Eating Fish: There's a Catch

Eating fish: There's a catch

By Elizabeth Weise, USA TODAY Posted 10/25/2005 10:37 PM

The results are in, and there's no question about it: Fish is really, really good for you. Not only is it packed with healthful vitamins and minerals, it is also a major source of omega-3 fatty acids, which a veritable flood of recent studies shows lowers the chance of heart attack, makes babies smarter, wards off dementia and stroke in the elderly, and even seems to guard against dry-eye syndrome.

But there's a fly in the ointment. Actually, two flies.

Some fish are mercury-filled time bombs, according to a parade of reports from government agencies and environmental groups.

And people are emptying the oceans of some fish. Overfishing and habitat destruction has left some species as low as 1% of their original populations, according to federal data.

So what now? Do we eat fish at least twice as week, as many nutritionists say we should?

Or is it time to pack away the tartar sauce?

Not on your life, say five Harvard University studies published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. Their advice: Pick up that fish fork and start eating.

Overblown fears could cause consumers to lower their consumption and lose the "substantial nutritional benefits" fish offers, the researchers found.

Tests on fish oil supplements, which also provide omega-3 fatty acids, have uniformly found extremely low levels of methyl mercury. But nutritionists still urge people to eat fish rather than take pills because they consider it an excellent source of protein that is low in saturated fats.

Even so, seafood sales appear to be slipping. The Food and Drug Administration's advisory on mercury and fish consumption in March 2004 got lots of media attention. According to ACNielsen, volume sales of tuna sold in cans and envelopes fell 9% in the 12 months after the advisory, which singled out tuna. Information Resources Inc. shows that sales of refrigerated seafood in the USA fell 2.1% in 2004.

Worries that overfishing is depleting fish populations may be having an effect on consumption, too. A survey of 400 visitors to the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California who picked up a Seafood Watch wallet-size guide to non-endangered fish species found that 80% said they still buy less of certain types of seafood, even four months after their visit.

But there's a real risk that warnings about a few fish species directed only at a small portion of the population will get simplified in the public mind to the mantra "Don't eat fish," says David Acheson, chief medical officer of the Food and Drug Administration.