Which Fish: With fish stocks under pressure, which are okay to eat?
whichfish.org
whichfish.org
[1] http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/cr/SeafoodWatch/web/sfw_i...
http://www.edf.org/page.cfm?tagID=1540 (eco best / worst)
http://www.edf.org/page.cfm?tagID=17694 (health best / worst)
You can even get a pocket guide that goes into your wallet that you can take out whenever you go into a sushi restaurant or fish market. Here in NYC there are a lot of hedge fund managers with serious neurological problems from eating sushi every day for years. They manage billions of dollars in assets but their hands twitch like they have parkinsons.
It would be good to have a second list along side, fish that are safe to eat. Or just one list, safe and sustainable.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/27/science/earth/27fish.html
Consumers have no effective way to verify what they're eating. This is a situation where there is either government action or no action; no private personal actions can be successful, barring the creation of instant cheap at-the-restaurant-table DNA analysis.
>Scientists aiming their gene sequencers at commercial seafood are discovering rampant labeling fraud in supermarket coolers and restaurant tables: cheap fish is often substituted for expensive fillets, and overfished species are passed off as fish whose numbers are plentiful.
The link states that overfished species are being intentionally mis-labelled. I would say that, yes, we might as well not bother if the seafood industry is going to pull these kind of shenanigans, absent some sort of regulation from the government (an unpopular sentiment here).
Surely there must be laws against this already. I have a hard time imagining that claiming that you're selling X when you're in actual fact selling Y is legal. If no one is being prosecuted it must be because the government doesn't care enough, not because they lack laws to prosecute under.
The most sustainable fish are the cheapest. If we can move past our fetish for eating apex predators, we can easily solve fish sustainability without the need for regulation.
Perhaps it's difficult to assure you're being given what you're told, but at least people are starting to ask.
And when preservation such as fishing regulations are proposed, this will make sense to more people. Maybe all the more so when they realize that their individual decisions don't matter, aren't sufficient, because they're bing lied to.
I hope. The alternative is pretty dismal.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/22/science/22fish.html
And here's a reference to an even earlier story from 2005, in which farmed salmon are substituted for wild (not DNA-checkable):
http://vitalchoice.com/shop/pc/articlesView.asp?id=95
So, 6 years later, we still don't know what we're eating.
Buy whole fish. It's much harder to be lied to when you can look the fish in the eye.
It would be a better argument if you could talk about the actual odds.
There are 6 instances where species are listed as okay to eat if they are from the US while not okay to eat if they are from elsewhere. There are 0 instances where the opposite is true.
# yes Barramundi (US/Europe/Australia) # yes Barramundi (Closed Production) # no Barramundi (Other)
# yes Catfish (US Farmed) # no Catfish (Other)
# yes Crayfish (US) # no Crayfish (Other)
# yes Herring (Norway, Iceland, North Sea, US) # no Herring (Other)
# yes King Crab (US) # no King Crab (Other)
# yes Northern Prawn/Pink Shrimp (US and Canadian) # no Northern Prawn/Pink Shrimp (Other)
There seems to be some bias towards US fisheries in this list.
Second, the regulations/practices on the environmental impact of fish farms on the nearby sea are probably better in the US than elsewhere (many fish farms are in the backwaters of an ocean).
Do you really find it hard to believe that the USA has higher standards of environmental protection than other countries?
no: All Bottom Trawled Fish no: All Fish caught by Longline
loses me right there. I don't know how different types of fish are caught, and I'm not going to reearch it before making each purchase.
I was way off.
The best option that should be on this list is to not eat any fish at all.
Anything that reduces consumer demand is a good thing, but American demand in the big picture is a small piece of pie. The Japanese will not be satisfied until every last aquatic creature is extracted from the Mediterranean.
America's biggest contribution to eradicating sea life are the destructive land use policies in the Mississippi watershed. We provide ridiculous incentives via direct payment to grow corn with massive quantities of fertilizer, build massive levee systems to reclaim floodplain land and cut canals in the Mississippi delta.
All of these things together have turned the Gulf of Mexico into an aquatic wasteland.
Your logic fails for the following reasons:
- not all fish are from the ocean
- not all species of fish are in fact overfished. There is no Sardine crisis.
- Fish consumption is linked to increased IQ including in babies and children
- Piscetarians have lower rates of heart disease than both vegans and occasional meat eaters
- Promoting abstinence over harm reduction is generally a very silly and inefficient way to do things
There are negative environmental impacts from ocean fish farms. I don't enough about non-ocean fish farms to comment on the environmental impacts of non-ocean fish farms though.
http://whichfish.org/detail/catfish_us_farmed.html http://whichfish.org/detail/crayfish_us.html http://whichfish.org/detail/trout_rainbow_trout.html http://whichfish.org/detail/tilapia_organic_or_closed_produc...
Did you know though that both Flaxseed and Walnuts are both better, cheaper, and less environmentally damaging sources of Omega 3s than fish? Soybeans and Tofu are also pretty good sources.
