is tuna healthy to eat these days? i keep hearing about mercury and iron and have researched this topic probably twice now and never can come to a definitive answer. thanks.
Yes, there is mercury in Tuna.
Mercury is mostly an issue for developing children. If you’re not a child, and don’t plan on giving birth to or nursing one, then you don’t need to worry about it. It does build up and stay in your system, so even if you’re not pregnant yet, but might be any time in the future, you should limit how much mercury you get in your food.
If you are a child or going to have one, then everyone agrees you should limit how much tuna you eat. There’s a little disagreement on how much is too much.
The FDA doesn’t take a strong stand on tuna, though they do warn against swordfish, which generally has similar mercury levels to tuna: http://vm.cfsan.fda.gov/~dms/admehg.html
Environmental groups charge that the FDA is too easy on tuna, and recommend staying away from mercury-containing fish quite a bit more: http://www.ewg.org/pub/home/reports/brainfood/pr.html
(recommendations at the bottom of the page).
My advice? If you’re a woman who’s going to have children go light on tuna – I’d try and average one or two meals a month of tuna/swordfish/etc combined. And try not to feed young kids on tuna for every meal. But once in a while it won’t kill you.
>for the record, when I reearched this last year, I learned that the mercury contained in fish -such as tuna- is a result of natural causes.
Whatever the ultimate source is, it becomes concentrated as you go up the food chain. So if you want to avoid the mercury it’s better to each smaller fish that don’t eat other fish.
And while you’re at it, you should also avoid any fish from the Great Lakes, especially Erie. Thanks to the zebra mussels, the water is now cleaner than ever before, but all of those pollutants (mercury, in particular) had to go somewhere, and where they went is into the food chain.
But according to this page:
http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~frf/sea-mehg.html
canned tuna has just 17% (on average) the level of mercury found in swordfish.
i am skeptical. if these levels of mercury have a negative effect on children, then they probably have a negative effect on adults, right? it’s probably a smaller effect but, hey, there is not a huge difference between kids and adults except that they are not as developed. same biology.
does 1.5-2 servings of packaged (not canned) tuna put me at risk at all? does drinking a lot of water help flush any excess out, because i drink at least 1 gallon of pure water a day and eat plenty of fruits? (i would think so)
i think i’m ok, but i swear if i lose my brain at 45-50 years old because of tuna, i’m gonna be pissed!
Philster – Do you rememember where you saw that mercury in fish is from natural sources? Because I don’t think that’s a majority view among scientists [putting it politely].
Fuel – mercury really does affect children much more than adults – it interferes with brain development and growth, but isn’t nearly as much as a problem for an already grown brain. If you’re not going to get pregnant, you probably don’t need to worry about eating canned tuna.
Crafter_man – I didn’t say there weren’t good arguments on boht sides of the tuna warning issue. But if tuna has typically 1/3 to 1/6 the concentration as swordfish, that’s pretty similar levels, when you’re talking environmental contaminants. I think the issue is that not many people eat swordfish morning, noon, and night, but there are people who eat canned tuna every single day. And for potential mothers or small children, that’s probably not a good thing, as far as mercury is concerned.