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Something fishy about that food pyramid

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  • Something fishy about that food pyramid

    From Salon:

    Something fishy about that food pyramid


    Whoops. There's a toxin in the new food pyramid. Apparently, the United States Department of Agriculture, which released the pyramid last week, forgot that women of child-bearing age and young children aren't ever supposed to eat swordfish and king mackerel, according to the Environmental Protection Agency's recommendations. (Nursing moms, would-be moms and kids are supposed to limit their diet of tuna, too.)

    Those fish are among those most contaminated with mercury, a pollutant released from coal-fired power plants -- which the Bush administration has failed to crack down on. According to E.P.A. research, some 600,000 U.S. newborns, each year, are at risk for learning disorders and behavioral problems because of their exposure to the neurotoxin in the womb.

    The USDA's new Web site ignores all these mercury warnings, recommending the very fish most likely to contain high levels of mercury. "Not only does the new food pyramid shirk away from telling the public which unhealthy foods to avoid," said David Wallinga, director of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy's Food and Health Program in Minneapolis, "it actually tells people to eat fish that other federal agencies warn are too contaminated with mercury to eat."

    Dr. Wallinga calculated that a single 6 ounce serving of swordfish, which is among the recommended daily allowances on MyPyramid.gov for an active 35 year-old woman, contains 28 times what the E.P.A. says is the maximum, safe, daily amount of methylmercury, and four times more than the maximum amount that's acceptable for an entire week.

    No wonder the public is confused about which fish is OK for women and kids to eat, and which they should avoid. Right now, the fed's new food pyramid -- only the government's biggest vehicle for communicating information about good nutrition -- leads health-conscious citizens right into the toxic soup.



    Chuck
    秋音的爸爸

  • #2
    While this may hold true for those species it doesn't hold for farmed fish.

    Species like swordfish and mackerel make up such a small percentage of what's consumed in my area as to be unlikely to have much of an effect. Instead of them we tend to eat catfish (YUMMY!!), trout, fresh water salmon and other farmed species.

    Farmed species make up a huge portion of the fish we see in markets. My estimate of the total mass based on what I see in the markets would be almost 50%, with much of the rest being species farmed overseas.

    Overall fish farming is the the fastest growing sector of U.S. agriculture market. Last year 12 percent of all seafood consumed in this country had been domestically farmed, and the USDA expects it'll be at least 25% within 5 years and 50% soon after that.

    How big a difference in contamination is there between pond raised an wild raised levels of contamination?

    Huge: studies going back as far as the early '90's show that farm raised fish have less than 5% of the levels shown in canned tuna with catfish being even cleaner than that. At these levels farmed fish is well below the USDA and EPA regulations.

    And lets not forget that even plants grown in natural earth will absorb at least some contamination.

    As for coal fired power plants: those are going the way of the dinosaur. Most of the plants in our area long ago converted over to natural gas with the rest nuclear. In fact nuclear is likely to make a huge resurgence in the US now that PBMR reactors are on the way;



    Now if only the west would "get" that the Chinese have the right idea.

    Dr. Mordrid
    Last edited by Dr Mordrid; 25 April 2005, 12:46.
    Dr. Mordrid
    ----------------------------
    An elephant is a mouse built to government specifications.

    I carry a gun because I can't throw a rock 1,250 fps

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    • #3
      Yup, they are mostly talking about swordfish and king mackrel.
      It's hard to know about salmon (one of my favorites) because the feed used on farmed can make them higher im Mercury than the wild ones.
      But not always.
      sigh...
      Chuck
      秋音的爸爸

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      • #4
        Farmed salmon tastes like ... well nothing. Give me wild salmon any time.
        <TABLE BGCOLOR=Red><TR><TD><Font-weight="+1"><font COLOR=Black>The world just changed, Sep. 11, 2001</font></Font-weight></TR></TD></TABLE>

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        • #5
          Yeah, wild salmon rocks.

          Anyway, don't forget that all of those nice childhood immunizations use a mercury-based preservative to keep the vaccines from going bad. You don't want to know the equilavent murcury levels are after a few injections into an infant.

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          • #6
            Why don't they just freeze the damned stuff?