I'm cool with people consuming less, not merely abstaining from eating fish. But for those out there who are willing to (and there are many such people in the tech community), it really is the best option.
The fatty acid in both Flaxseed and Walnuts you are referring to is alpha Linolic acid (ALA), whereas fish contains Eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and Docosahexaenoic acid (DHA). Out of these, only DHA is found in the brain. If DHA is not present in the diet, ALA can be converted into it, but only at an extremely low rate of efficiency [1]
The only reliable vegan source of DHA I am aware of is certain types of algae. Additionally, by consuming extremely large quantities of nuts you will typically be overloading your copper to zinc ratio.
[1] http://dx.doi.org/10.1186%2F1476-511X-8-33 "Are all n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids created equal?"
"While there is discrepancy in ALA conversion rates in rats, these studies imply that dietary ALA could sufficiently supply the brain with DHA in the absence of exogenous DHA intake."
This is consistent with all other research I've read, debunking this myth has become a hobby.
Is this a joke? The article specifically states:
>It is not enough to assume that ALA exerts effects through conversion to EPA and DHA, as the process is highly inefficient in humans.
>with higher levels of ALA, no net rise in the level of circulating DHA occurred [2,3]. For example, feeding 10.7 g/d of ALA from flaxseed oil for 4 weeks failed to increase low DHA levels in breast milk of lactating women [4]. Some estimate that only 5–10% and 2–5% of ALA in healthy adults is converted to EPA and DHA, respectively [5], while others suggest that humans convert less than 5% of ALA to EPA or DHA [6]. The International Society for the Study of Fatty Acids and Lipids (ISSFAL) recently released an official statement on the conversion efficiency of ALA to DHA. They concluded that the conversion of ALA to DHA is on the order of 1% in infants"
Now let's examine the actual context of your quote:
>"While there is discrepancy in ALA conversion rates in rats, these studies imply that dietary ALA could sufficiently supply the brain with DHA in the absence of exogenous DHA intake. It is important to note that the hepatic DHA synthesis rates observed for rats do not extend to humans [44]. The higher rates reflect a more efficient ALA elongation process in mice and rats"
It specifically states that ALA->DHA is only a phenomena that occurs in rats and not humans.
>Studies on rats are far from conclusive... but then why claim it's a human-health fact?
Exactly my point. The human studies clearly state it is not reliably converted, and you are claiming it IS based on a rat study. The whole article I linked is based on the assumption it is NOT, and from the perspective that we should be examining the health benefits of ALA independently from the health benefits of fish oil.
My point is that ALA provides adequate, not elevated levels of DHA, and there's no evidence to the contrary.
Now let's examine the actual context of my quote:
> ALA is adequately converted to DHA
I think it's worth mentioning where you make a false statement, directly after citing inefficient conversion rates in humans.
>It specifically states that ALA->DHA is only a phenomena that occurs in rats and not humans.
Which is it, inefficient or non-existent in humans?
This statement: >It is not enough to assume that ALA exerts effects through conversion to EPA and DHA, as the process is highly inefficient in humans.
... Says exactly nothing about healthy levels of DHA. It is non sequitur. It skirts the issue, it avoids the topic, the statement tries to make a huge jump in unreasonable unproven logic. This paper shows nothing but the therapeutic effect of DHA/EPA on diseased people.
There is no evidence to suggest inadequate DHA is produced from dietary ALA in otherwise healthy humans. Not in this paper, nor any I've seen.
It's correlated with being a human, but the significance of very inefficient conversion versus trivial conversion is simply that it prevents us from claiming they are metabolically identical goods.
>Which is it, inefficient or non-existent in humans?
Inefficient. 'ALA->DHA' shorthand was meant to token the previous idea of "efficient endogenous ALA to DHA conversion" and not initialize a new false one.
>no evidence to suggest inadequate DHA
I think you're missing the point by intentionally or unintentionally rephrasing this in terms of avoiding a negative. Let me requote the initial context by jeremymims:
> Just for the record, fish consumption is linked to increased IQ in children because of the presence of Omega-3 Fatty Acids. Did you know though that both Flaxseed and Walnuts are both better, cheaper, and less environmentally damaging sources of Omega 3s than fish?
My primary point is that one cannot rationally assert that the numerous positive IQ benefits scientific literature attributes to consumption of fish and fish oil are somehow equally or better attributable to walnut and flax consumption. The evidence indicates differing methods of action and a need to consider their health benefits independently.
Fair enough. I learned a thing or too here, so thanks.
Would you have a link for that? I'd add it to my collection for future diet discussions ...
In other words, the way to solve the problem is not by not eating fish (though that is perfectly fine at an individual level) but to establish sustainability around the globe.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longline_fishing
The problem does not simply go away because Americans stop eating fish.
Funnily enough my little lad asked me randomly "can we have cod". I'm conscious that we should only eat tuna once a week (line caught seems hot at the moment) but don't eat much fish and hadn't thought about mercury/environmental chemicals for other catches.
The fish in my diet consists almost entirely of salmon and trout, and occasionally a tuna tartare (I would have a real hard time giving that one up.) I avoid farmed stuff.
