Skip to main content

Heart Healthy Fish - Health Benefits of Fish


July 6, 2010
Do fears about mercury keep you from reeling in the health benefits of fish? If so, you could be missing the love-your-heart boat.

For most people, the healthy fats in fish provide a huge benefit to your heart and overall health -- even with a little mercury. Skeptical? Get this: Eating one to two 6-ounce servings of omega-3-rich fish each week reduces your risk of dying from heart disease by 36 percent! And your all-cause mortality rate drops by 17 percent.

Soon-to-be or currently breastfeeding moms need to be especially careful to avoid excess mercury. Still, most people can do their heart and body right by eating one or two servings a week of omega-3-rich fish that is relatively low in mercury. Unfortunately, most fish contain some mercury, thanks to industrial processing. But the less time fish spend simply living in a mercury-laden environment or eating other fish containing mercury, the lower the contamination levels will be. So for low-mercury fish, we're talking small fish that don't eat many other fish (or fish meal) and don't have a long life span. Here are five good choices:

1. Salmon (wild): 1 gram of omega-3 fatty acids per 2 ounces of fish;* 0.014 parts per million mercury concentration

2. Herring: 1 gram of omega-3 fatty acids per 1 ounce of fish;* 0.044 parts per million mercury concentration

3. Sardines: 1 gram of omega-3 fatty acids per 2-3 ounces of fish;* 0.016 parts per million mercury concentration

4. Trout (freshwater): 1 gram of omega-3 fatty acids per 3-4 ounces of fish;* 0.072 parts per million mercury concentration

5. Pollock: 1 gram of omega-3 fatty acids per 6.5 ounces of fish;* 0.041 parts per million mercury concentration

*Oil content varies widely, depending on species, season, environment, diet, and packing and cooking methods.

Here's the list of fish to avoid:
King mackerel: 0.73 parts per million mercury concentration
Shark: 0.99 parts per million mercury concentration
Swordfish: 0.98 parts per million mercury concentration
Tilefish (Gulf of Mexico): 1.45 parts per million mercury concentration

So where does the beloved tuna fall? Pretty close to the middle of the road, actually, with mercury concentration ranging from 0.12 to 0.69 parts per million, depending on what kind of tuna you eat. And you'll need to eat anywhere from 3.5-12 ounces to get 1 gram of omega-3 fatty acids, depending on how you take your tuna: Fresh tuna has the most and canned chunk light tuna has the least. But chunk light tuna also has the least mercury.

Keep in mind that oil content estimates can be fairly rough, despite the best research efforts. A fish-oil supplement is a surefire way to get the omega-3 fatty acids you want and need. But talk to your doctor first. Fish-oil supplements are dangerous for certain people.

Comments

Buy Preserved Lemons said…
After reading your post I am more comfortable eating wild Alaskan Sockeye salmon. However, I'm worried about what's ahead for Omega 3. I'm worried about salmon. I'm worried that the loss of salmon will drive up the price of fish oil and Omega 3. I read that salmon supplies are already diminishing at http://www.order-salmon.com/salmon-global-warming-salmon-climate-change.php It says that the oceans are becoming more acidic and that this endangers the food that salmon feed on. What do you know about this? What can we do about it? What can one person do?
August 1, 2010 at 5:58 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Olympic Diet of Michael Phelps!

By Kathleen M. Zelman, MPH, RD, LD WebMD Health News Questions and answers about the high-calorie diet that fuels the Olympic swimmer's championship performance. Aug. 13, 2008 -- His body may resemble the trim, athletic figure of Michelangelo's statue of David, but the diet of Michael Phelps sure doesn't sound like the stuff of champions. The U.S. Olympic swimmer told ESPN that he eats roughly 8,000-10,000 calories a day, including "lots of pizza and pasta." In addition to stuffing down carbs, he's said that he routinely eats foods like fried egg sandwiches. So exactly how do all those calories help fuel the most decorated Olympic athlete in history? Here are some questions and answers about the Michael Phelps diet. How can Michael Phelps eat 10,000 calories a day and still be so lean? There is no doubt he packs away a ton of food, but it is unlikely that he actually eats that many calories a day, an expert believes. University of Pittsburgh Director of Sports...
Post a Comment
Read more

Soy Products Can Reduce Sperm Counts!

By: Heather Hajek Published: Friday, 25 July 2008 www.healthnews.com C alling all men who want to become fathers! Soy products may reduce a man's sperm count. Based on a recent study, men who consume soy products may have lower sperm counts than those who don't. The study was based on a small group of men who visited the Massachusetts General Hospital Fertility Center from 2000 to 2006. Even though the study found that some of the men who ate soy products on a regular basis had lower sperm counts, the researchers conducting the study are not saying that soy products were the cause of the lower sperm concentrations. The men who had soy products in their diets recorded lower sperm counts than those that didn't, but their counts were still within the normal range. Researchers don't deny that during the study men who consumed soy products had lower sperm counts, but they want people to realize there are other factors other than soy products that may have played a role in th...
Post a Comment
Read more

Biggest explosion!

Thu Feb 19, 3:58 pm ET WASHINGTON (AFP) – The US space agency's Fermi telescope has detected a massive explosion in space which scientists say is the biggest gamma-ray burst ever detected, a report published Thursday in Science Express said. The spectacular blast, which occurred in September in the Carina constellation, produced energies ranging from 3,000 to more than five billion times that of visible light, astrophysicists said. "Visible light has an energy range of between two and three electron volts and these were in the millions to billions of electron volts," astrophysicist Frank Reddy of US space agency NASA told AFP. "If you think about it in terms of energy, X-rays are more energetic because they penetrate matter. These things don't stop for anything -- they just bore through and that's why we can see them from enormous distances," Reddy said. A team led by Jochen Greiner of Germany's Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics deter...
Post a Comment
Read more