Letters to the Editor
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Tomorrow's Tuna: brighter babies vs. barren seas
While I agree that this study is frustratingly vague and its conclusions are underdeveloped... what about the fact that fish are a dwindling resource? Yes I realize that many moms-to-be dream of spawning their very own Einsteins but I feel that it is irresponsible to encourage ANYONE to feast on fish these days. Not only are the toxin levels present in all marine life enough to give me pause (and do I ever love sushi), I believe the ravenous consumption of seafood by those who eschew red meats for health, dietary, or status reasons only makes it harder for the fishing industries and national governments the world over to come to grips with the fact that we will face the loss of many of our most important fisheries due to overfishing if we don't seriously reduce catch limits. Already some species of Tuna are on the verge of extinction. Yes fish are a fabulous resource for important nutrients that have amazing health benefits. Will you birth a baby genius if you eat tonnes of seafood? No. Could blindly persisting in underwriting the commercially unviable fishing industries directly contribute to a world in which your minimally smarter child never remembers a time when seafood was a safe or affordable option? I'm going to skip over quite-possibly to emphatically YES.
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incomplete
These types of studies are incomplete and vague.
Yes - Omega-3 is very good for developing humans, and those of us out of the uterus.
I could say that people who eat at McDonald's 3 times a week or more, are more likely to have children who do poorly in school. Or pick your imcomplete cause and effect.
I think you'd have to look more at the whole picture. What is the overall lifestyle and diet of women who eat fish several times a week and are also pregnant. Do people who eat more fish have other eating and living habits and financial situations that might also contribute to babies with higher IQ's?
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Yet Another Food Fad
Every five minutes, self-described experts announce that some food or another is going to give the people who eat it some kind of edge over the lumpenproletariat.
What did our parents eat? Chicken a la king, mac n' cheese, bourbon n' ginger ale, franks 'n beans. We turned out OK. The big differences in how kids do has to do with parental income, opportunities and how much time the parents spend enriching their kids' lives. It has nothing to do with one single component in their diets.
I think all the nice upper middle class people gnawing their fingernails about their prenatal diets have to realize that their kids are going to come out just fine (barring some outlying situation like chromosome damage, hypoxia, or a genetic predisposition to Asperger's). Its poor women, women who smoke, women who drink too much, and women who don't get prenatal care who we need to worry about.
Making pregnant women worry with the latest "scientific report" (usually funded by some lobby) makes me crazy.
The fish fad makes me crazy because it is just that, another fad. We are in the middle of a global crisis with overfishing, diseases spread by fish farming, and habitat loss destroying fish breeding grounds.
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Sigh...
First coffee, now fish...what the heck ever happened to "Everything in Moderation?"
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The only question this study raises for me is
Who funded the study? Fish lobby, perhaps?
Most of these so-called "studies" are funded by the very industries that gain from them. For example, the "study" cited in my very paper today calling dangers from second-hand smoke a myth. Please.
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So....
Mrs. Paul + Gorton's Fisherman = Genius!
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Fish aren't the only way to get omega-3s or high IQs
First off, for those who don't like fish, or who might happen to be vegetarian, seeds are a great source of omega fatty acids. Flax seeds and hemp seeds are particularly good. For example Trader Joe's sells a tasty "Omega Seed Bread" that's chock full of omega-3, omega-6, and omega-9 fatty acids, without any of the mercury, stink, or guilt associated with fish.
Second, as a recent story on NPR (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7406521) explained, IQ is not a fixed thing, and children who are taught that their intelligence can increase with work, find that they are able to improve their IQs. So, even if your mom never ate a fish or a seed, you could still become highly intelligent just by spending some of the time you would have spent with your PSP with a book instead.
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speak for yourself
"What did our parents eat? Chicken a la king, mac n' cheese, bourbon n' ginger ale, franks 'n beans."
Whoa! Whose parents ate that? When were you born, last year or something?
For your information, in many parts of this nation, seafood has been a dietary staple for generations (not mac n' cheese or frans n' beans).
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Sardines are one answer...
...since they are so small and not as likely to have accumulated much mercury.
I prefer them with the bones, for calcium, since I can't have dairy, but they are also available skinned and boned, and even fresh during the proper season of the year.
If you think they sound too unappetizing, I'll bet you haven't tried putting them into a bowl of hot soup. Think if it as a "convenience" chowder you can have at lunch. White or red, depending on whether you use a potato soup or tomato/vegetable. (The canned sardines don't really need additional cooking-- and you wouldn't want to heat them in a microwave at work anyway.)
The most important thing for me about the canned variety is to get them in olive oil, rather than in soybean oil, both for taste and best nutritional benefits.
As for the study, were shellfish included?
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A little joke for Karen M to appreciate
My dad used to take sardines to lunch frequently, especially on Fridays since we're Catholic. I remember the label: "King Oscar's Brisling Sardines." Which was the subject of a long-ago comic's comment: "Brisling Sardines? Maybe they're 'bristling' because they don't like being cooped up in that can!"
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fish is good for you!
The study on which the current reports are based is being done in England (Avon Study)with the cooperation of US researchers as well, and involves 14,000 subjects (mothers & kids); it shows a clear correlation between smarter kids and mother's fish consumption. Another on-going study, in the Seychelles, followed about 800 moms & kids, and showed the same result; eating more fish produced smarter, better coordinated, better behaved kids. Those women for religious reasons neither smoke nor drink alcohol, and ate fish 12X per week, so no big confounding factor problems. But the standards for mercury in US fish are based on a study in the Faeroe Islands, where their dietary staple is whale blubber. Some Faeroe mothers also smoked and drank alcohol during pregnancy. This is the study that our mercury levels are based on, but not at the levels considered harmful; the government took the figure at which they thought there might be a problem and divided it by 10. This means they set the warning level at 1000% below where it may be a problem. Somehow, all this caution has turned into dire warnings about eating fish, which is so much healthier for you than most other protein sources, and actual harm is being done to babies because their mothers are afraid to eat any fish. And for all of you anti-farmed fish people, where are you getting your "wild" chicken, beef, pork and lamb? Most fish farming operations are pristine, and the tiny amounts of PCBs are also in wild salmon, not enough to bother anyone. My advice is don't buy your fresh fish from Wal-Mart, and do a little research on your own -- all of the studies listed above can be found on the internet.