From Gitwithit on Flickr Low in fat, high in protein, and filled with omega-3 fatty acids (which protects against heart disease and stimulates brain activity), canned tuna is a wonder food on paper. Until it starts making your hair fall out. As Mother Jones reports, Deborah Landvik-Fellner ate canned albacore tuna daily for 12 years until her hair started falling out and her speech started slurring. When she got her blood tested, frightening results came back: it had 48 parts per billion of mercury, nearly ten times the Environmental Protection Agency's notion of "safe." Shouldn't tuna be labeled if it's so dangerous? The Tuna Foundation sure hopes not. They know mercury scares will cause sales to plummet. In 2005,...
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"No. Overall, the dangers of not eating fish [including tuna] outweigh the small possible dangers from mercury. The recommended amount for adults is to eat one or two servings of fish per week — but probably only 10% to 20% of the population in the U.S. eats sufficient fish. The real danger in this country, the real concern, is that we're not eating enough fish. That is very likely increasing our rates of death from heart disease." Thanks goes to Time for its straightforward Q&A with Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, assistant professor of medicine and epidemiology at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health, on the potential dangers of eating mercury-rich fish. The National Fisheries Institute has also...
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Adding to the confusion around what to order at the sushi bar if you are concerned about food safety (and sustainability), the New York Times' investigation of mercury levels in tuna served in Manhattan restaurants raises many more questions than it answers. The Times reports that 5 of 20 samples tested had mercury levels so high "that a diet of six pieces a week would exceed accepted safety levels. This sounds like scary and bad news for restaurateurs and sushi lovers. Statistically speaking, how relevant are these findings? There has not been much research into the impact of high mercury consumption in adults, so how scared should we be? How variable are mercury levels from fish to fish? Do mercury...
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