Paleo Diet: Raw Paleo Diet and Lifestyle Forum
Raw Paleo Diet Forums => Hot Topics => Topic started by: B.Money on December 02, 2010, 02:58:19 pm
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"Sadly, contamination of our oceans and waterways is so great that I don't advise eating ANY fish, whether farm-raised or wild-caught, unless you can verify its purity."
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/11/30/farmed-salmon-exposed.aspx
Thoughts?
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lol....lol...lol :) the ocean is HUGGGEEEEE no fking way. eat fish man, this society tries to grip and manipulate everyone via fear
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The above claim by Mercola is absolute, utter nonsense as regards wildcaught fish and is a desperate ploy to get people to buy his Krill-Oil supplements. There is no truth, whatsoever, that mercury-levels in wild fish are dangerous. Here is a website with numerous articles debunking this absurd myth and pointing out the politically-motivated scum who are manipulating the data:-
http://fishscam.com/fearmongers.cfm
Here is the famous study which debunked the anti-mercury/anti-fish scares:-
http://www.rochester.edu/pr/releases/med/mercury.htm
It is embarassing to admit that I once plugged those mercola krill oil capsules. I have anyway been informed of a better, rawer alternative of krill-oil so will be trying that in a few months when I get around to it.
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But it's better to eat the smaller ones, as they have got the lowest level of toxins.
Sardines, herrings, anchovies, mackerels, etc.
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But it's better to eat the smaller ones, as they have got the lowest level of toxins.
Sardines, herrings, anchovies, mackerels, etc.
Utter nonsense as the above study showed that people in the Seychelles had 10 times the amount of mercury in them as those in the United States due to their massive consumption of seafood, yet these Seychelles Islanders had no ill-effects from mercury whatsoever. In short, eat plenty of raw (wildcaught) seafood as there is no danger involved whatsoever.
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Utter nonsense
Ok, I understand.
But I'd rather eat smaller ones, just in case ;)
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Me too. To be on the safe side, one should avoid large, long-lived predatory fish including swordfish and even tuna. Salmon, mackerel and sardines are safe, if one does not eat more than about 3 kg a month. Iguana, perhaps this is interesting for you (tuna):
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega-3-Fettsäuren#Vorkommen
Reference: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega-3-Fettsäuren#cite_note-1
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It seems there are always going to be some hysterical people with illogical phobias who will readily believe in some of the more unusual and ridiculous scare-stories peddled by the media, even here on rawpaleoforum -v l) :'( :( -[. What makes it so pathetic is that the whole mercury-in-fish scam was originally started by environmental and vegan activists(such as PETA), for purely politically-motivated reasons.
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Sorry, Tyler, but you really have a screw loose.
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Yeh, 99% of fish would say that they've never eaten Dr Mercola, but that doesn't mean that it would be wrong to do so.
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Well, since the meagre science in favour of the mercury-toxicity allegations is pretty suspect anyway(such as that Faroes study), I doubt it will have any really sizeable effect on the RVAF diet community as a whole, especially since so many RVAFers eventually find that the scares re bacteria/parasites are similiarly bogus. So, I will just ensure that such dumb topics routinely get parked in our "rubbish-bin" forum here on RPF, and post relevant data like fishscam.com and the Seychelles study in those threads for the less gullible newbies among us.
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My main source of food is fish; mainly wild salmon and pollock and sometimes tuna and sole. I often eat about a kilo per day.
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For me it doesn't matter whether larger fish are safe to eat or not.
Why? Because I practically do not eat any fish, even smaller ones.
I find my local land mammels and some fowls much better. They suffice me. :)
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The study Tyler give the link for http://www.rochester.edu/pr/releases/med/mercury.htm is very reassuring about the mercury level in fish, said to be roughly the same throughout the World's oceans and seas. But I guess other pollutants are unequally distributed and the Indian Ocean around the Seychelles Islands is relatively clean. So it matters that the fish we eat is from not too polluted waters. Rivers and lakes are generally too polluted, I never eat it fish from soft waters. The pollution of partially closed seas such as the Baltic is also scary.
Hanna, what do you want to show me with your links? They don't work as they are, here it is http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega-3-Fetts%C3%A4uren#Vorkommen
I learned German 5 years at school, but I'm unable to understand much of it! By contrast, I never learned English at school, just by my own.
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The mercury issue is irrelevant, regardless of which ocean etc. the fish is in. The only problem that might occur, such as what happened in Mianamata Bay in Japan, is if industrial chemicals containing mercury were regularly dumped in vast amounts in just 1 particular bay(either by accident via spillage from mines or on purpose) so that any fish in that small region get huge amounts of mercury-contamination and poison any humans eating lots of fish. Such an event is extremely rare, though, so it's nothing to worry about.
