A wellness expert has slammed American food culture after making a startling discovery about Trader Joe’s salmon.
Emily Pesch is a gut health pro who frequently shares tips for looking and feeling good on TikTok, where she has amassed more than 498,000 followers.
Most recently, the health and wellness guru, based in Austin, Texas, traded her advice for criticism as she slammed food practices in the US.
In a now viral video, which has so far been viewed more than 918,000 times, Emily questioned why America had a slew of unnecessary additives in its food.
Emily admitted she was frustrated when she discovered that the frozen farm-raised salmon that she had purchased from the grocery chain featured ‘red dye number five,’ which is a known cancer-causing chemical.
Wellness expert Emily Pesch has slammed American food culture after making a startling discovery about Trader Joe’s salmon
The viral clip was captioned: ‘Keep your red dye number five out of my salmon, thank you!’
Emily explained that she had purchased a piece of farm-raised salmon from Trader Joe’s, admitting that while she tends to opt for wild-caught fish, she was on a budget this week.
‘I’m sorry but why are we a country like this? I got this salmon from Trader Joe’s and I didn’t get wild salmon because it was a little bit more expensive and I’m going out of town halfway through the week so I didn’t know for sure if I would be able to cook it,’ she said at the start of the clip.
She noted that she went for the ‘cheaper’ option – adding that she knows she should have splurged.
Holding the label to camera, Emily added: ‘I’m looking at the ingredients [and it says] “Atlantic salmon and color added.”
‘This is the second salmon that I have gotten in the past two months that has had color added.
‘I don’t need you to add color to my salmon for me to eat it, like why do we do this?’
People on the web flooded the comments section and expressed their own frustrations with finding food dye in their foods.
In a now viral video, which has so far been viewed more than 918,000 times, Emily questioned why America had a slew of unnecessary additives in its food
People on the web flooded the comments section and expressed their frustration with finding food dye in their foods
One person said: ‘Reposting because I don’t know why either.’
Someone else wrote: ‘I pay two times more for salmon from Whole Foods for this reason.’
Another user added: ‘Pickles also have added color – I always read the labels now!’
‘I feel the same way,’ one user commented.
Farm-raised salmon has recently been outed as being bad for the environment as well as for human health.
This is because the salmon are often raised in crowded environments, which makes the spread of disease more likely.
They are also known to contain high levels of chemicals, which have been linked to a slew of health issues.
In the clip, Emily noted that the piece of salmon she purchased had ‘red dye number five’ in it, however, experts note a different dye is often used in farmed salmon (stock image)
In the clip, Emily noted that the piece of salmon she purchased had ‘red dye number five’ in it, however, experts note a different dye is often used in farmed salmon.
According to Aquaculture Stewardship Council: ‘Astaxanthin is added to the food of farmed salmon because they need these nutrients but can’t hunt krill and shrimp like wild salmon do.
‘It’s part of the process of raising healthy salmon. There is no before or after, because there is no part of the farming process that calls for salmon to be dyed.’
Wild-caught salmon is often the preferred fish due to its low levels of contaminants.
A representative for Trader Joe’s told DailyMail.com: ‘Trader Joe’s products do not include any artificial colors. Rather, we use only colors derived from naturally available products like plants (e.g. beets, beta carotene, turmeric, annatto, and paprika) and minerals (e.g. titanium dioxide or ferrous gluconate).
‘To understand what Color Added means for Farmed Salmon, we have to explain Wild Salmon first. Wild Salmon naturally feed on organisms in the wild. These organisms along with naturally occurring molecules called carotenoids in their body, provide astaxanthin to the salmon which gives the wild salmon the natural red or orange red color.
‘For Farmed Salmon, they are provided feed only, therefore, they do not get the same carotenoids naturally from the environment, so the farms have to add astaxanthin to the feed (which is naturally occurring in plants and animals) to the feed so that the color is the orange you see today. Without this, the salmon would be pale brown.’
