This article appears as part of the Winds of Change newsletter.

People love to eat salmon. I know that, and I have enjoyed a fair few plump pink steaks in my time, though vanishingly rarely now. I also understand that when you enjoy eating something you don’t necessarily want to hear the bad news about it – like the fact that there are high mortality rates on the farms, or that lice, amoebic gill disease and plagues of jellyfish are a continuing problem.

There’s a hand over the ears 'la la la' response to that kind of bad news. It was there, for instance, in a reaction to my recent series on salmon farming, which said, "I can't read any of these. I've just eaten some lovely salmon. I want to eat more lovely salmon."

And I get it. Demand and desire matter. I understand how salmon, particularly when cooked well, or delicately smoked, can be delicious. In a world full of so many unhealthy treats it also has a story of being a healthy one.

That appeal is what has made it the biggest UK food export year on year, and what also keeps the people of Scotland and the UK, plucking it from their supermarket shelves, whether as salmon steaks, salmon wellington, fishcakes, smoked, hot smoked and other various forms.

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Demand is at the heart of salmon farm expansion and production in Scotland. It, and the money it brings, is the biggest argument for supporting he industry. This is a protein that people want to eat and also one that, in a world in pursuit of Net Zero and battling climate change, makes more carbon sense by comparison with others like beef or lamb.

That word demand came up at a recent meeting of Holyrood's Rural Affairs and Islands Committee to look at the progress of the industry. Ben Hadfield, representing Salmon Scotland at the hearing, said: “The demand for salmon as a healthy protein, and for Scottish salmon particularly is incredibly high. So the idea that worldwide, people don’t have confidence in salmon as a product [is incorrect].

"You just need," he went on, "to look at demand... People have enormous confidence in salmon as a healthy protein. I respect that there are critics in this room and on a wider basis that have a voice, but the production systems that we have in Scotland are amongst the best in the world.”

But demand is something that is also created. It’s inspired by the stories we tell. Salmon though not the most consumed animal protein product in the UK (that is chicken), has increasingly become the go-to fish, but it wasn't always.

I don’t remember a lot of salmon around in my childhood, other than a bony tinned mush that would end up in sandwiches, but sometime in early adulthood the fish started to seem like a treat, something to wrap into a bowl of pasta, a key element amidst the unctuous gloop of a fish pie, a slab to sear and arrange on a plate with baby potatoes and veg. Smoked salmon became the festive starter of choice, almost a tradition.

In the UK now there is a ‘big five’ of salmon, tuna, cod, prawns and haddock, which used to be the most popular, before being displaced by salmon.

Winds of change on eating salmon (Image: Derek McArthur)

The type of salmon we eat has also changed. It's worth noting that none of the salmon we buy from Scotland now is wild – unless you go to a rare specialist fishmonger who sells it - nor is it desirable to get yourself some wild salmon it’s not actually a better option given that in Scotland the species is endangered, its population collapsed by half since the 1970s.

So why, over the same period of time, did we become a nation of farmed salmon eaters, choosing salmon over other fish?

There are a number of reasons that shift happened, but one of them, according to 'The hidden role of market-making in the rise of farmed salmon', a paper published last year, is that “market-making efforts by industry and retail actors… shaped consumer demand by promoting salmon as an accessible, nutritious and sustainable product”.

“Accreditation and labelling," it said, "have helped to develop perceptions of health and sustainability, despite farmed salmon being comparable in nutrient profile to other aquatic foods and having long-standing environmental impacts."

It also observed that "market-making insights could be used to enhance demand for other aquatic foods in ways that target dietary gaps by supplying affordable and sustainable products, such as mussels.”

We could be eating mussels more instead. Or other fish. And it might provide some of what salmon gives us.

We all now know that salmon is a good source of omega-3, but in fact it’s not as good as mackerel (now unfortunately overfished, so I’m not proposing that as a replacement) and sardines, even-tinned. It’s also comparable to herring.

The paper also pointed out, that convenience products, like smoked salmon or fishcakes, contain less omega-3 than fresh fish – and that significant amounts of that salmon is delivered through ready meals, and is therefore not quite so brain-boosting.

The authors noted: “One of our interviewees said ‘we can only encourage consumers to eat [what they want] to eat’ . However, our study suggests that the rise of demand for farmed salmon in the UK was a process that included several purposeful actions from market actors, such as the processing and creation of convenience food products, wide availability, and health and sustainability labelling, leading to positive framing of the industry from almost all interviewees."

One of the questions often raised is whether we could be eating the wild fish that are used in creating the feed for salmon.

That’s a complex question. Some of the wild fish element in salmon feeds comes from offal, processing trimmings and by-products that we would not be likely to eat. Some comes, according to salmon farmers, from species that would not be fished in significant quantities for human consumption.

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Some comes from novel new, non-marine protein sources, like insects and plant products, cereals, oilseed crops and legumes, soy protein concentrate. Increasingly marine ingredients are forming a smaller percentage of the feeds.

On its website, Bakkafrost, says its feed comes “from sustainable sources, including fishmeal and fish oil produced in-house using locally caught fish and by-products from the mackerel and herring industries”.

People like to eat salmon. But we know that tastes can shift. Mine have as a result of covering the salmon farming industry, and while it's not a never again, I choose other options. Those mussels, for instance, or some nice pickled herrings.

© Herald Scotland