As for pollution in general, we all have eaten raw grassfed meats from cattle routinely exposed to traces of air-pollution of some sort, and we haven't suffered from it, so I think that trace amounts are not an issue.
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so I think that trace amounts are not an issue.
That's true.
Besides, have we got any choice?
We've got to eat something and we try to eat the best food that's available around us.
That's all we can do.
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Sure. And heavy metals, PCB, pesticides and most other pollutants are not at all rendered harmless by cooking.
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Sorry, Tyler, but you really have a screw loose.
how? about what? Ty seems prty smart to me, and admits if hes wrong. If ur gonna attack someone have some substance or at least state ur reason. we are all grown ups here
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"...I don't advise eating ANY fish, whether farm-raised or wild-caught, unless you can verify its purity."
Thoughts?
Verify its purity! Why would you eat farmed salmon though? I look for wild caught, sustainably harvested etc.
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Yeh, 99% of fish would say that they've never eaten Dr Mercola, but that doesn't mean that it would be wrong to do so.
ROLF! :o
Would eating a fish that ate a Dr Mercola be more nutritious?
There is line I draw when worrying about every food and your happiness, there is reason you can find to not eat ANYTHING!
I mean we have to buy food it would be depressing if all I can eat is grass fed beef, I have periods where I love it but then I get tired of it...
Yesterday I had some raw filet mignon, yes it was from grain-fed beef but is was melt in your mouth goodness. Today I am thinking to go buy some fish, I will enjoy it and the last thing on my mind will be mercury...
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I have periods where I love it but then I get tired of it...
There is a marvellous scene in an episode of the TV series, "Married With Children", where Al wordlessly says" Where is there a cyanide pill when I need one!" upon hearing the word "period", spoken by Marcy's niece during some torturous, excruciating dialogue with Marcy. Please don't mention the word" period" or "cycle" etc. ever again on this forum!
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I loved that show I remember watching it with my dad all the time and we'd laugh our heads off!
Poor Al :-*
I shall say it no more! The cycle shall stop! Period.
Well to try and stay on topic, perhaps we should be aware of fish, look what happened to Kayne West :P
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GzOoyOOfqM
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I can see if someone is eating a conventional diet and happy taking supplements and so forth, it might be somewhat wise to avoid the heavily loaded wild fish and of course everyone should avoid and not support farmed fish in general.
I know some people will say that fish and sea foods aren't really a necessary part of our natural diet, but not only is that very speculative, in today's reality fish and sea foods are often one of the major available sources of wild food. Cutting them out and being without game meats would mean a diet mostly of domesticated animals which would - I assume - garner some environmental and degenerative toxicity in comparrison to wild foods hundreds or thousands of years ago.
If people want to stick to the smaller end of the chain, that is their business, but I don't think it makes much sense. I tend to agree that alot of it is fear-mongering and the logic is somewhat akin to the ideology of eating a plant based diet because this is what the grazing animals eat and that the meat is then 'toxic' and indirect. Unless one believes we are meant to eat the algaes and plankton, odds are the bivalves and fatty fish are more our style. Unfortunately the stream salmon and so forth that probably represented a more natural food source than the deep ocean fish ARE probably no longer very edible due to pollution.
I believe the the mercury and pollution issue is very real as well in terms of ocean fish, at the same time, eating a raw food diet high in minerals and fats -including sea foods - should go a long way towards removing these sort of toxins from the body, to the point that minimizing risk seems more a preference of extreme fussiness than a necessity. Unless I was very careful about the exact PPM of my directly sourced spring water, I wouldn't think to drop my intake of swordfish and tuna, but I honestly would probably not base my diet around those things either.
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I am proud to say that I ignore such mindless scaremongering re absurd
mercury-in-fish notions. AV has a similiar take re claiming that raw fish is somehow less mercury-toxic than cooked fish, but his ideas are as ridiculous as the anti-mercury-claims.
For now, I will continue to eat plenty of raw swordfish, as often as possible.
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For now, I will continue to eat plenty of raw swordfish, as often as possible.
Well, good luck.
You have great faith in one particular study (Seychelles). But there is a huge literature on mercury, seafood, and toxicity, and as far as I can tell, there is no clear consensus. For example, some quick googling turned this up:
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2803%2914170-0/fulltext
I find it strange that in the case of saturated fat and cholesterol, you agree with the mainstream because "there are thousands of supporting studies, and they can't all be wrong".
http://www.rawpaleoforum.com/hot-topics/new-wave-of-anti-meat-studies-in-newspapers/
But in the case of mercury and fish, you pick out one study (Seychelles), and ignore thousands of studies on mercury toxicity and seafood. (In particular, the above link has references to other epidemiological studies which did find correlations between mercury intake from seafood and neurotoxicity). This is real science, not just PETA hysteria.
