Silver Salmon - also known as Coho - is the unsung culinary star of Alaska's wild harvest. 

Our Silver Salmon is wonderfully moist, despite having less fat and fewer calories than Sockeye or King.

(Although Silver is 30% leaner than Sockeye, it offers just as many omega-3s ... about 2,000 mg per 6 oz portion.)

Unlike our Sockeye and King, Vital Choice Silver Salmon portions come with the skin on one side, which helps keep them moist on the grill.

Certified Kosher by EarthK.

If you haven't tried our Wild Red Sockeye Salmon you're in for a treat, because it tastes much fresher than standard supermarket brands.

The rich, red color of the meat and oil is unlike any you're likely to have had before.

Our minimal processing methods ensure that you'll get the maximum amount of nutrients naturally abundant in Sockeye Salmon.

These include omega-3s, vitamin D, and astaxanthin: the super-potent carotene-class antioxidant that gives the oil brimming in every can of Wild Red its bright orange-red color. (The liquid in standard canned Salmon is pallid and watery by comparison.)
 

Choose Skinless-Boneless Wild Red, or Traditional Style with skin and soft edible bones for extra flavor and ample calcium.

Both kinds are available with salt (less than is added to most brands) or without added salt ... and several varieties come in EZ-Open pull-tab tops.

“You are providing a wonderful health-giving service to the planet with your business. And it is a pleasure to bring this information to my audience. It is also a pleasure to snap open these little cans of salmon and have an instant healthy meal!”

-- Christiane Northrup, M.D.

The death of widely liked and admired NBC political newsman Tim Russert from coronary heart disease last week came as a complete surprise to his doctors.

He showed none of the symptoms that would normally lead to invasive tests that might have revealed his high degree of risk.

According to his doctors, Mr. Russert’s autopsy revealed an enlarged heart and significant atherosclerosis (plaque buildup) of the left anterior descending coronary artery.

When the plaque in this artery burst, it threw off a fresh clot that blocked the artery. This blockage caused a heart attack, which simply means that heart muscle cells suffer from lack of oxygen and begin to die.

In turn, the heart attack caused a fatal ventricular arrhythmia, which was the immediate cause of death.

No single food or lifestyle factor can prevent all heart attacks or sudden cardiac deaths.

But a new epidemiological study adds possible heart protection to the fast-growing list of potential benefits associated with vitamin D.

Harvard study links higher vitamin D to reduced heart risk

Researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health reviewed the medical records and blood samples of 454 men between 40 and 75, selected from among 18,225 men who’d participated in the Health Professionals Follow-up Study.

 

Fish fit the vitamin D bill; Sockeye salmon stand out Certain fish rank among the very few substantial food sources of vitamin D, far outranking milk and other D-fortified foods. Among fish, wild Sockeye Salmon may be the richest source of all, with a single 3.5 ounce serving surpassing the US RDA of 400 IU by about 70 percent:   Vitamin D per 3.5 ounce serving* Sockeye Salmon  687 IU Albacore Tuna  544 IU Silver Salmon  430 IU King Salmon  236 IU Sardines  222 IU Sablefish  169 IU Halibut  162 IU   *For our full test results, click here.

At the outset of the original study, the participants had provided blood samples and completed questionnaires on diet and lifestyle factors

The men selected for the new analysis had either died from heart disease or suffered a non-fatal heart attack during the first 10 years following their enrollment.

At the time they enrolled, all the men were free of diagnosed cardiovascular disease.

To conduct the new analysis, the Harvard team compared data from these 454 “cases” with data from 900 healthy “control” men with no history of heart disease (Giovannucci E et al. 2008).

Results indicate possible heart-protective effect of vitamin D

The Harvard team’s analysis showed that during a decade of followup, men with low blood levels of vitamin D (15ng/mL) were more than twice as likely (i.e., 142 percent more likely) to have died from heart disease or suffered a heart attack, compared with men whose blood levels are considered sufficient, albeit far short of optimal (30ng/mL).

And even men with intermediate vitamin D levels (22.6-29.9 ng/mL) were 60 percent more likely to have died from ...

Last week, the eco-activists at Greenpeace ranked the nation’s major supermarket chains according to how much of their fish and seafood is harvested sustainably.

