Posted by Alaina Browne, January 25, 2008 at 1:30 PM
"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 issued a rebuttal to the Times story. As an industry trade group its response had to be both swift and slanted, as the Newsweek science blog pointed out. This story just keeps getting bigger and bigger.
According to the New York Times' Marion Burros, a study by the international conservation group Oceana also found unacceptably high, potentially unhealthy levels of mercury in tuna samples taken from stores and restaurants around the country. Burros writes that "Oceana is asking the FDA to require warnings at seafood counters, to add fresh tuna to its 'do not eat' list and to increase the frequency of its testing of fish."
Posted by Ed Levine, January 24, 2008 at 3:00 PM
According to the New York Times, raw tuna lovers were undeterred by the news that some of their favorite sushi bars were serving tuna containing what some would construe as unhealthy levels of mercury.
As we pointed out yesterday, the story in yesterday's paper raised many more questions than answers. I think consumers are getting hip to the fact that virtually every food can be shown to be harmful if consumed in excess. Common sense will rule the day, I hope.
Apparently it did yesterday. I called the kitchen at Esca, which sells many different kinds of tuna in many forms, and I got this report:
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Posted by Alaina Browne, January 23, 2008 at 12:15 PM
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 levels in fish show any seasonality? Do suppliers actually monitor the mercury levels of their fish? And last but not least, what's a serious eater to do?
Posted by Ed Levine, September 19, 2007 at 5:00 PM
The European Union has just ordered its members to stop reeling in bluefin tuna for the rest of year.
Here's how the New York Times is interpreting this:
That may seem like a positive step toward saving the species, but it comes because the union’s fishing fleets have already caught their quota for the year — a quota that scientists say is twice as large as it should be.
The most immediate practical impact outside the fishing industry falls on restaurant chefs faced with a sudden hole in their menus. The longer-term question is how to manage the world’s ever-deepening bluefin addiction.
Do we have a bluefin tuna addiction? And are chefs worried about this?
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