Throw back the tilapia, now!

By John Trump

Published: July 11, 2008

Much like the Peanuts character Pig Pen, a dark cloud that makes it difficult to see what’s in front of me has tailed me in recent months. Pig Pen was enveloped in dust. I rather, am surrounded by a dense, reverse pixie-dust type film that clouds my judgment and makes it hard to see – I found no other explanation for continually stubbing my toes on the wheels of the world’s largest suitcase that my wife has strategically placed in our bedroom.
We’ve been home from vacation for more than a week, but we continue to live out of the immovable monster case. No airline, unless we’re booked on a C-130, would allow it on board.
The suitcase thing would be fine if I could see the ocean from my bedroom window, as opposed to a major county highway usually framed with a cat and one of a couple dozen miniature Sprint Cup cars, which we buy for one of the 5-year-olds each time someone changes teams or NASCAR has a great idea, such as the monumentally boring Car of Tomorrow.
Examples dropped from the cloud include our decision to buy a large pickup just as gas prices began to skyrocket and our decision – my wife and I – to eliminate meats from our diet for a month. We’ve allowed ourselves the option of fish – salmon, tuna, whitefish, catfish, mahi-mahi and inexpensive, good-for-you tilapia.
Hold on there. Throw that last one back, Wake Forest University researchers say. Tilapia is bad for you, worse than doughnuts and cheeseburgers. Might as well eat a double-chili-cheeseburger buried in pastrami, corn dogs, onion rings, eggs and Utah fry sauce as eat a fresh, farmed-raised tilapia. Maybe I’m exaggerating, but, I must admit, it’s fun.
Still, put down your fork and back away from the fish. The beekeepers will be here momentarily to dispose of it in a site used to hide nuclear waste.
This week, the researchers reported that farm-raised tilapia—the fifth most popular fish consumed in the United States —has very low levels of beneficial omega-3 fatty acids, according to a story in the Winston-Salem Journal.
“Perhaps worse, it contains very high levels of omega-6 fatty acids,” the researchers said.
“See,” I said to my wife, “I told you the omega-6 fatty acids were the bad ones.”
“Yes, you did,” she said, tearing up. “You’re so smart, which is one of the reasons I love you and could never live without you.”
OK, she didn’t really say that.
To be honest, her response was more like, “Yeah, whatever. Eat a cheeseburger then.”
The story says the fish “could be a potentially dangerous food source for some patients with heart disease, arthritis, asthma and other allergic and auto-immune diseases that are particularly vulnerable to an ‘exaggerated inflammatory response.’”
That doesn’t sound good, even if you don’t really understand what it means.
Inflammation, the Journal reported, is known to cause damage to blood vessels, the heart, lung and joint tissues, skin and the digestive tract.
“We are all familiar with the classical Hippocratic admonition, ‘First, do no harm,’” said Dr. Floyd “Ski” Chilton, a professor of physiology and pharmacology and the director of the Wake Forest Center for Botanical Lipids. “I think it behooves us to consider this critical directive when making dietary prescriptions for the sake of health.
“Cardiologists are telling their patients to go home and eat fish, and if the patients are poor, they’re eating tilapia. And that could translate into a dangerous situation,” he told the paper.
People on food budgets – and that includes most of us – are told to steer clear of processed foods, which are filled with sugar, nasty trans fat and layers of salt and other tasty chemicals. Now, the food patrol is taking away our affordable fish. What’s next? Is someone going to announce that canned tuna packed in pure vegetable oil is bad for us, or that catfish deep-fried in lard could harden our arteries?
Tilapia, which are increasing in popularity, are one of the world’s most farmed species. But, in pop culture terms, the Wake report is akin to Queen Tilapia being caught driving with a fin full of newly hatched yet unsecured fish eggs in the front seat of her jeep.
So, I suppose we will now forego the tilapia, which frankly has limited taste unless it is heavily seasoned and dropped in a pool of sauce. We plan on adding sea bass to the menu, but—because it’s about 25 bucks a pound—we’re still waiting to hear from bank regarding that home equity loan.
What’s next? Is someone going to tell me people are turning to the Internet for their news rather than depending on newspapers and broadcast TV? Nah, that won’t happen.

John Trump is group editor of the Rockingham County (N.C.) group of newspapers. Reach him at .