We regret the report's tendency to assign Greenpeace an unearned role as sole arbiter of sustainability. (See “Greenpeace puts self on pedestal”, below.)

But overall, we find their findings on target.

It came as little surprise that even the highest ranked chain – Whole Foods Market – received only 36.5 out of 100 possible points on the eco-organization’s sustainability scale.

(We’ve invited Greenpeace to rank Vital Choice for their next report … see “Doing our part”, below).

The press release announcing the report puts the situation accurately:

“Our oceans - the world's last great wilderness – are in crisis. Destructive fishing practices, lack of marine reserves and global warming are threatening the survival of fisheries, fishing communities, and the health of marine ecosystems.”

 

Doing our part: Sustainability at Vital Choice Most of our fish and seafood products are certified (current) sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council, using credible methodologies.   And the rest of our seafood comes from fisheries that possess credible stamps of sustainability from Alaska’s state agencies.   For the full story, go to our Sustainability page.   We try to support and spread the principles and practice of seafood sustainability via our Website and e-letter.   We’ve published many articles on seafood sustainability… click HERE and search for “sustainability” and “farm”.   Vital Choice also distributes thousands of free Monterey Bay Aquarium “Seafood Watch” wallet cards to customers, and we donate very substantial sums annually to credible eco-orgs like The Natural Resources Defense Council, Environmental Defense, The Monterey Bay Aquarium, The Blue Ocean Institute, and others.

And the report cites United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) statistics showing that three-quarters of commercially valuable fish stocks are fully exploited, overexploited or depleted.

It goes on to cite widely reported scientific estimates that 90 percent of large predatory fish have already been lost and that the world’s commercial fisheries could collapse within the next 40 years.

But as Greenpeace paper says, “While this paints a dire picture of the future, it is clear that together we have the tools to turn things around, but we must act quickly.”

Greenpeace believes that one potentially effective action is to pressure supermarkets to avoid overfished species … and that makes some sense to us.

Greenpeace report gives all supermarkets failing grades

According to the new Greenpeace report, consumers buy half their seafood at supermarkets, where annual seafood sales total about $16 billion.

The report, titled “Carting Away the Oceans”, alleges that the top 20 U.S. supermarkets select seafood with little regard for sustainability.

Greenpeace awarded chains points for policies and product selections that promote sustainability, with a maximum of 100 possible points.

With 36.5 points, Whole Foods Market topped the rankings. But the large natural supermarket chain was followed closely by Harris Teeter and Ahold USA – owner of Stop & Shop and Giant supermarkets – both of which earned 35.9 points.

Each of the 17 remaining major chains scored less than 30 points from Greenpeace, including Wegman’s, Target, Wal-Mart, Safeway, Costco, and Kroger’s.

And out of the under-30-points group, 10 chains – including Publix, Price Chopper, and Trader Joe’s – earned less than 15 points each.

Here’s how Greenpeace described ...

It’s the most common caution printed in connection with advice to take fish oil supplements. Supplement labels and doctors alike are prone to warn against exceeding recommended doses or combining fish oil with blood thinning drugs.

In fact, the pages from which we sell our own Salmon Oil supplements (click here to view them) bear similar cautions.

And the reason is a long-standing assumption that omega-3s thin the blood, making bleeding easier and clotting harder.

This example comes from the American Heart Association (AHA) Web page on fish and supplemental omega-3 fatty acids:

“Patients taking more than 3 grams of omega-3 fatty acids from capsules should do so only under a physician’s care.  High intakes could cause excessive bleeding in some people.”

How much fish oil is enough? As reported in a past Vital Choices article (see “How Much Sockeye Salmon Oil Should I Take?”), a panel of experts in fatty acid nutrition recommended that healthy people consume about 660 mg of omega-3s (EPA+DHA) per day.    Few people take more than one gram (1,000 mg) of supplemental omega-3s (EPA+DHA) – the amount recommended to heart patients by the AHA – daily.   Fish oil contain other fatty acids besides omega-3s (EPA and DHA), with even chemically concentrated fish oils containing only about 30 percent omega-3s.   You would get just under 1,000 mg of omega-3s (EPA+DHA) from six of our whole, unrefined, un-manipulated 1,000 mg Salmon Oil capsules.   And you’d get about 1,000 mg of omega-3s (EPA+DHA) in three to four 1,000 mg capsules of standard (molecularly distilled and concentrated) fish oil.   Folks who take fish oil and eat fatty fish frequently can easily exceed one gram per day, since a standard 3.5 oz serving of Sockeye Salmon provides about 1,200 mg of omega-3s (EPA+DHA).

