Fish are a nearly perfect, high protein, low calorie source of nourishment.  The benefits of fish, and especially those with high concentrations of omega-3 fatty acids are well documented.  Studies on the Mediterranean style diet emphasize over and over how powerful this meal plan is for good health, with it’s strong emphasis on (omega-3 rich) fish over meat.  Omega-3’s help protect against heart disease, strokes and some cancers. Newer studies on Mediterranean style eating – the type of diet the people from the 17 countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea have enjoyed for generations, has linked eating fish to lower rates of Alzheimer's disease, degenerative eye disorders, diabetes, depression and other illnesses.

Traditional health care / health organizations like The American Heart Association recommends healthy adults eat at least two servings of fish a week to protect their health.

But I said fish was nearly perfect.  In the last few years, a battle over safety has erupted, confusing many with the good benefits vs. possible unhealthy toxins found when eating fish.

MERCURY & PCBs
All fish contain low levels of contaminants (ingested from water or by eating smaller, contaminated fish), notably polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), cancer-causing industrial chemicals banned in 1976; and mercury, a heavy metal found in lakes, streams and oceans, often the byproduct of trash burning, fossil fuel (coal) combustion in factories, mining, and the dumping of sewage sludge in croplands.

Consuming Mercury and PCBs with your fish can cause many diseases and disorders.

A study of 1,833 men in Finland, for example, reported that those who ate mercury-contaminated freshwater fish (and who ended up with higher mercury blood levels) suffered twice the rate of heart attacks and deaths from strokes as those who did not eat contaminated fish. (“Water, Air & Soil Pollution, Volume 19, No. 3 / April, 1983  0049-6979 (print) 1573-2932 (online)

But many (often the same) diseases and disorders are being found in people eating no, or very little fish at all!  So if you eat no fish you lose.  If you eat the wrong fish, you lose.

And for expectant Mom’s, this question is even more troubling.
Omega-3s are critical to an infant's developing brain. A Harvard study (Harvard School of Public Health) found that pregnant women who ate fish every week during pregnancy had offspring with intelligence scores 4 points higher for every additional serving of fish over the average of one serving.

But, this was only true if the Mercury levels in the mother’s were low. Women with the highest blood mercury levels had children with intelligence scores 9.3 points lower than those from mothers with an average amount of mercury, or less.

Eating no fish, and eating the wrong fish, both seem to have terrible consequences.  

Which leads us to ask; what fish can we eat and how do we avoid those fish polluted by our industrial carelessness?

Whereas in the Mediterranean Fish is the dominant protein source, in the United States, we are eating very little fish, on a whole.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Americans eat about 3.4 ounces a week, with people on the west coast eating a bit more: about 3.7 ounces.

By comparison, the USDA estimates that per capita red meat consumption totals nearly 21 ounces.  (USDA.org)

So how do we get the benefits of Fish while minimizing the poisons?

Omega-3’s are a powerful factor for health found in fish, but Omega-3’s can be found in nuts, grains and vegetables too!

The two sources of omega-3’s from fish are DHA and EPA, the ‘long chain’ fatty acids.  These are plentiful in “oily” or “fatty” fish such as salmon, trout, sardines, artic char, herring - even oysters.  They are easily absorbed and put to work in the body.

Omega-3s are polyunsaturated fatty acids (the great kind).  They are called “essential” because our body cannot manufacture them, and we MUST get it from the food we eat.

The Omega-3 ALA (short chain) fatty acid is found in plant / nut / seed sources.  Walnuts, ounce for ounce have more Omega-3’s (ALA) than salmon, and broccoli more than the fish Talapia!  But these ALA Omega’s have to work harder to be absorbed by the body, and compete for enzymes that help them convert from short chain to long chain, and thereby be more easily utilized.

And another fatty acid, competes for and often robs these enzymes from the omega-3 ALA’s.  It’s the “bad” omega-6s fatty acids.  

A diet that is far higher in omega-6’s (bad) to omega-3’s (good) has been blamed for many diseases and disorders, (prominent in the west), ranging from depression, systemic inflammation, heart attacks, strokes, osteoporosis, mood disorders and cancer. (Calder, Philip C. (01 June 2006). "n−3 polyunsaturated fatty acids, inflammation, and inflammatory diseases". American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (American Society for Nutrition) 83 (6, supplement): 1505S–1519S. PMID 16841861)

These “thieves in the night”, the Omega-6 fatty acids found in palm oil, soybean, rapeseed, sunflower oil, margarine and corn oil are robbing us of all the omega-3’s beneficial contributions.  Other sources include poultry, eggs, cereals, breads, baked goods, most vegetable oils, flax/linseed oil, pumpkin seeds and the recent darling of the multi-level infomercial-esque pseudo nutrition world, acai berries.

Keep in mind, not all omega-6 fatty acids are bad (including acai berry, which has many anti-oxidants).  It’s just the proportion must be a healthy one, with enough omega-3’s in the diet to balance it out.  In the Mediterranean this balance is natural to their diet (a good ratio is believed to be omega-6 to omega-3 of 4:1, but in the west it sometimes exceeds 20:1).  So you might be eating some healthy fish, but because of all the other less healthy omega-6’s sneaking into your diet, you are canceling out any benefit.  Actually, by having to compete with the omega-6’s, the good fats from omega-3 canno get properly absorbed.

Another way people might be eating good fish, and canceling it’s benefits out is by eating “fish sticks” and other fried, drive through fried fish filet-burgers.  Aside from the omega-6’s, the unhealthy trans fats used to cook it will further cancel out any benefit.

A published investigation known as the Cardiovascular Health Study, in which 4,775 adults older than 65 were tracked for many years, those who ate baked or broiled fish one to four times each week had 27% fewer strokes than those who ate fish less than once a month.

People who ate fried fish or fish sandwiches more than once a week had 44% more strokes.

SOME WARNINGS
Fish to eat less of,
and others we should enjoy more…

The Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency advise pregnant and nursing women, women of child-bearing age, children (and people with compromised immune systems, and small framed individuals) to avoid certain fish because of the mercury content, which are; swordfish, king mackerel, tilefish, sea bass, and shark.  All are large, long-lived predatory fish that concentrate mercury in their bodies throughout their lives through eating smaller fish that also contain mercury.

Tuna was later added to the list. The agencies made a recommendation that the above, more vulnerable groups eat no more than 6 ounces, or one can, of white or albacore tuna a week. FDA tests had shown that canned albacore tuna, as well as fresh or frozen tuna steaks, contained significantly more mercury, because they came from larger tuna species.

Chunk light tuna (skipjack tuna), often canned from the smaller skipjack tuna, are considered safer.

The Environmental Working Group has a tuna calculator on their web site to help you figure how much tuna you can safely enjoy;
http://www.ewg.org/tunacalculator

The City of New York also has made a handy list of good and bad fish, amounts and who can eat them; http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/downloads/pdf/edp/mercury_brochure.pdf

The advisory also recommended that vulnerable groups limit their total fish consumption to 12 ounces a week of low mercury selections.  This usually comes out to two servings per week.

The FDA warns pregnant women and women of childbearing age against eating shark, swordfish, king mackerel, sea bass, and tilefish. If they do eat it, they suggest no more than once a month.  

For everyone else, when choosing seafood with lower levels of mercury, officials advise no more than 14 ounces per week.

Although “light” tuna is considered safer to eat, it has on average 20mcg of mercury, whereas a 6-pz serving of salmon (very low in mercury) only has about 1.6mcg – and has the added benefit of having very high levels of the healthy omega-3 fats.

How much is too much?

Good news.  The FDA reports (FDA.gov) the top 10 seafood species (which make up about 80% of the U.S. seafood market) -- canned tuna, shrimp, pollock, salmon, cod, catfish, clams, flatfish, crabs, and scallops -- generally contain less than 0.2 ppm of methylmercury.

And some of the most popular commercial fish; salmon, trout, arctic char, herring, flounder are rich in omega-3s and also do not have high levels of mercury. Only about 4.5 ounces of salmon, 3 ounces of rainbow trout and 2 ounces of herring contain a full gram of omega-3s.  (Keep in mind that Salmon, Trout and Arctic Char are high in omega-3’s, and are genetically related to each other).

And one study published in the Aug. 29, 2006 issue of the journal Science casts doubt on the true dangers of fish eating!  In lab tests, Stanford University researchers determined that the mercury in fish may be a different type than previously thought. There are reportedly 26 different known compounds of mercury, and the kind researchers now suspect in fish may be less toxic than the old variety.

But don’t make the mistake of now thinking it’s ok to eat any fish with mercury.  It is not.  Mercury in ANY form is still bad, especially for the special groups we discussed above.  Unfortunately we have put it in our food supply, and through the steps we are citing, must try to minimize it’s intake.

Eat wild caught fish, be wary of farm raised.
 
Wild-caught salmon, a very low-mercury fish with among the highest amount of omega-3s, is a wonderful choice.  But farmed salmon has, in some cases (farmed Atlantic Salmon, particularly from Norway, Iceland and Scotland) contained PCB levels as much as 7x higher thank those in wild caught.

Although the levels didn't exceed the FDA standards for PCBs in commercial fish, they were above the safe limits set by the EPA for sport fish caught and eaten by amateur fishermen.

Farmed fish contain higher levels of PCBs because the fish-meal and fish oil they're fed is high in these contaminants. The global salmon farming industry is investigating ways to reduce PCBs in farmed fish by substituting soybean oil in place of some of the fish oil in the feed.

In the meantime, country-of-origin labeling, required now on fish sold in supermarkets and other retail stores, may help guide careful consumers.

The Environmental Working Group (EWG), a watchdog organization, concurred with the finding that most of the PCB-contaminated protein sources in our food supply came from farmed salmon.  But they also pointed out that Butter has 2 1/2 times the level of PCBs found in farmed salmon by the EWG. Chicken breast has about the same as the farmed salmon.  And the farmed salmon they purchased in San Francisco, Portland and Washington, D.C. had PCB levels that were 16x higher than fresh, wild salmon.

The least-contaminated fish among the 2 metric tons of salmon purchased by other researchers came from farms in Chile. Salmon from Washington state and Canada was also cleaner than that from the north Atlantic.

Remove PCB’s when Cooking?

The bad chemicals we discussed tend to concentrate under the skin and the layer of fat beneath the skin.  By removing the skin before or after cooking, you will reduce the PCB’s in the fish.

We must be the change we seek in the world - Gandhi

In the long run, we must take responsibility to clean our lakes, rivers and oceans, so to protect our food supply for generations to come.  

This is a cause that N.Y. Strength Inc., the Fitness & Wellness Professionals International and my students around the world have adopted as their own.  

“Today when you ask the general public what comes to mind when they think of personal training and food, odds are they will reply; fat burners, powder and protein bars”.  So Says Dr. Jack Barnathan, President of N.Y. Strength and Founder of the Fitness & Wellness Pro’s International. “Through our educational programs we are helping our profession change this perception.  It is my wish that soon when the public hear the title ‘Wellness Coach’ or ‘Fitness Training Professional’ they will associate with it the people most dedicated to cleaning the seas while promoting, and protecting, a healthy food supply for the strength and wellness of all”.