You are what you eat

by Dr Neil Auchterlonie, Technical Director, IFFO

The readers of International Aquafeed will all be well-versed in the need for adequate nutrition for farmed fish, and an understanding that nutritional needs go well beyond the requirement for macronutrients into a full range of micronutrients.

With at least 550 farmed aquatic species, of which more than 200 are fed, there is a lot to understand about how these requirements vary across species, and even within specific different life stages of a single species, customisable even further to different geographic regions, temperatures and farming systems.
 

As the situation is with farmed fish, so it is with human nutrition and the implications for health.  Nutrition, and especially the importance of micronutrients, is frequently under-valued.  This week in the UK the BBC reported on the tragic case of a teenage boy in the UK who had developed some permanent sight loss after years of being what was described as a “picky eater”.

A predominantly junk food diet had resulted in the boy presenting clinically with some sight and hearing loss, associated with low levels of certain vitamins such as B12 and D, and minerals such as copper and selenium.

This disturbing story is perhaps more of a reflection of the lack of understanding of the importance of nutrition for health in the general population at the current time.  The story came shortly after another media story regarding the health impacts of a reduced choline intake on those who choose vegan or vegetarian diets.  (Choline is found predominantly in animal-origin foods and has important physiological function.)

What struck me most about these stories was that the micronutrients mentioned as lacking in the human diet are all found in fishmeal.  As the cornerstone of aquafeeds, one can’t help but think of the association between meeting the needs of the farmed fish through fishmeal and fish oil providing appropriate nutrition and the subsequent relationship with the quality (and especially the micronutrient content) of the aquaculture end-product.

Read the full article, https://issuu.com/international_aquafeed/docs/iaf1910_w1/8HERE.

The Aquaculturists

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