Tilapia used to be a popular farm fish in Perak but the fish farmers have upgraded to more exotic and expensive species like 'Sultan fish' which was reportedly charged S$1,224 for the dish at the Resorts World Sentosa’s (RWS) Feng Shui Inn restaurant in Singapore.
Tilapia is so common and hardy that if we were to look closely at a big monsoon drain, chances are we can see some swimming in it! Sometimes, heavy rain caused fish ponds to overflow and fish escaped into drains, streams and rivers. Cheng forwarded the following link because the fish reminded her of home:
Another Side of Tilapia, the Perfect Factory Fish
Excerpt:
AGUA AZUL, Honduras — A common Bible story says Jesus fed 5,000 people with five loaves and two fish, which scholars surmise were tilapia.
But at the Aquafinca fish farm here, a modern miracle takes place daily: Tens of thousands of beefy, flapping tilapia are hauled out of teeming cages on Lake Yojoa, converted to fillets in a cold slaughterhouse and rushed onto planes bound for the United States, where some will appear on plates within 12 hours.
Americans ate 475 million pounds of tilapia last year, four times the amount a decade ago, making this once obscure African native the most popular farmed fish in the United States. Although wild fish predominate in most species, a vast majority of the tilapia consumed in the United States is “harvested” from pens or cages in Latin America and Asia.
Compared with other fish, farmed tilapia contains relatively small amounts of beneficial omega-3 fatty acids, the fish oils that are the main reasons doctors recommend eating fish frequently; salmon has more than 10 times the amount of tilapia. Also, farmed tilapia contains a less healthful mix of fatty acids because the fish are fed corn and soy instead of lake plants and algae, the diet of wild tilapia.
“It may look like fish and taste like fish but does not have the benefits — it may be detrimental,” said Dr. Floyd Chilton, a professor of physiology and pharmacology at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center who specializes in fish lipids.
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