[Donald Duck]

I used to eat canned tuna for protein and a snack 7 days a week until I heard there's Mercury in it that is supposed to be deadly. Now I limit my canned Tuna intake to 3x a week. What are some other canned tuna replacements that are very low on carbs?

[Chad Daring]

Off hand that sounds like mumbo jumbo, but I'm not saying it isn't possibly true. Why not go to Whole Foods and just buy some all natural hippy-dippy tuna?

[Alfonzo]

Salmon,Crab,Sardine... all kind of bean .

[Kickb]

I've also heard that you should only eat fresh water fish. They say the fish that come from fish farms are bad for your health.

[The_CEO]

weblinks, is that you?

Avoid albacore tuna.
Mackerel and Sardines are very good.

[thegmanifesto]

How bad really is canned tuna?

Has there been any real significant/conclusive studies?

I am not asking to be combative, I really want to know.

I kind of take the approach in life that if Mercury from tuna is going to get me, then good for mercury.

There are way more dangerous things in life.

[Caligula]

The bigger and older the fish, the more pollutants it absorbs.

http://www.fda.gov/food/foodsafety/produ...115644.htm

[The_CEO]

(01-27-2012 05:47 PM)thegmanifesto Wrote:  

How bad really is canned tuna?

Has there been any real significant/conclusive studies?

I am not asking to be combative, I really want to know.

I kind of take the approach in life that if Mercury from tuna is going to get me, then good for mercury.

There are way more dangerous things in life.

Yeah it's conclusive. Contraindicated for pregnant women and children.

-Albacore is on the avoid list.
-Chunk light is better, say 3x a week.
-Large fish like swordfish, shark, etc, avoid.
-farmed fish also not so good for other reasons

anyway, thanks to overfishing there may a collapse of certain fish populations, solving the mercury-in-fish problem at least.

[Deb Auchery]

I loved smoked mackerel. It's as easy and convenient as Tuna to eat, although a bit more oily and smelly.

[alecks]

the whole mercury thing is overhyped IMO. I watched a doc about poisons in our food (mercury,aspartame etc) and it really opened my eyes,it can cause cancer,kill brain cells etc

anyway then i realised its probly just overhyped bs about mercury because think of it this way....people have been getting mercury fillings in their teeth for years (prob over 70 years) and there have been no problems relating to it. Ive even talked to dentists who USE MERCURY and say its completely harmless.Ive been eating tuna for years to,with no problems.

Thats not to say I could get cancer or said diseases later in life,im just sayin!

[T and A Man]

The premise behind tuna having hig mercury is that tuna is higher up the food chain, thus stays alive longer and absorbs more minerals found in sea water (thus fresh water fish are recommended for this reason).

If you are concerned, go to the other end of the food chain, eat sardines.

[Kona]

My crew and I kill tons of Ahi a week. Our customers always ask about mercury. I wish the hype would go away.

I took some fish to the auction in Honolulu a few months back. Some guy from a government agency was there with some bullshit test tubes and a laptop hooked to some stainless steel crap. He was able to determine if a fish had something like 5 parts per billion mercury. Then he goes on to say the machine has a 5% margin of error. I wanted to kick his ass.

I eat uncanned tuna probably 14 times a week. Half the time it's raw. I had seared aku with my eggs this morning.

This has been going on my whole life. My mom, may she rest in peace, ate the same diet while she was pregnant with me. My grandma did when she was pregnant with her, and all over the family tree.

I'm gonna take my great grandma out to dinner tonight. No doubt she'll have sashimi. Guess what, she's fine.

A hook shot out of an ahi when I was pulling it in recently. It jammed into my earlobe like an earring. That hurt. It's probably the worst thing that will ever happen to me from eating fish.

Aloha!

[mofo]

Does not tuna make your breath smell bad anyway? I mean this food stinks guys. Don't you think so?

[thegmanifesto]

(01-27-2012 09:26 PM)Kona Wrote:  

My crew and I kill tons of Ahi a week. Our customers always ask about mercury. I wish the hype would go away.

I took some fish to the auction in Honolulu a few months back. Some guy from a government agency was there with some bullshit test tubes and a laptop hooked to some stainless steel crap. He was able to determine if a fish had something like 5 parts per billion mercury. Then he goes on to say the machine has a 5% margin of error. I wanted to kick his ass.

I eat uncanned tuna probably 14 times a week. Half the time it's raw. I had seared aku with my eggs this morning.

This has been going on my whole life. My mom, may she rest in peace, ate the same diet while she was pregnant with me. My grandma did when she was pregnant with her, and all over the family tree.

I'm gonna take my great grandma out to dinner tonight. No doubt she'll have sashimi. Guess what, she's fine.

A hook shot out of an ahi when I was pulling it in recently. It jammed into my earlobe like an earring. That hurt. It's probably the worst thing that will ever happen to me from eating fish.

Aloha!

Going with Kona on this one.

I eat tuna from a can at least once a week and sushi at least once a week. I probably top out at 4-5 times a week (usually sushi driven).

Pretty much every one I know does.

Were much better than fine.

[The_CEO]

(01-27-2012 09:26 PM)Kona Wrote:  

My crew and I kill tons of Ahi a week. Our customers always ask about mercury. I wish the hype would go away.

I took some fish to the auction in Honolulu a few months back. Some guy from a government agency was there with some bullshit test tubes and a laptop hooked to some stainless steel crap. He was able to determine if a fish had something like 5 parts per billion mercury. Then he goes on to say the machine has a 5% margin of error. I wanted to kick his ass.

I eat uncanned tuna probably 14 times a week. Half the time it's raw. I had seared aku with my eggs this morning.

This has been going on my whole life. My mom, may she rest in peace, ate the same diet while she was pregnant with me. My grandma did when she was pregnant with her, and all over the family tree.

I'm gonna take my great grandma out to dinner tonight. No doubt she'll have sashimi. Guess what, she's fine.

A hook shot out of an ahi when I was pulling it in recently. It jammed into my earlobe like an earring. That hurt. It's probably the worst thing that will ever happen to me from eating fish.

Aloha!

i wouldn't tell you to stop eating of that and it sound delicious.

as far as anyone extrapolating that fish is safe to eat or not based on this, i wouldn't. it's anecdotal evidence that you can't really draw a conclusion from. ie. ahi caught in a certain area that is most likely fine.
+ eating it as a kid when it was also fine. + not being in a any risk group, etc etc

FYI i also eat a ton of fish. today i had tuna for lunch (chunk light), white fish for breakfast. and salmon for dinner...

but i general try to avoid albacore, and large ocean fish like sword fish, and shark b/c of high merc. content

[The_CEO]

In the 1950s, inhabitants of the seaside town of Minamata, on Kyushu island in Japan, noticed strange behavior in animals. Cats would exhibit nervous tremors, dance and scream. Within a few years this was observed in other animals; birds would drop out of the sky. Symptoms were also observed in fish, an important component of the diet, especially for the poor. When human symptoms started to be noticed around 1956 an investigation began. Fishing was officially banned in 1957. It was found that the Chisso Corporation, a petrochemical company and maker of plastics such as vinyl chloride, had been discharging heavy metal waste into the sea. They used mercury compounds as catalysts in their syntheses. It is believed that about 5,000 people were killed and perhaps 50,000 have been to some extent poisoned by mercury. Mercury poisoning in Minamata, Japan, is now known as Minamata disease.

[The_CEO]

and yeah, sounds like ahi is fine!

Fish that contain higher levels of mercury include:
Shark
Ray
Swordfish
Barramundi
Gemfish
Orange roughy
Ling
Southern bluefin tuna.
Fish with lower mercury levels

Examples of fish that contain lower levels of mercury include:
Shellfish including prawns, lobsters and oysters
Salmon
Canned tuna.

[Kona]

(01-27-2012 10:26 PM)The_CEO Wrote:  

FYI i also eat a ton of fish. today i had tuna for lunch (chunk light), white fish for breakfast. and salmon for dinner...

If you're eating fish like that then you need to hit up these guys:

http://www.honolulufishstore.com/Default.aspx

Get at me if they give you shit about being wholesale only.

They sell some of my fish. I know we just dropped off about a 3/4 ton of kajiki and maybe half that of opah. It's good fresh stuff. Lots of it is straight out of the Kauai Channel. And, it's only 5 parts per billion mercury!

Aloha!

[velkrum]

I wouldn't worry about Mercury..I'd be more concerned about the BPA used in the cans and where the fish was caught or raised.

Wild caught fish ONLY
and I would avoid any seafood from the Pacific NW.
Mercury levels are no big deal.

[gringochileno]

I wasn't sure whether there's anything to this so I went to UpToDate, which is a peer-reviewed database that summarizes findings from the medical literature. Here's what it had to say about mercury poisoning and fish (emphasis mine):

Quote:

Exposure from diet — The concentration of mercury is very low in most foodstuffs (below 0.02 mg Hg/kg). However, certain types of marine fish (such as shark, swordfish, and tuna) and certain fish taken from polluted fresh waters (such as pike, walleye, and bass) may contain high concentrations of mercury. In this setting, mercury is almost completely in the form of methylmercury. It is not uncommon that concentrations of methylmercury in these fish are 1 mg/kg or even higher. Severe epidemics caused by the consumption of fish polluted with mercury have been reported from Minamata in Japan [7].

Monitoring of mercury in blood is commonly used to identify and quantify exposure to methylmercury [10]. Heavy consumers of fish, in particular those who eat mercury-containing species, may have blood mercury levels in excess of 20 µg/L (normal value less than 5 µg/L).
There is also concern that dietary exposure of children and fetuses (via the mother) may result in neuropsychological deficits [11]. (See "Genetic and environmental causes of birth defects".)

Quote:

Clinically significant poisoning from mercury is unlikely if blood and urine concentrations are below 100 µg/L.

So basically, it looks like unless you're a pregnant woman, the amounts of mercury you can be exposed to by eating fish are several times too low to cause toxicity. I wouldn't worry about it.

[Amour Fou]

I have to chip in on this one:

Hawaiian Ahi (tuna) is as good as it gets. Delicious fish!

(But I still prefer Mahi Mahi though...)

[Kona]

This thread had me thinking all night. Fishing a passion of mine and a large part of my income. This mercury crap has driven me nuts for years.

After banging out an NFL cheerleader (its Pro Bowl week) I sat down here in my hotel to do an unofficial study. The theory I wanted to prove was that your chances of dying from a shark attack were higher than getting poisoned by mercury in shark meat.

I am unable to prove it at this point. There is so little information available about the actual number of people who get sick from mercury in fish. It is impossible to compare any amount to the 60 people killed by sharks per year.

I did find out that:

-10% of high school students in Hong Kong had high levels of mercury in their systems. I cannot, however, find out how many high school students there are total over there so it could be 10 or a million.

-Jeremy Piven got hydrargyria (mercury poisoning) after eating sushi twice a day for 20 years. Here's the thing though, you wouldn't have time to sit down at two sushi restaurants a day. I bet he ate a lot of bentos. As many of you are aware, the bentos contain that fake lettuce green stuff so the wasabi doesn't touch the sushi. That's dyed plastic shit, and I bet it has some mercury in it.

-The State of California makes people put warning labels on things, and I've seen these labels before. It's because of something called Proposition 65 and I read it. What a bunch of bullshit. these are the ones that say: WARNING: This product contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm. Basically, lawyers specialize in filing Prop 65 suits on behalf of what's called "straw man" plaintiffs, and make millions of dollars. Anything involving a "straw man" is sketch if you ask me. These lawyers just figured out a way to scare people and make money. Because of what I found out I don't believe any of those labels are factual and encourage all of you to ignore them, or anything else The State of California says.

- Autism is a big deal these days. I see people with the bumper stickers that say "Autism: It's no mystery, it's mercury" This is because they use a mercury based preservative in vaccinations. When kids are over-vaccinated then eat fish, they get autism. Lawyers have been trying to push mercury lawsuits over autism for a long time. Schools are set up that charge 140k a year to educate the autism kids. When you go there to enroll a kid, they give you a list of lawyers that specialize in suing cities and medical malpractice insurance companies in order to cover that tuition. Most real studies say that Autism is 90% hereditary.

To conclude, I cannot determine if eating shark is more dangerous than swimming with them. I have been aware for years that the dangers of shark attacks is way over hyped. My little study here shows that the mercury is the same deal.

The NFL cheerleader is the token Asian member of an east coast team's squad. All the hype surrounding NFL cheerleaders and how they fuck is absolutely true.

Aloha!

[gringochileno]

(01-28-2012 07:56 AM)Kona Wrote:  

This thread had me thinking all night. Fishing a passion of mine and a large part of my income. This mercury crap has driven me nuts for years.

After banging out an NFL cheerleader (its Pro Bowl week) I sat down here in my hotel to do an unofficial study. The theory I wanted to prove was that your chances of dying from a shark attack were higher than getting poisoned by mercury in shark meat.

I am unable to prove it at this point. There is so little information available about the actual number of people who get sick from mercury in fish. It is impossible to compare any amount to the 60 people killed by sharks per year.

I did find out that:

-10% of high school students in Hong Kong had high levels of mercury in their systems. I cannot, however, find out how many high school students there are total over there so it could be 10 or a million.

-Jeremy Piven got hydrargyria (mercury poisoning) after eating sushi twice a day for 20 years. Here's the thing though, you wouldn't have time to sit down at two sushi restaurants a day. I bet he ate a lot of bentos. As many of you are aware, the bentos contain that fake lettuce green stuff so the wasabi doesn't touch the sushi. That's dyed plastic shit, and I bet it has some mercury in it.

-The State of California makes people put warning labels on things, and I've seen these labels before. It's because of something called Proposition 65 and I read it. What a bunch of bullshit. these are the ones that say: WARNING: This product contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm. Basically, lawyers specialize in filing Prop 65 suits on behalf of what's called "straw man" plaintiffs, and make millions of dollars. Anything involving a "straw man" is sketch if you ask me. These lawyers just figured out a way to scare people and make money. Because of what I found out I don't believe any of those labels are factual and encourage all of you to ignore them, or anything else The State of California says.

- Autism is a big deal these days. I see people with the bumper stickers that say "Autism: It's no mystery, it's mercury" This is because they use a mercury based preservative in vaccinations. When kids are over-vaccinated then eat fish, they get autism. Lawyers have been trying to push mercury lawsuits over autism for a long time. Schools are set up that charge 140k a year to educate the autism kids. When you go there to enroll a kid, they give you a list of lawyers that specialize in suing cities and medical malpractice insurance companies in order to cover that tuition. Most real studies say that Autism is 90% hereditary.

To conclude, I cannot determine if eating shark is more dangerous than swimming with them. I have been aware for years that the dangers of shark attacks is way over hyped. My little study here shows that the mercury is the same deal.

The NFL cheerleader is the token Asian member of an east coast team's squad. All the hype surrounding NFL cheerleaders and how they fuck is absolutely true.

Aloha!

It's an interesting question. I know both of them are extremely rare. You should also look at the risk of something like being struck by lightning for comparison's sake.

I agree that the public controversies over mercury (even more so the vaccine shit than fish poisoning) are mainly motivated by lawyers and the misinformed. A statement like "WARNING: This product contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm" is pretty meaningless when you realize that it's the amount of a substance that you're exposed to that determines whether it's harmful. "Everything is poison, there is poison in everything. Only the dose makes a thing not a poison."

[Laner]

I am willing to bet that there are other more harmful things put into the body every day.

Worrying about a tiny bit of mercury is a moot point.

Are you pregnant? That might be the only time to avoid seafood that might contain mercury.

Quote:

and I would avoid any seafood from the Pacific NW.

Why do you say that? I would venture to say that fish from BC and Alaska are the best cold water species on the planet.

But if you have some inside info, please share.

[RichieP]

Wild Planet Sardines, Wild Planet Tuna
http://www.wildplanetfoods.com/Highest-O...rcury.html

Sardines no mercury
Tuna lowest mercury around

Both BPA-free (probably important if you eat them from cans regularly)