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If your mom called fish “brain food,” she was right. But how much do you know about the nutrients in your favorite seafood? And is naturally occurring mercury really a concern? What about for pregnant women? This website shows how much fish you can safely eat—and just how much nutritional goodness is packed in every bite.
Seafood Calculator
For most people—including men, teens, older kids, post-menopausal women, and women who don’t plan to become pregnant—there are no limits on the amount or types of seafood that are safe to eat. The Food and Drug Administration and Environmental Protection Agency recommend that pregnant women, women who are planning to become pregnant, nursing moms, and young children eat 12 ounces of seafood each week and avoid four types of fish not included on this list. The government guidance regarding mercury in fish applies only to this limited group of Americans, and even then the federal government’s recommendations are overly cautious.
This is good news for anyone who is eager to eat a delicious fish-rich diet and reap the health benefits — even for pregnant women and women who are planning to become pregnant. Scientific research is clear about the positive effects that omega-3 fatty acids have on the risk of heart attacks, strokes, kidney disorders, Alzheimer’s disease, certain cancers, rheumatoid arthritis, type-2 diabetes, low birth weight, post-partum depression, and pre-term delivery.
Beyond omega-3s, fish also offers consumers an excellent source of protein, Vitamin B12, potassium, selenium, and, in some seafood varieties, iron. (Prenatal vitamins all contain generous amounts of Vitamin B12 because it is so vital for fetal brain and nervous-system development.) B12 is also necessary for adults to maintain healthy nerve cells and red blood cells. Potassium is key for its benefits to muscle and nerve function and helps lower the risk for high blood pressure. Selenium, an antioxidant, helps guard against heart disease and boosts the immune system.
This calculator, the only one of its kind on the Internet, can help you determine how much fish you need to eat to reach the FDA’s Reference Daily Intake of these nutrients (RDI, indicated in parentheses). It can also tell you how much fish is safe to consume based on the Environmental Protection Agency's “Benchmark Dose Lower Limit” for mercury content. As you can see, the level of naturally occurring mercury in ocean fish is insignificant in the portion sizes that consumers typically eat. Seafood gets a clean bill of health!
(Note: The FDA currently does not have a daily intake recommendation for omega-3 fatty acids; however, the International Society for the Study of Fatty Acids and Lipids advises that people concerned with cardiovascular health consume at least 500 milligrams per day.)
Results
As you can see, fish is an excellent source of protein, omega-3 fatty acids, and other essential nutrients. Yet many consumers have been scared away from this health food because of overblown mercury warnings from environmental groups .
According to numbers published by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), a -pound person would need to eat ounces of every week (for a lifetime!) in order to introduce new health risks from mercury.
Does this sound like a lot of fish? It’s true. The EPA knows the level of exposure that represents a hypothetical risk, but it adjusts it by a factor of ten in order to arrive at its “Reference Dose.” It’s this smaller, hyper-cautionary number that environmental groups use to scare Americans into thinking that tiny amounts of mercury in fish represent a real health hazard, while ignoring all of the proven health benefits that eating fish brings.
According to fishy math from the Environmental Working Group, the Sea Turtle Restoration Project, and Oceana, for instance, your health is at risk if you consume just ounces of in a given week. This is ridiculous, of course. And you will be even worse off if you don’t get enough of the beneficial vitamins and minerals that a seafood-rich diet can give you.
This confusion is responsible for a great deal of needless fear. And food-scare groups ignore the fact that any (still unproven) health risks from mercury would take an entire lifetime to accumulate. It’s simply not possible to get mercury poisoning from eating a week’s worth of any commercially available fish.
For more information about the EPA’s “Reference Dose” and the theoretical harm threshold (a number ten times greater, called the “Benchmark Dose Lower Limit”), please see the Glossary section of the MercuryFacts website.