Seems like no one really gives a shit about the literal shit that comes out of Southeast Asia.
Haha of course we give a shit about you, you purple menace you. I thought the points you were bringing up were going to be the main topic of the thread, with "tilapia is for poor people" being a close second.
So, a little backstory. I didn't eat tilapia regularly until recently. I was vaguely aware of the warnings, didn't look into it much further , so just avoided it. There was other seafood I liked, there were other proteins I liked and my plant intake has gone up a lot in the last few years, so I wasn't missing anything. Maybe about a year or two years ago, we were at the grocery store and needed some white fish for a fish salad. We both said let's not do tilapia, so we got basa, which neither of us had heard of at that time. When we got home I looked it up and I was surprised that its nutritional profile was so different from tilapia. Did a little research and was like, tilapia's a pretty decent fish, especially if you get it from a place that raises it responsibly, blah, blah blah. Still didn't start eating it regularly until amazon bought whole foods and dropped the price late last year.
Fast forward to a few weeks ago. Was watching the finale of the show top chef with my wife and one of the challenges is catching a fish from a river and cooking it in 30 minutes. One of the contestants takes a long time to catch her fish and she says that she's only going to have time to make a trout sushi. We looked at each other and were like "Can you make that? I've never seen trout sushi." The show judge familiar with the area said that it's not safe to eat undercooked fish from that river because the wildlife around there shits in it and the fish live in a contaminated environment. They ended up disqualifying her dish. so there's two interesting aspects about that to me. 1- There's the acknowledgement that the fresh, wild caught fish is not necessarily safe. 2)It's a "fancy" cooking show, so there's the aspect of these gourmands eating fish that just came out of toilet water.
So, this got me thinking about how a lot of people consider tilapia. It has such a negative reputation, but a lot of the things that it gets derided for either aren't negatives or aren't really unique to farmed fish. Wild caught fish aren't necessarily less likely to carry disease or toxins. There is an increase in the amount of sushi places using farmed fish not only because of price, but because it is generally considered safer and more consistent. Farming fish is the best way to guarantee sustainability. Part of the reason tilapia exploded in the last 15 years is because there was a gap in the market after some other fish variants collapsed. We don't get any other food, much less a major protein, in any other way. In terms of health, even with lower Omega 3s than wild caught, farmed tilapia still has a high level of them.
I specifically was not addressing you because I think some of the things you posted are the most legitimate concerns about the rise of cheap tilapia, but I also think it reasonable to question how widespread and how dangerous those concerns are.