Finally, I would like to point out that deep ocean fish in general, and swordfish in particular, is a neolithic food. They have different fatty acid profiles than freshwater fish. I'm not saying they're necessarily bad to eat, but it's just something to think about before deciding to "eat plenty of raw swordfish, as often as possible".
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I just bought a kilo of swordfish for sashimi this evening for the entire family.
The ocean is a whole lot bigger than land masses.
I'd bet more on ocean creature nutrition than land animal nutrition any time.
I say ocean creatures are the last frontier.
Will enjoy my sword fish and my sea urchin this evening with my family.
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Well, good luck.
Thanks, Michaelwh: it's good to have another point of view. I've eaten tuna quite often and I will continue to do so, but of course not every day and I prefer the small ones. I'm more wary about swordfish because it contains in average as much as 4 times more mercury than tuna. It doesn't mean that we should never eat it, but eating some everyday during a whole live is certainly not advisable! On the contrary, having a large piece of raw swordfish once in a way or even regularly during a short period ;) is not likely to be dangerous; on the contrary it can be very beneficial.
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Actually, the only vaguely reliable study that mercury-in-fish activists can cite is the Faroes study. The trouble is that the Seychelles study has, according to reports, far more solid data by comparison to the Faroes study and it has been going on for many years as well. The Faroes study was of a much shorter duration and only cited a 0.25 IQ-point difference which is so tiny that it is well within standard deviation and is therefore unlikely to be correct.
I back those anti-saturated fat studies as there are just too many of them showing a clear drop in health from consumption thereof. I have already stated that, while their evidence is fine given so many supporting sources, their conclusions are clearly false. They cite saturated fat as the problem when it is actually the heat-created toxins in foods high in cooked saturated fats, which are the real problem.
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I don't think what I cited was particularly unique to aajonus. If somone is on a conventional diet, they likely won't have any kind of system in place for removing mercury or other toxins from their body. This can become an issue for lots of things from bacteria to parasites to environmental stuff. I think this is fairly agreeable.
I believe Aajonus has stated that fish and seafoods will aid directly in removal of mercury where perhaps other foods would not, but I can only have a suspicion that this cold be true and wasn't presenting that as an idea really. More or less all I was saying was that a healthy diet should be a better starting point to not worry about excess mercury, and that seafoods themselves could still be part of this healthy diet.
As to even high levels of mercury being acceptable as shown in a few isolated peoples, this I think ironically does point to the negative dependability of studies, as you can pick people all around the globe that have high this or that or habits deemed 'good' or 'bad' and still maintain reasonable levels of health. I think it its pretty safe to say that a build up of mercury is not that desirable. The issue then for me would be making sure I'm not building up large quantities of mercury, but not necessarily micromanaging my intake towards 0.
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but it's just something to think about before deciding to "eat plenty of raw swordfish, as often as possible"
I doubt that the mercury will make things worse in Tyler´s case. -\
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AxBxpB-fEw
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autism's_False_Prophets
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Hanna, what do you want to show me with your links? They don't work as they are, here it is http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega-3-Fetts%C3%A4uren#Vorkommen
The article states that more than about 500 g tuna a month is potentially toxic because of its mercury content.
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What about someone who is six months pregnant? I'd be grateful if you guys would give your opinions on pregnant ladies' intake of fish.
I'm "Sabertooth's" ( l) ) wife... I am almost 25 weeks pregnant. I've been craving fish like crazy for the past two days, but the OB-GYN I am seeing says that pregnant women should severely limit their intake of fish, unless it's farm-raised, to be "safe". But I've been craving all kinds of fish so badly... I think I need it, for sure.
It's rather interesting to read these studies you guys linked to... :)
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The evidence against the mercury notions is pretty damning, so you don't need to worry re this scare. Indeed, there are plenty of studies showing benefits for pregnant women eating fish eg:-
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140673607602773/fulltext
(the irony of the above study is that it showed that those who consumed the least seafood during pregnancy had children with the lowest IQs).
Her advice to eat farmed fish is insane as farmed fish contain harmful chemicals. Plus, if the absurd mercury-in-the-environment notions were true, then farmed fish would be just as contaminated with mercury(that is, unless fish-farmers have some artificial means to remove mercury).
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What about someone who is six months pregnant? I'd be grateful if you guys would give your opinions on pregnant ladies' intake of fish.
I'm "Sabertooth's" ( l) ) wife... I am almost 25 weeks pregnant. I've been craving fish like crazy for the past two days, but the OB-GYN I am seeing says that pregnant women should severely limit their intake of fish, unless it's farm-raised, to be "safe". But I've been craving all kinds of fish so badly... I think I need it, for sure.
It's rather interesting to read these studies you guys linked to... :)
Hi Mrs Sabertooth. I'm a woman, a mom, I've been pregnant, given birth (no drugs) etc. Yes there are more toxins in the world than there used to be and more in the water. Do you eat marrow? How are you with edible seaweed? If I were you I would not eat cooked fish and I would not eat most farmed fishes. Pregnant women can have some of the best intuition. If you are craving fish, it might be that fish is the best food for you and for your little one. Maybe its the fetus that's "calling" for it. I would also avoid raw fresh water fish. Otherwise, it might be best that you just go with your instincts. Of course a medical OB-GYN will tell you to do everything the straightlaced way. He could lose his position otherwise. This is your child though, and if his advice hurts your child, it's not him that's going to pay. It's your child, and you experience this child in a way the doctor does not.
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Exactly, well said, RawZi and Tyler. And not only farmed fish contains harmful known chemicals and pollutants: worse they heavily loaded with an innumerable number of unknown new chemical species produced by heat in the fodder they are fed.
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It's the wife here again! :) Thanks Tyler, RawZi, and Iguana. I appreciate your opinions/advice... I think I will go ahead and eat fish and other seafood as I wish - and definitely not the farmed variety!
RawZi - I'm just beginning to open my mind (and mouth) to a raw diet, therefore I've never eaten much raw foods. I am just sticking my toe in these new and uncharted waters, so to speak. I do think that I will eat the fish/oysters raw, though. I'm ready to try... It will be a long road for me, though. On top of a chronic illness (Type 1 diabetes), I also have a lot of addiction problems with carbohydrates/sugar, and it began in babyhood. I believe it is yeast overgrowth as well as conditioning, and it's so hard to break free from. :(
For instance, after I had our first child in 2006, I asked my mother if I could look through my baby book to compare pictures since our son looks so much like me. While leafing through, I stumbled across a page in it about the baby's firsts. Under "First Food" my mother had written, "Chocolate ice cream, 4 months old, May 1988. Loved it". Me: :o ??? My mother couldn't see "the big deal" and thought it was "funny" how much the 4 month old me had gobbled up. Growing up I had McDonalds once a week for dinner throughout childhood, and anything else was canned or from a frozen bag - when I met my husband, I had never eaten a grapefruit in all my life and looked at him puzzled when he mentioned buying some tilapia for dinner, because I had no idea what tilapia was. Fish to me was the breaded, nameless kind from Wal-Mart's freezer section or handed over the counter at a fast food place. And surprisingly, I got Type 1 diabetes at age 9. I'm just thankful that I don't have obesity/digestive problems, too!
I'm off to ask Mr. Sabertooth ( :P) to bring home some raw oysters for me.
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I am just sticking my toe in these new and uncharted waters, so to speak.
Don’t worry, those water have been charted since the 60s by the pioneers (our member GCB, family and friends) and I’m sailing on it since January 87.
On top of a chronic illness (Type 1 diabetes), I also have a lot of addiction problems with carbohydrates/sugar, and it began in babyhood. I believe it is yeast overgrowth as well as conditioning, and it's so hard to break free from. :(
Don’t confuse cooked carbohydrates and processed sugars (especially refined white sugar, which is chemically pure saccharose) with raw, natural ones found in a wide array of different plants and fruits. Sugars and carbs are essential components of life! When their intake is instinctively regulated, wild sources of sugars don’t cause any problems, even in case of diabetes, and are very suitable nutrients.
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A person who is malnourished will have a body incapable of handling heavy metals. Ironically, it may be the vegans and vegetarians who are more likely for mercury toxicity than fish eaters. There are protein complexes known as metallothionein in the body that are important in eliminating mercury and other heavy metals from the body. It requires zinc, cysteine, and selenium for proper function and these nutrients would be low on low protein vegan diets without red meat. The rich selenium content in fish along with bioavailable cysteine supports this function. Just make sure you eat red meat too. :)
I'm wary of Mercola at times because he always wants to sell something to you.
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I'm wary of Mercola at times because he always wants to sell something to you.
Last I heard... at "longevity now", he claimed that he believes he will live to be 150.
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I'm not scared of eating any wild fish, and I'm not scared of Mercola either. It was rather irritating listening to him in a clip from the longevity conference.