How To Introduce More Fish into Your Diet
Paella. Philippe Gama from Lorena, Brasil.
How To Introduce More Fish into Your Diet
By Dale Mayo, October 6, 2022
Many trusted medical organizations recommend that we eat seafood at least twice a week. Fish is a low-fat, high quality protein loaded with omega-3 fatty acids, vitamins (B2 and D), minerals (iron, zinc, iodine, magnesium, and potassium), other nutrients (choline), calcium, and phosphorous. Seafood is good for everyone – adults, children, and pregnant women. The Federal Drug Administration and Environmental Protection Agency have developed a chart that shows dozens of healthy and safe options and includes information about the nutritional value of fish. [1]Seafood is easy to fit into your diet. It can be eaten as a main ingredient or a side with breakfast, lunch, or dinner. You can serve up an elegant meal in a short time using your favorite way to cook - baking, grilling, frying or sauteing, or even making soup or stew. Seafood can stand alone as an entrée or be used as an ingredient in a larger dish like a casserole, pasta, taco, or salad.
When you introduce the brain-boosting benefits of seafood to young children, start early and choose a mild-tasting fish like cod, haddock, halibut, or catfish. Adding seafood to a pasta sauce or making kid-friendly fish cakes with a tasty dip can make it easier to entice cautious eaters to try it. [2] If you find yourself on your own, you can find some tasty seafood recipes at www.onedishkitchen.com
Seafood for breakfast, lunch, dinner, or a snack
Here are some ways of adding seafood to any meal of the day:
Breakfast
Smoked salmon on a bagel is not the only way to have seafood at breakfast.
You can add some crab or shrimp to an omelet along with spinach, onion, cherry tomatoes, and/or cheese. For an even heartier breakfast, try Alaska salmon potato breakfast hash or shrimp and grits (good any time of day). Spreads and dips are not only to be served as appetizers, a little crab dip or wild smoked king salmon dip on crackers or salmon salad and bacon toast make a good breakfast, snack or dinner accompaniment.
Grilled shrimp and vegetable salad. by Neeta Lind
Lunch and Dinner
Seafood is a great protein alternative for red meat and poultry. To keep it simple, you can bake, grill, broil, fry, or sauté seafood that you then add to another type of dish.
- Any salad (fresh greens, Greek, Caesar, arugula, or horiatiki) can be improved with a serving of grilled or baked salmon (or fish of your choice), scallops, calamari, or a handful of North Carolina shrimp. Seafood can also be the main ingredient of a salad: tuna salad niçoise, salmon.
- Pasta and seafood are made for each other – clams, calamari, lobster, and shrimp. There’s an easy recipe from America’s Test Kitchen in a 10-minute YouTube video that shows how to make Spaghettini with Shrimp using homemade stock. [3] Paella is a great Spanish rice dish that can be adapted to include only seafood, or seafood and other meats and vegetables.
- There are lots of Japanese, Thai, Vietnamese, Indian and Chinese seafood dishes that include ingredients like ginger, curry, brown sauce, coconut milk, and can be served with rice or noodles.
- Burgers can be made from a variety of seafood, like shrimp or fresh tuna.
- Sandwiches, rolls, or po’ boys are made from a variety of seafood and are especially popular where the seafood is caught fresh. Fortunately, they can be made from fresh frozen seafood, as well: lobster, shrimp, and catfish.
- Fish tacos have become popular for a reason – they’re really tasty and good for you. They can be made with any kind of seafood – fried mahi-mahi, chipotle sablefish, paleo salmon, baked catfish, grouper, scallops, or grilled shrimp. Seafood tacos are usually served with a citrusy slaw or mango salsa, which makes it a meal in your hand.
Halibut tacos with cilantro lime sauce
- You can add fish, shrimp, scallops, crab or lobster to stews in place of chicken or beef. Seafood stews and soups also stand-alone, like cioppino or bouillabaisse – select a large flake or firm white fish like cod, catfish, rockfish, grouper, or haddock. A simple recipe for a healthy, flavorful, filling meal can be found in Joel Fuhrman’s Eat To Live cookbook:
Eat more seafood!
A recent article in Nature states that “replacing meat with certain types of sustainably sourced seafood could help people to reduce their carbon footprints without compromising on nutrition, finds an analysis of dozens of marine species that are consumed worldwide.” [4] That makes adding more seafood to your diet a win-win for your family’s health – good for your body and good for the earth. When you order
seafood from Sizzlefish, you can count on getting high-quality fish, shellfish, and crustaceans from sustainable sources.
While I have not used all of the recipes linked to in this article, I have looked at hundreds of recipes online and in cookbooks to select the most popular recipes or most trustworthy sources. ~ D.W.M.
- https://www.fda.gov/food/consumers/advice-about-eating-fish; https://www.fda.gov/media/102331/download
- https://www.todaysparent.com/sponsored/adding-seafood-to-family-diet/
- America’s Test Kitchen. (2021, November 24). Today’s Special with Ashley Moore: Make a Stock with Shrimp Shells for the Most Flavorful Shrimp Pasta [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cd5IlOSoLpQ
- Coleman, J. (2022). Eat more fish: when switching to seafood helps — and when it doesn’t, Nature. September 13, 2022. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-02928-w
