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Developing countries pay less for the nutrition in seafood imports than developed countries, largely because developed countries pay a premium for non-nutritional attributes such as convenience, according to an published in Nature Communications on July 1. The findings suggest that disruptions to the global seafood trade could affect food and nutritional security in countries that depend on seafood imports for meeting their dietary needs.

“No matter how we did our analysis, we always found the same thing: Developing countries get more nutrition per dollar in seafood imports than developed countries. They get more protein per dollar, more fatty acids per dollar, more iron per dollar, more vitamin B12 per dollar, and so on. And the reason they get this discount on nutrition is that they spend less for attributes that are highly desired by developed countries that are unrelated to nutrition,” said Martin Smith, George M. Woodwell Distinguished Professor of Environmental Economics in the Nicholas School of the Environment at 91��������, who designed the study.

Seafood, which comes from marine and freshwater environments, is the top-traded food commodity in the world and plays an outsized role in food security. More than a third of the global population relies on seafood for at least 20% of their animal protein intake. Fish and shellfish also provide key nutrients, including heart-healthy fatty acids, as well as essential vitamins and minerals — or micronutrients — such as B12 and calcium.

“We mostly take micronutrients for granted in high-income, developed countries, partly because we fortify foods and partly because we just have a lot of them in our diets already from eating a lot of animal products. But micronutrient deficiencies are a real problem for many developing countries,” Smith said.

Because developing countries tend to export more expensive seafood and import less expensive seafood, the researchers wondered: Are those countries sacrificing nutrition for lower-cost goods?

To answer that question, the team combined information from two large databases: The first, called United Nations Comtrade, provides global trade data on both wild-caught and farmed seafood. The second database, managed by the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, provides detailed nutritional information categorized by seafood species and product type, such as frozen or fresh fish, and whole or fillet. 

“By linking these two databases together, we could match nutrient content with the specific seafood products exchanging hands,” said first author Yaqin Liu, an environmental economist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and a former postdoc in Smith’s lab.

Focusing on the years 2015 to 2021, the researchers analyzed 266 unique seafood products representing 90% of the global seafood trade. Then, they used six different methods to classify each importing country as either developed or developing based on several socioeconomic factors, such as gross domestic product and food insecurity. All told, the team examined 267,505 records on bilateral trade, or the exchange of goods between two countries.

Next, for each of those records, they calculated the nutrient content per dollar for each of nine nutrients — including protein, fatty acids, vitamin B12, calcium, iron, zinc, potassium and magnesium.

“We’re the first team to do this analysis in the seafood trade sector,” Liu said.

Regardless of how they sliced the data, the researchers consistently found that developing countries, which are typically low- and middle-income countries, pay lower prices for nutrition in imported seafood than developed countries.

For example, a pound of fresh salmon and a pound of frozen salmon have approximately the same amount of protein, but because developing countries pay less for frozen fish, they essentially get more protein per dollar. 

“When it comes to seafood imports, developing countries get more nutritional bang for their buck,” said co-author Joshua Abbott, a professor of sustainability at Arizona State University.

The team also found that the discrepancy between developed and developing countries largely reflects differences in preference for seafood qualities unrelated to nutrition.

“Seafood consumers in the United States, Japan, the European Union, and other high-income countries are paying a high premium for getting more fresh fish into their markets, even though it’s not more nutritious,” Smith explained. “When wealthier countries pay extra for freshness, that creates an opportunity for lower-income countries to import frozen fish for a lower price and still get that nutrition.”

From a global health perspective, the findings are encouraging, according to the authors.

“At the outset, our concern was that lower dollar value of seafood imports reflects lower nutritional content. But our study shows that’s not true,” Smith said. “Our findings also suggest that disruptions to the global seafood trade could well have negative nutritional consequences for developing countries.”

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Citation: “,” Liu, Y., Smith, M.D., Abbott, J.K., et al. Nature Communications, July 1, 2025.

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