For thousands of years people have known the benefits of fish toward maintaining a healthy weight, and a healthy heart. The Omega-3 fatty acids and other nutrients found in fish are thought to reduce your chance for a heart attack by a third or more. However, what many studies don’t specify is how the fish needs to be cook in order for it to be beneficial to your health.
Although fish itself is very healthy, the benefits can be completely outweighed by the negative effects of frying the fish.
A study was conducted over a 10 year period which monitored the eating habits and health of 85,000 postmenopausal women. The women who ate five or more servings of fish each week had a 30% lower risk of having a heart attack. However, this was only true if the fish was baked or broiled.
Frying the fish is actually so unhealthy that you would be better off to just not eat fish at all. Eating just one serving of fried fish per week was shown to cause a 48% higher risk of heart attack, even after the researchers calculated for the overall diet and medical history of these participants. You not only lose the health benefit of the fish, but the meal becomes quite harmful.
Donald Lloyd-Jones, M.D. is the chair of preventive medicine at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, in Evanston, Illinois. He stated, “How you prepare fish is just as — if not more — important than the type of fish in terms of seeing benefits… This may not be earth-shattering news, but it is important to get people focused on a healthy diet, because that is what helps us avoid disease.”
In addition to the positive benefits of baked and broiled fish in our diet, Lloyd-Jones also found that certain types of fish are much healthier than others. Dark, oily fish such as mackerel and salmon are associated with a lower risk of heart failure, while tuna and white fish were not beneficial. However, all baked and broiled fish provide a healthy meat that is much lower in fat than red meat or even chicken.
Omega-3 may not be the only benefit of fish, however. Researchers used surveys to study participants total intake of omega-3 fatty acids, including those from dietary supplements. They found no direct link between the omega-3 and reduced rates of heart failure. This seems to tell us that it’s the whole fish, rather than solely its oil, that provide the benefit.
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