Mike
In a recent TikTok, Emily Pesch (@whoisemilypesch) stumbled onto a fishy situation—literally—when she took a closer look at her Trader Joe’s salmon fillet. And honestly, her reaction sums up what a lot of us were probably thinking.
“Why are we like this as a country?” Pesch asks, clearly baffled.
Turns out, she usually buys wild salmon but opted for the cheaper farmed kind since she was heading out of town and wasn’t sure if she’d finish the whole thing. But then, her eyes landed on two unexpected words on the packaging:
“Color added.”
Cue the confusion. “Why do we need to add color to this? I don’t need you to add color to my salmon for me to eat it!” she exclaims in the clip. And, yeah, she’s got a point.
But as it turns out, this is pretty standard in the farmed fish world. A sustainable fish blog later cleared things up, explaining that “color added” isn’t as bad as it sounds. It’s actually a pigment called astaxanthin, which is found in algae and gives flamingos their pink hue, crabs their orange, and salmon their red-orange color. Plus, fun fact: it’s also a solid antioxidant that people take as a vitamin E supplement.
See the Tiktok here:
@whoisemilypesch keep ur red dye number 5 out of my salmon thank u! #salmon #reddye #traderjoes #cleaneating #cooking
Here’s what people had to say about it in the comments:
