Loading...

Environmental Defense Fund: Is Eating Seafood Regularly Really Such a Good Thing?

Today’s post is by Environmental Defense Fund scientist Tim Fitzgerald.

Wild salmon from Alaska is a better choice than farmed or Atlantic salmon.Seafood is often called brain food. It’s a good source of many different nutrients, including long chain omega-3 fatty acids. Eating fish β€” or taking fish oil supplements β€” has been linked to a number of cardiovascular and neurological benefits. For this reason, most health experts and the U.S. government’s dietary guidelines encourage people to eat more seafood.

However, a new study in the journal of the Canadian Medical Association calls this recommendation into question, contending that the health benefits of omega-3’s have potentially been oversold while the ocean’s ability to provide them is failing.

The bottom line? The jury is still out on how much fish we should eat, so making eco-friendly choices is essential.

The study’s authors accurately point out that the oceans can no longer provide us with fish (and fish oil) at the current pace. Barely one-quarter of U.S. fisheries are known to be sustainably fished, and the United Nations reports that 80 percent of the world’s fisheries are now either fully fished (i.e. incapable of providing more) or overexploited.

Aquaculture, or fish farming, can help meet additional seafood demand, if done right. But raising carnivorous species like salmon further depletes finite sources of small oily fish, which are used in large quantities to make their feed. These β€˜forage’ fish are vital links in the marine food chain and are eaten by larger fish, as well as marine mammals, birds, other wildlife and even humans.

To provide a secure supply of seafood for future generations, recommendations for consuming fish and fish oil must weigh the proven benefits of omega-3’s against the harm done to ocean ecosystems from taking unsustainable quantities of fish from the sea.

Fish (and fish oil) lovers weighing these questions on a personal level can help by choosing sources that are fished or farmed responsibly, that are high in omega-3s and low in environmental contaminants. Arctic char, farmed oysters, sablefish (aka black cod), wild Alaskan salmon, sardines, farmed trout and West Coast albacore tuna are some of the choices that are safe to eat and safe for the environment.

To learn more about healthy and eco-friendly seafood, and the safest fish oil supplements on the market, visit Environmental Defense Fund’s Seafood Selector.

3 comments
  1. Global Patriot

    This highlights an ever increasing trend in which something that is “good for us” encounters issues with sustainability. Some will say that all methods of providing meat and fish have limited sustainability as the population continues to increase.

  2. Nudger

    This is all well and good, but there is no reliable way to know the origin – or even the kind – of fish you are eating. Remember this NYT article about high end Manhattan restaurants and how the wild fish wasn’t wild, the chilean sea bass wasn’t chilean or bass, and the scallops were actually meat punched from skate wings??

    http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/23/nyregion/23sushi.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

    If you can’t even trust vendors and restaurants to tell you what kind of fish you are eating, how can you rely on anyone to tell you whether the fish were raised in a sustainable manner???

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *