A licensed acupuncturist will offer you nutritional advice for your particular constitution or medical condition based upon the principles of Traditional Chinese Medicine(TCM).  You will be advised to eat whole foods over supplements.  For example, you would be advised to eat salmon instead of taking a fish oil supplement and iron supplements.  You would be advised to eat hearts of palm or eggs for calcium instead of taking a calcium supplement.  The reason for this is that the less processed food is, the more “chi” or vital energy it retains, so by the time a supplement is manufactured from its source it is virtually totally devoid of any of the life-energy or chi that was orginially in it.  The rule of thumb in choosing food that still retains a lot of “chi” is if it still looks the same as it did in nature and if it is still fresh, it still has chi.

Fish are an excellent source of nutrition.  They can be especially good for treating the TCM diagnoses of yin deficiency or blood deficiency.  The following is advice on how to choose quality fish to eat from Nick Rose, Nutritionist from PCC Natural Market.

 

At PCC, we refer to the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch Guide to help us choose which seafood options are best for sustainability.  <a href=” http://www.pccnaturalmarkets.com/products/standards.html#seafood “>PCC Product Guide

 

By using this guide, PCC never carries farmed salmon, only wild Alaskan/Washington salmon. 

 

For trout, PCC should only be carrying farm-raised-rainbow trout, never wild caught trout, (unless it is from Lake Superior or Lake Michigan) because wild trout species are at risk for being over-harvested.  You can read here on the Seafood Watch page, about why farmed trout are a more sustainable choice than wild trout. See:  Monterey Bay Seafood Watch Program

and much more here:  Monterey Bay Seafood: Farmed Trout

Referring to the Seafood Watch guide is a very useful resource (we always have wallet-sized guides in our seafood cases-for you to carry with you) because sometimes wild is a better choice, and sometimes farmed is a better choice.  In this case, farmed is the better choice for sustainability.  When you shop at PCC, you can trust that you are always making a sustainable choice: according to Greenpeace, PCC has the most sustainable selection of seafood in the entire US: Greenpeace.

 

As for tilapia – you may know that this fish is always “farmed”…did you know that some tilapia farms are more sustainable than others?  US-raised tilapia is the Best Choice for sustainability according to Seafood Watch Factsheet: a handy table to refer to:  <a href=” http://www.montereybayaquarium.org//cr/SeafoodWatch/web/sfw_factsheet.aspx?gi…“>Seafood Watch Factsheet.

 

Let me know if you have any questions!  I can be reached at:  Nick Rose, MS  Nutrition Educator / PCC Natural Markets

206.547.1222 (ext. 140) / nick.rose@pccsea.com / www.pccnaturalmarkets.com