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            • #7
              Anyway, mercury is not the worst that coal-fired power stations produce. World-wide, it is estimated that more radioactive fall-out comes from them than all the nuclear power stations (Chernobyl included) plus all the nuclear explosions combined. Of course, the percentage composition of radionuclides (mostly thorium) in coal is tiny but the teratonnes of the stuff that are burnt each year means that this source has considerably upped the natural background levels.
              Brian (the devil incarnate)

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              • #8
                All the more reason for the anti-nuke weenies to go back in their holes and let the rest of us get on with building PBMR's

                Not only will it actually reduce the radionuclide pollution caused from burning coal but it will drastically lower the levels of particulates, sulphur compounds and CO in the atmosphere.

                IMO PBMR's are a truely enviromental solution to our power needs.

                Dr. Mordrid
                Dr. Mordrid
                ----------------------------
                An elephant is a mouse built to government specifications.

                I carry a gun because I can't throw a rock 1,250 fps

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                • #9
                  And meanwhile almost 100% of electricity here comes from coal, and worst of all, 2/3 of it is brown coal :/ And probably public will block construction of nuclear power plant, that is planned in the next ~10/15 years...people just don't realize that a coal plant emits more radiation than a nuclear plant. When the largest (largest in the world - yupee ) brown coal power plant was beeing built (which produces ~half of our electricity), it was meant to be temporal: the nuclear was planned. Unfortunatelly after Tchernobyl there was mass hysteria about it (the plant wouldn't have been like in the Tchernobyl = dangerous), which mostly preserves to this day. Basically even though a little over half of the population would agree for construction somewhere in Poland, over 90% of them says "no f***ing way in my backyard" (I wouldn't mind...nuclear powerplant "softens" the microclimate :> But unfortunatelly the region in which I live isn't very good for construction, so I'll have to move )

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                  • #10
                    Huge: studies going back as far as the early '90's show that farm raised fish have less than 5% of the levels shown in canned tuna with catfish being even cleaner than that. At these levels farmed fish is well below the USDA and EPA regulations.
                    do they have regulations regarding the contamination with antibiotics too?

                    mfg
                    wulfman
                    "Perhaps they communicate by changing colour? Like those sea creatures .."
                    "Lobsters?"
                    "Really? I didn't know they did that."
                    "Oh yes, red means help!"

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                    • #11
                      Originally posted by Wulfman
                      do they have regulations regarding the contamination with antibiotics too?

                      mfg
                      wulfman
                      Not that I know of... and don't forget the other delicious things like pesticides and other chemicals that are present in the feed that the farmed fish are given.

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                      • #12
                        The recent reports I've read (used to be on newscientist.com, but now gone) says that farm raised fish have more toxins because they swim in the same cruddy water their whole lives.
                        Gigabyte GA-K8N Ultra 9, Opteron 170 Denmark 2x2Ghz, 2 GB Corsair XMS, Gigabyte 6600, Gentoo Linux
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                        "if I said you had a beautiful body would you take your pants off and dance around a bit?" --Zapp Brannigan

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                        • #13
                          That it's now gone could be an indiation of its veracity, or lack thereof.

                          Dr. Mordrid
                          Dr. Mordrid
                          ----------------------------
                          An elephant is a mouse built to government specifications.

                          I carry a gun because I can't throw a rock 1,250 fps

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Originally posted by TnT
                            The recent reports I've read (used to be on newscientist.com, but now gone) says that farm raised fish have more toxins because they swim in the same cruddy water their whole lives.
                            The only thing I've read like that is that farmed fish that eat fishmeal based food may be higher in metals because the fishmeal is made from fish higher up in the food chain ( and therefore with higher metal content) than they would eat in the wild.
                            But even that is an iffy indicator because the feeds vary so much.
                            And I don't think that even applys to freshwater farmed fish like catfish.
                            Chuck

                            PS My favorite, by far, is Tuna that I have cooked myself on a hot grill over hickory.
                            It should still look like cherry candy on the inside or it is over cooked.
                            Hard to get it like that at a restaurant
                            Chuck
                            秋音的爸爸

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                            • #15
                              Originally posted by rylan
                              ...
                              Anyway, don't forget that all of those nice childhood immunizations use a mercury-based preservative to keep the vaccines from going bad. You don't want to know the equilavent murcury levels are after a few injections into an infant.
                              ChooChoo's immunizations were done in a Chinese orphanage.
                              Gives me the willies just to think about it.
                              Though they did titer as giving her protection.
                              Last edited by cjolley; 27 April 2005, 10:23.
                              Chuck
                              秋音的爸爸

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