Ordinary Gweilo

I recently mentioned one of the latest health scares, over farmed salmon. These type of stories appear regularly, and they intrigue me for a couple of reasons – firstly because you sometimes need to check who is behind the scare stories, and secondly because you can almost guarantee that another study will appear later that will contradict or at least cast doubt on the scare.  Sometimes the counter-argument appears almost immediately, sometimes it takes months or years, probably depending upon whether there is any company or other organization that has a strong interest in the subject, and whether it has an effect on sales of the product(s).

A couple of the recent scare stories that come to mind:

• All fried food is carconogenic – no-one quite believed it, and further research established that it was apparently not true.
• Excessive amounts of vitamin C can be bad for you – the UK government is introducing legislation to stop the sale of large doses.

Interestingly, the salmon story does not seem to have had any significant effect on sales (in the UK), which suggests either that people are cynical about these scares or that they were already convinced by the research about eating oily fish being good for the heart – or possibly that salmon is cheap these days and people enjoy eating it!

The Scotsman has followed-up on the salmon story comprehensively, as you would expect given the importance of salmon fishing in Scotland, and is, unsurprisingly, defending the industry. This is not a new story, and Private Eye has been running it for several years.  There was also a BBC documentary on the subject a while back, and the reporter on that programme felt vindicated by the latest study and wrote about it, again in The Scotsman, arguing that he has been vindicated. The ordinary reader is, unfortunately, left confused by the conflicting claims.

As is often the case. there appears to be a genuine dilemma.  If salmon (and other oily fish) is good for you, how much difference does it make if there is an increased risk of cancer?  By the same token, if Vitamin C is good for you, can you have too much of it?

Fortunately, The Economist managed to analyze the evidence on salmon and explain why different conclusions are being drawn (mainly because there are several potentially dangerous organochlorines in salmon and some scientists believe all of them cause liver cancer through the same mechanism, whereas others believe they work in different ways). They also point out that wild salmon probably eat the same smaller fish, so ought to be equally contaminated, but the recent study didn’t investigate that issue.

One benefit of controversies such as this one is that it can have beneficial effects in the longer term, because it should be possible to reduce the levels of organochlorides if it is established that they do present a danger to health. However, as with intensively-reared chickens there will probably always be doubts about farmed fish, which brings us to another interesting question – is cheap food worth the risks that are involved?