish kicked off the Genetically Improved Farm Tilapia Project
01:31with the goal of perfecting a strain of tilapia for raising on a commercial scale.
01:34What followed was a systematic breeding program, where researchers selected the
01:38fish with the genetic traits they wanted to pass on and bred those fish.
01:41The program started with wild tilapia from various locales and resulted in tilapia that
01:45grew 85 percent faster. Since 2017, a weirdly popular meme about tilapia claims the fish is
01:52a mutant full of cancer-causing toxins, with no skin and no bones.
01:56Have you tried not being a mutant?
01:59Snopes says that there is some truth to the meme, namely that most tilapia comes from farms and is
02:04raised on genetically modified foods, depending on its source. But it isn't dangerous. Also,
02:09the fish clearly has bones and skin. As for the toxins, there's the potential for dangerous levels
02:13of mercury and other chemicals to show up in any kind of fish, so that's another bit of
02:17scaremongering, too. The Washington Post reported that another rumor claims tilapia isn't good for
02:22you because a lot of it is fed with livestock waste, and its basis comes from the U.S. Department
02:26of Agriculture's 2009 report on how fish imported from China were raised. And according to Seafood
02:32Watch, manure is often used in the process of raising fish, usually dumped into ponds to feed
02:36plankton and other organisms that the fish actually eat. That practice can potentially
02:40increase the chance bacteria like Salmonella will find its way into the fish, but it only
02:45happens at some farms. Bottom line, know where the fish you buy comes from.
02:49Tilapia has a bad reputation when it comes to how healthy it is,
02:52but it's a little more complicated than that. Healthline says that even though it's a super
02:56low-calorie fish, it's also got a ton of protein, 26 grams in a 3.5-ounce serving.
03:01It's also high in B12, niacin, and potassium. It's low in fat, too,
03:05but that's part of the problem. When you compare tilapia to salmon,
03:08you'll find that serving of salmon has about 10 times the health-promoting omega-3 fatty acids.
03:13Tilapia has more omega-6 fatty acids, which is not nearly as good for you as the other stuff.
03:18Some pseudo-nutritionists have claimed that tilapia is worse for you than bacon,
03:21but that's a case of twisted facts. According to Berkeley Wellness,
03:24the bacon rumor got started thanks to a 2008 study published in the Journal of
03:28the American Dietetic Association. They were looking at the ratio of omega-3s to omega-6s
03:32in tilapia and found that it has roughly twice as many omega-6s. But omega-6 is found in much
03:38higher amounts in other foods, like seeds and nuts, and tilapia has far fewer calories and
03:42less saturated fat and sodium than bacon. So, should you add tilapia to your menu or
03:47skip it? If someone in your family doesn't like fish, Berkeley Wellness says that tilapia might
03:51just be the perfect gateway fish. It's mild, very lean, and it doesn't have the strong fishy taste
03:56and smell that turns a lot of people off. The National Fisheries Institute says that at the
04:00end of the day, tilapia is perfectly safe. It's low-calorie, super sustainable, and very versatile.
04:06If you're looking for fish to get the big nutritional punch you've heard so much about,
04:09Medical News Today says there are other types that contain more omega-3 fatty acids and might
04:13be a better option. Those are fish like red snapper, trout, cod, salmon, mackerel, and even
04:19sardines. Here's a wild fact, though. Sometimes if you're eating what you think is one of those fish,
04:24you're actually eating tilapia.
04:25You've been duped, suckers.
04:27Seafood fraud is rampant, and according to Oceana, as much as 21 percent of seafood is
04:31mislabeled. The worst offenders are restaurants and small markets, and among the most commonly
04:36mislabeled fish are sea bass and snapper. A shocking 55 percent of the time, customers
04:40weren't getting sea bass, and they weren't getting snapper 42 percent of the time.
04:44Instead, they were getting tilapia, or perch. Tilapia has also been labeled as Alaskan or
04:49Pacific cod. If you want to know what you're really getting, large chain grocery stores
04:53tend to have the best record when it comes to accurately labeling exactly what it is they're
04:56selling. So enjoy that tilapia you're eating, whether you know it's what you're eating or not.