How to feed your children seafood without poisoning them
-
- May
- 20
Amber Valetta, spokeswoman for Oceana’s Campaign to Stop Seafood Contamination, recently posted her tips for moms who want to feed their children seafood.
Seafood, as we’ve been told most of our lives, is healthy. Brain food. Problem is, there’s so much mercury in our waterways and oceans that a lot of seafood is contaminated to levels that make fish unhealthy for us to eat, particularly for children or pregnant moms. (I was dying for sushi while I was pregnant and nursing!)
Anyhow, here’s what she advised:
1. Choose low-mercury fish- those that are small and low on the food chain. Because mercury bioaccumulates as it goes up the marine food chain, small fish, like tilapia and cod, and shellfish, like shrimp, crab and oysters, have low mercury levels. To help people remember this, the Washington State Department of Health has made a very handy pocket guide to mercury levels in fish.2. Limit fish consumption to 12 oz. a week for kids and young women, especially those of us that might consider becoming pregnant. Because mercury is a neurotoxin that can affect children, babies and fetuses at lower doses than adults, it’s most important for kids and women who are pregnant, nursing or may become pregnant to avoid high-mercury fish and limit fish consumption. Keep in mind that your body can take a while to eliminate the mercury that you consumed before you got pregnant so if there’s any chance you may become pregnant soon, it’s best to be cautious about mercury in fish.
3. Tell your grocery store to post signs containing the FDA advice about mercury for women of child-bearing age and children at their seafood counters. Oceana has already gotten 30% of major US grocery companies to post this information but they’re still working to get even more on board. If your grocery store were posting this information, you wouldn’t even need to read my tips!
4. Choose “chunk light tuna” or canned wild Alaskan salmon over “solid white albacore tuna.” The average level of mercury in cans of chunk light tuna, usually skipjack tuna, tested by the Food and Drug Administration was about one third the average mercury level in the cans of albacore they tested. If your family can adjust, you might try switching to canned salmon, instead of tuna, which is even lower in mercury and higher in Omega-3s. For more info, check out Oceana’s page about mercury in canned fish.
I know that when I was pregnant, I avoided eating any fish, because I just didn’t want to have to keep track of how much I ate and when. We eat a lot of tilapia in our house, but when I lived in Florida, I ate a tremendous amount of swordfish, tuna (fresh, not canned) and salmon. I probably ate seafood four times a week.
I do miss it, but I wouldn’t go back to those levels now that we know how much mercury is in them. ‘Tis a shame.
Photo by Mark Vergari / The Journal New/LoHud.com
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, May 20th, 2008 at 7:59 pm by Amy Vernon.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Print
| 
Email
Thought you’d be interested in this short omega-3 video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIgNpsbvcVM