One of my patients asked me this question recently after reading my blog entry about whether pregnant women should eat fish. I love fish – low in saturated fats and high in omega 3 fatty acids, it’s a great source of heart-healthy protein. I grew up on the coast and as a child was lucky enough to be able to eat beautiful fresh fish. So no-one is more disappointed than me that so many fish are too contaminated to be safe. However the health benefits outweigh the concerns for me and I do still eat fish. I’m just very careful about the kinds of fish I eat. Recently whilst surfing the net I came across these handy downloadable guides which tell you which fish are safe in your region. What a good idea!

So what is mercury and how does it get into the fish? Mercury is an element that occurs naturally in soil, lakes and oceans. Although some mercury is natural, mercury is also released into the environment from man-made sources. These include power plants that burn coal as well as waste incinerators, paper processing factories, mines and smelting operations. The mercury gets into the air as pollution and then goes into the water when it rains. Surface run off can also dump mercury into our lakes and oceans. Once there it settles at the bottom of the ocean where it is converted into methyl mercury by bacteria. It is this methyl mercury that is more toxic unfortunately. Fish absorb the methyl mercury in two ways, both as food and in the water as it passes through their gills. The mercury then binds to proteins in the muscles of the fish.

All fish contain some mercury and there is no way of cleaning the fish that avoids this. The amount of mercury accumulates as you move up the food chain so the bigger, more predatory fish contain much more. There was a 163% increase in mercury advisories issued by the EPA between 1993 – 2003 so its not hard to see that the amount of mercury in fish is going up.

Taking in too much methyl mercury can cause some serious health problems. When we eat fish it is absorbed through the intestines and spreads throughout our bodies. It enters the brain in the blood stream and can effect the nervous system. It can also cross the placenta to effect an unborn child or be passed through breast milk to an infant. There are still many fish that are safe to eat so download your guides and keep them in your purse to help you make good choices for you and your family.

Photographs
© Willem Dijkstra | Dreamstime.com
© Yvonne Bogdanski | Dreamstime.com

Back in July I wrote a blog entry about how shocked I was to find that as a nation we waste $43 billion dollars of edible food each year. It is one of the posts that people talk to me about when they visit us here at the YinOva Center, so I think it struck a cord with many of you. You can read it here.

In these trying economic times I thought it might be worth drawing your attention to it and giving you an update on my own family’s attempts to avoid wasting food. Amazingly enough just by doing the things mentioned in the article we have now reduced our weekly food costs by almost half. We still buy good quality, organic food, but we buy much less of it. It makes me realize how much money we were wasting buying large, prepackaged containers of food, most of which ended up going off before we ate them.

The most useful change we made was using the left-over meat and veggies in the fridge to make soup which we eat at work during the week. This has a triple benefit – we use up leftovers, we eat healthier and we’ve stopped spending money on take out.

There is so much pleasure in growing vegetables, making soup or mending clothes. Far from feeling frugal and as if we are doing without, I believe that consuming less can make our lives more enjoyable.

Photograph
© Dušan Zidar | Dreamstime.com

Recently some patients in our waiting room were talking about wasting food, which is a topic close to my heart. I was shocked to find out that here in the US we throw away $43 billion of edible food each year. In fact a 2004 study at the University of Arizona, estimated that between 40 and 50% of the food we buy does not get eaten. As food prices rise I have become more conscious of the way my own family wastes food and have been looking for ways that we can improve.

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