Every list of the healthiest fish is really a list of the oiliest fish, because the thing that separates great fish from merely good fish is omega-3. The long-chain kind, EPA and DHA, lives in the fat of cold-water oily fish and almost nowhere else in the food supply. So the podium picks itself from that family. Here are the three we would put on it, and why, with an honest word about the ones that nearly made it.
What are the top 3 healthiest fish?
1. Salmon
Predictable, but the predictable answer is correct. Salmon earns the top spot by doing everything at once: among the highest omega-3 contents of any commonly eaten fish, around 20g of protein per 100g, one of the best food sources of vitamin D in existence, plus B12, selenium and potassium. Just as important is what it lacks: as a relatively short-lived farmed or wild fish, salmon is low in mercury, which is what rules the big predator fish out of any health list.
Salmon also wins on a measure nutrition science rarely records: people actually eat it. The healthiest fish in the world does you no good if it stays in the sea. Salmon is mild enough for children, flexible enough for any cuisine, and available fresh, frozen, tinned, hot-smoked and cold-smoked. Whether the smoked version carries the same benefits is a fair question with a happy answer, covered in is smoked salmon actually healthy.
2. Sardines
The pound-for-pound champion, and criminally underrated in this country. Sardines carry a serious omega-3 dose of their own and then add a trick nothing else on this list can do: because you eat the soft bones, a tin of sardines delivers a serious dose of calcium, along with vitamin D to help absorb it. Bone food, in both senses.
Sardines are also small and short-lived, which puts them at the very bottom of the mercury table alongside salmon. They are about as sustainable as fish gets, and a tin costs less than a coffee. If your fish budget is tight, sardines are the best nutrition-per-euro purchase in the entire shop, and we say that as people who sell salmon.
3. Mackerel
The Irish entry, and the one you can catch off a pier in Howth on an August evening. Atlantic mackerel is arguably the richest omega-3 source of the three, with a deep, full flavour that needs nothing beyond heat and lemon. It carries the same vitamin D and B12 credentials as its podium-mates, and North Atlantic mackerel is low in mercury.
One clarification, because it trips people up: the advice to limit mackerel applies to king mackerel, a large tropical predator high in mercury. The Atlantic mackerel landed and smoked here is a different fish entirely and sits firmly on the safe list. Smoked mackerel pâté on brown bread is one of the great Irish lunches and a fine gateway for anyone nervous of stronger fish.
The nearly-men
Herring would make a top four without argument, omega-3-rich and historically the fish that fed this island. Trout is salmon’s gentler cousin and a fine choice. Tinned wild salmon and anchovies both punch far above their price. White fish like cod and hake are lean, clean protein, genuinely good food, but without the oils that get a fish onto this particular podium.
The fish to limit are the giants: shark, swordfish, marlin, and tuna to a lesser degree. Long lives at the top of the food chain mean accumulated mercury, which is why no large predator appears above.
What to actually do with this list
The official advice is two portions of fish a week, at least one oily. Any fish on this page covers the oily portion. The pattern that serves most households: salmon as the regular, because everyone will eat it, with sardines or mackerel rotating in for variety, conscience and the grocery budget. How often you can lean on the salmon specifically is answered in how often should you eat smoked salmon.
And if the gap between you and oily fish is cooking it, start with the forms that need none: smoked salmon over a grain bowl, tinned sardines on toast, smoked mackerel from the deli counter. Tinned counts fully, by the way; the canning process does the omega-3 no harm, and tinned sardines and salmon are among the most nutritious things in the entire shop per euro spent. The healthiest fish is the one that makes it onto the plate, and the second healthiest is the one that was no bother to get there.
From the smokehouse: we smoke salmon because it is the fish this harbour built its name on, but ask anyone who works here what they had for lunch and the answer is as often mackerel. The podium is a family affair.
Sources
- Fish, salmon, Atlantic, farmed, raw: nutrients, USDA FoodData Central
- Vitamin D, NHS
- Advice about eating fish, US FDA and EPA
- Fish, sardine, Atlantic, canned in oil, with bone: nutrients, USDA FoodData Central
- Fish, mackerel, Atlantic, raw: nutrients, USDA FoodData Central