But when a respected expert in omega-3s and cardiovascular health scrutinized the medical literature, he could find no scientific justification for these concerns.

His experience was like that of the physicians who recently undertook to find the source of the common medical advice to drink eight full glasses of water (one gallon) daily.

After an exhaustive search of the medical literature, they concluded that this watery nostrum – repeated for decades by physicians and health writers, ad nauseum – is a medical myth that lacks any credible basis.

Bleeding beliefs hold no water, either

Like the doctors on the trail of the elusive 1/2 gallon-a-day water-needs claim, William Harris, Ph.D. recently sought evidence for the oft-repeated claim that omega-3s can promote bleeding.

There are plausible biological reasons – related to the influences that omega-3s exert on key metabolic agents called eicosanoids – to propose that high doses of omega-3s (or omega-3s combined with blood-thinning drugs) might promote bleeding.

We met William S. Harris, Ph.D., at the 2005 Seafood & Health conference in Washington, D.C.: a gathering sponsored by the U.S. government and attended by the world’s top experts in fish-related health fields.

Dr. Harris is a former professor of medicine at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and former co-director of the Lipid

William S. Harris, Ph.D.

and Diabetes Research Center at Saint Luke's Hospital in Kansas City. (He now serves as Director of Nutrition and Metabolic Diseases Research at the University of South Dakota Health Research Foundation.)

As someone who’s worked closely with cardiac surgeons and has access to virtually all scientific journals, Bill Harris was well-equipped to find any and all relevant evidence.

He started by asking this question: “What is the evidence that taking long-chain omega-3 fatty acids in doses of ...

The results of two clinical trials confirm that "high" doses of vitamin D are safe and that doses four times greater than the US RDA are barely adequate to maintain minimally healthful levels.

The new findings support the flood of research linking higher vitamin D levels – whether from sun exposure, supplements, or fatty fish – to reduced rates of a wise range of disease conditions.

Researchers at the American University of Beirut-Medical Center, Lebanon conducted two placebo-controlled clinical trials in children aged 10 to 17.

We met chef and cookbook author Rebecca Katz at the recent Food as Medicine conference – which she serves as Executive Chef – and found her to be delightful company and extremely savvy about the connection between health and food.

Rebecca has consulted, lectured, and done culinary demonstrations for leading health care institutions including Manhattan’s Cornell Medical Center, University of California at San Francisco (UCSF) Medical School, and Johns Hopkins Medicine. 

She is also the Senior Chef at the internationally acclaimed Commonweal Cancer Help Program in Bolinas, California, and founder of the Inner Cook, a culinary business focused on teaching individuals and communities how to make healthy connections with food.

Amazon.com carries her wonderful book, One Bite at a Time: Nourishing Recipes for Cancer Survivors and Their Friends.

This week’s delicious recipes come from her Healthy Cook column in Guideposts magazine. Here’s how Rebecca describes them:

“In putting together my book, One Bite at a Time, the miso Salmon with lime-ginger glaze and the jicama (pronounced HEE-ka-mah) salad were two of my favorite recipes. They go so great together!”

 “The flavors in the Salmon dish compliment one another: the touch of sesame oil provides fat (unsaturated, the good kind), the lime contributes the acid that unlocks the Salmon's flavor, the miso gives a hint of salt and the mirin (a Japanese sweet rice wine) adds a gentle flavor.”

Note: Miso is fermented soy bean paste, and is available at natural food markets and Asian groceries. It is usually used to make a broth, but serves as a seasoning in this recipe. Be sure you get mild "white" miso ... darker varieties will be too strong.
 

Miso Salmon with Lime-Ginger Glaze

This recipe comes to our readers thanks to Rebecca Katz.

Rebecca's Tips: "You can grill this dish too, but use caution: The marinade can burn easily if the grill is too hot.

Before grilling, wipe the marinade off of the Salmon, rub the Salmon with a teaspoon of sesame oil and ...