Good Fish, Bad Fish, It's Hard to Know

(cross-posted from La Marguerite blog)

Have you tried sorting out the information on fish? Which kind can you eat without worrying about mercury, PCBs, chlorinated pesticides, dioxins, furans, PBDEs, and other nasty contaminants? You would think there is one central place with all that info, neatly packaged into one pocket size guide. There is. Actually, there are, and that's the problem. Several sources, all with different recommendations:

To be safe, I guess I will just stick to the ones they all agree on: anchovies, catfish (farmed), clams (farmed), crab (Dungeness), crawfish (domestic), mackerel (Atlantic), oysters (farmed), salmon (wild, Alaska), sardines (Pacific, domestic), scallops (bay, farmed), squid (Pacific, domestic), tilapia (farmed, domestic), trout (fresh water, farmed). Even so, I am not even sure. Isn't farm raised fish bad sometimes? I am confused. Please, help me!

Comments

[EDFseafood]

You're right Marguerite - the seafood counter can be a confusing place. However its important to point out that the discrepancies in the four 'safe fish' lists result from different perspectives. For example, NRDC and FDA only list fish that are low in mercury, whereas the other two combine both environmental and health considerations.

There is an emerging voice of consistency in the conservation community when it comes to sustainable seafood choices. Environmental Defense Fund (www.edf.org/seafood) and Monterey Bay Aquarium (www.seafoodwatch.org) - creators of two of the largest and longest-running seafood guides - have produced consistent ecological and health recommendations for two years now. While there are dozens of seafood guides out there, we think this will help consumers choose fish that is good for them, their families, and the oceans.

[azythos]

Don't you have it bassackwards? It seems to me that you first decide what you like (fish-tasty like mackerel and sardine, or bland and steak-like like halibut and seabass, or exotic like salmon), then you look into its toxicity. You couldn't feed me salmon or catfish even if they were the only food left on earth, and I couldn't know your tastes. If we can't think about taste before pollution we might as well give up living.

[jbatch]

It's not that hard ... 1) MSC certified fish is sustainably caught;
2) fresh water farmed fish are ok -- salt-water usually not -- unless the farms have been rated or approved by any of 3 entities.

Wild Alaskan salmon is sustainably caught and safe.

Now for health and safety -- the higher on the food chain the more mercury -- thus the larger tuna species, the larger mackerel, sword fish etc are typically higher in mercury.

Famed fish does tend to have PCBs -- although this has been improving lately ... they also have far less omega 3's than their wild counterparts in the case of salmon.

One fish that is seldom rated but is both safe and sustainable is farm raised Arctic Char ...

[JanelleS]

We've looked in to this repeatedly over at Healthy Child Healthy World as the issue is so important for pregnant women and small children who are much more vulnerable to the contaminants. It's an awful irony that fish contain fatty acids necessary for healthy brain development, but we've contaminated them with potent neurotoxins that do the reverse.

A recent study published in Environmental Research (Methylmercury and omega-3 fatty acids: Co-currence of dietary sources with emphasis on fish and shellfish), offers new insights on the fish paradox of health and risk. The authors tested a wide variety of fish to find which had the highest amounts of the omega-3 fatty acids our brains thrive on and which had the lowest levels of mercury.

Their findings?

#1 - The fish with the highest amount of Omega-3 fatty acids and the lowest amount of mercury is herring. Herring has the added benefit of not storing other toxins like PCBs and dioxin, so it’s all around the healthiest fish choice.

#2 - Second best is mackerel, but be vigilant of species, because King Mackerel is extremely high in mercury. Look for little guys (N. Atlantic, Chub).

#3 - Third is salmon, but farmed salmon tend to have high levels of carcinogenic PCBs, so look for wild.

Also, use the Smart Fish Calculator:
http://www.iatp.org/foodandhealth/fishcalculator/index.cfm

Enter your weight and it will recommend personalized consumption advice.