Paleo Diet and Paleolithic Diet Questions & Answers

Question

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I've been supplementing my canned sardine intake with some canned tuna - primarily for variety, but also on a lark to see if it also doesn't taste as bad as I had feared. Good news on that front, it's actually quite palatable!

However I'm confused - I've run across a number of cans that report having no fat per serving (all wild-caught, dolphin safe, BPA-free cans). 0 total fat, 0 saturated fat, 0 trans fat. How is this possible? Part of the reason I'm eating fish to begin with is to get a "more natural" source of fish oil (yes, not totally natural, but as convenient and portable as possible) - but if there's no fish oil in these cans, I almost feel like I'm wasting my time.

So are they doing something to this fish to somehow remove all the fat before/during the canning process?

Or does this fall under the "Well it's less than 1-2g so we can report it as 0g" kind of marketing malarkey?

flag	asked Dec 8 2010 at 15:22 Casey 7,766●8●39

David Moss · Accepted Answer · 2010-12-08 15:32:17Z UTC

Tuna isn't an oily fish*, it's pretty much by definition low fat, so on the one hand, these figures aren't worrying, but tuna certainly isn't a reasonable source for fish oil. A raw, fresh fillet of skipjack tuna (200g) is only going to contain about 2g of fat anyway. Bluefin is apparently a little better (1.3g o-3/100g), but that's still out of a total of only 5g fat.

Tuna is potentially a good source of cheap protein for limited calories and a few nutrients (but more akin to white meat than red meat- less nutrition) but not for fish oil. I never go out of my way to eat it, but there's nothing objectionable about it.

*Edit: apparently tuna is classified an oily fish, but regardless, it is still woefully lacking compared to the 5g of o-3 I'd get from an equivalent can of salmon.

wjones3044 · Answer 2 · 2010-12-08 15:33:44Z UTC

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I'd be curious to know what the serving size is. For a 28 g portion, Nutrition Facts data says there is 1 g of fat in canned tuna ("Fish, tuna, white, canned in water, drained solids," see http://nutritiondata.self.com/).

I cannot imagine that there is some "oil removal process." Most likely, there is LOTS of good oil in that tuna.

answered Dec 8 2010 at 15:33

wjones3044
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It very much depends on the kind of tuna. I've got albacore sitting in front of me that reports the lack of fat in a 56g serving (2.5 servings in the can). I don't recall which other tuna had an appreciable amount of fat in it, though - I'll have to check on that. – Casey Dec 8 2010 at 17:30

Bruno · Answer 3 · 2010-12-08 16:59:57Z UTC

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When I get tuna it's canned in virgin olive oil. De-li-cious

answered Dec 8 2010 at 16:59

Bruno
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Ditto this! NOM! – Blue -the Thrifty Mom Dec 8 2010 at 18:34

Eva · Answer 4 · 2010-12-08 17:24:30Z UTC

If there is only a bit of fat in a serving, the law allows manufacturers to 'round off' the numbers and thus report there is 0 fat when in fact there is still a little bit of fat in each serving. The manufacturers may have chosen to do this as a marketing tool since 'everyone knows' that 'fat is bad.' If the tuna was rinsed and canned in water, could be there is very little fat in it. Then split up the servings to small portions to keep the fat count ever lower per serving and next there you know, there is 'zero' grams of fat per serving.

Fat free canned tuna?

4 Answers