On Healthy Living

Many of us eat salmon for the health benefit of the high levels of fish oils that it and tuna contain. Not so many of us are lucky enough to be able to buy fresh fish, especially wild (not farm-raised), so we must make do with the canned variety. And we’ve been doing ourselves a favor, as it turns out. The Enviornmental Protection Agency (EPA) has studied the levels of methylmercury, a neurotoxin in fish, and found the average for fresh or frozen salmon to be 1.7 mcg per six-ounce serving (12 times less than that of light tuna.) What’s really astounding is that the level of mercury in canned salmon is too low for the EPA to measure!

Almost all the mercury in the fish you eat is not metabolized by the intestines or the liver. Instead, it goes right into your blood stream and from there, it accumulates in the tissues and remains throughout your lifetime. It is this lifetime accumulation about which people are concerned. Richard Harkness is a natural therapy specialist and pharmacist with an interest in this problem and recently reviewed it for the Knight Ridder News Service. He pointed out the EPA guidelines for eating canned tuna, which contains an average mercury level of 60 mcg per six-ounce serving, suggest eating no more than six ounces a week for children, pregnant women, and nursing mothers. You can consult with him at rharkn@aol.com.

Georganna Hancock wrote this on June 15th, 2005 and filed it under Healthy Eating |