Systemic changes in aquaculture impacting the fatty acid composition of commercial aquaculture products reported in FoodData Central.

USDA’s FoodData Central is a suite of databases that continues the mission of providing accurate composition data to Americans. For the Foundation Foods database we sampled seafood representative of what is available in the marketplace for consumers.  With eight samples from vendors or distributors, five types of fish were selected: farmed Atlantic salmon, wild-caught sockeye salmon, farmed catfish, farmed tilapia and wild-caught cod. Skinned fillets were cryogenically pulverized and converted by acid-catalyzed transesterification to fatty acid methyl esters which were analyzed by GC-FID and GC-CI-MS.    This work captures several trends in aquaculture that may have an impact on human nutrition. In the previous 2008 collection, wild-caught sockeye salmon contained ALA, EPA, and DHA at 0.047, 0.251, and 0.471 grams per 100 grams of fish, with respective decreases to 0.020, 0.210, and 0.324 grams per 100 grams of fish in the most recent acquisition.  By comparison, in farmed Atlantic salmon EPA and DHA dropped from 0.862 and 1.10 grams per 100 grams of fish in 2008 to 0.317 and 0.584 grams per 100 grams of fish, respectively, with concomitant increases in ALA (from 0.148 to 0.538 grams per 100 grams of fish for 2008 and 2023, respectively.  These changes came with increases in oleic acid (2.72 to 4.10 grams/100 grams) and linoleic acid (0.90 to 2.18 grams per 100 grams). This change reflects the impact of changes in aquaculture as producers move to terrestrial plant-based diets and economize on the use of DHA and EPA-rich oils.  Inclusion of other farmed and wild species in this work revealed distinct fatty acid markers for farmed fish that are independent of species and demonstrate the impact of the stock management practices human nutrition.