With farmed fish it basically depends on where it's farmed. It can be very healthy and sustainable, or quite terrible.
Eat jellyfish.
Can't eat fish for all the mercury and lots of them being close to extinction and it kills dolphins and damages the oceans.
Can't eat eggs or milk, again for cruelty and various possible diseases or other contamination.
And vegetables and fruits? Well, practically all of the mass produced ones never EVER saw any soil or real sunlight but artificial gel to grow on and were picked by poor and heavily underpaid and downright exploited people from (and typically in) poor countries under inhuman conditions and bought by the rich nations for next to nothing. (here is to you, militant vegetarians!) On top of that they are heavily laden with chemicals of all sorts and chances are when you get to buy them, they are far from being fresh.
Plus for practically all the food mentioned above: production heavily, grossly outranks what actually ends up being bought... so we just dump it, burn it or do FSM-knows what with it. We certainly do NOT give it to the starving people in this world because it would cost too much.
And if you go organic and local farmers only? Apart from few choices, you have even less inspections and regulations to protect your safety because you don't know what they are selling, what it grew on and how clean and safe to eat it is. And some of it just taste absolutely horrible.
This is just pathetic... the whole food industry, front to back, top to bottom. If you go by the warnings on what to avoid, what is dangerous for your health and what is immoral and wrong to eat, we better come up with a way to get by on nothing but sunlight and water quickly.
But then again, fresh water supplies are currently being bought up by Big-Food to make lots and lots of money and water in bottles is very often not as clean as one might hope and certain chemicals from plastic bottles could basically work like estrogen in your body.
Cross-pollination can bring genetically modified strains into organic crops, making it hard to keep a crop organic even if you want to.
Run-off from industrial agriculture has damaged water and soil, which will impact whatever is planted, whether organic or not.
Soil depletion has also lead to decreased nutrient presence in fruits and vegetables.
Industrial agriculture has reduced the number of varieties of each species grown. Why does all broccoli look the same? Surely pre-industry, there were numerous varieties of broccoli.
Land is not divided in such a way to make local, small-scale, organic farms practical. Where are you going to put a farm in New York City or Los Angeles?
This is not to say the problem can't be fixed, but we are living in a non-ideal time for food, so there won't be any ideal choices. The only thing you can do is make better choices, and try to turn the direction of food production around so that eventually ideal choices will be possible.
I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic here or not. If you are sincere then you are mistaken beyond your wildest dreams. All cultivars of the broccoli species look magnificently different.
Broccoli, kale, collard greens, Chinese broccoli, cauliflower, Romanesco broccoli and broccoflower, cabbage, brussels sprouts, and kohlrabi are all different cultivars within the same species: Brassica oleracea.
I'm aware of the size of the Brassica genus and the B. oleracea species in particular. I was not, however, trying to make the point that B. oleracea is a species without a lot of variety.
I was trying to make the point that the food industry consistently simplifies the genetic variety of foods, sometimes alarmingly so. Bananas are definitely a better example.
You don't have to buy all your vegetables and fruits at the convenience store or local supermarket. It may be easier, but in that case you're exchanging variety for convenience, so don't be surprised at the result.
If I buy my produce from a local farm whose soil is full of run-off from an industrial farm upstream, I'm still being impacted by industrial agriculture. If my local farm only has one type of banana because industrial agriculture has killed all the other ones (this is a metaphor, not reality), then I'm still being impacted by industrial agriculture. If I cook my locally grown produce with water polluted by industrial farms, I'm still being impacted by industrial agriculture.
Riding your bike to work doesn't make you immune to the impacts of climate change. Neither does buying locally grown produce make you immune to the impacts of industrial agriculture.
Wait, what? You are going off the deep end here. I assure you that the exact opposite is true - practically all mass produced produce touches soil and uses real sunlight. The economics don't support your premise at all. Have you never been to rural areas? I assure you they are not lined with industrial warehouses and artificial lighting systems.
And if you go organic and local farmers only? Apart from few choices, you have even less inspections and regulations to protect your safety because you don't know what they are selling, what it grew on and how clean and safe to eat it is. And some of it just taste absolutely horrible.
At some level you need to take on a certain amount of responsibility. My locally grown produce mostly comes from people I know. They don't need a ton of regulations and inspections to keep me safe - social contracts do. We've been doing it this way for thousands of years. The regulations and inspections mostly became needed when you got so far removed from your food source. Also life isn't 100.00% safe, c'est la vie.
You are aware that Farmville != rural areas in the real world? There are movies and books depicting the industrial rising of cattle (for example "Eating Animals" does a nice, graphics job). You can spot the "pink lakes" which result from the waste output of industrial pig farming on Google Maps. But these are indeed not the areas you would visit on a weekend trip to the countryside, because these areas reek for miles.
Just because some chickens still roam outside, doesn't prove that the majority of them does.
The article about pig farming was on HN years ago, but I can't find it atm. But Google provides a lot of info "factory farming".
The worse part still remains: chemicals, pesticides and lots and lots of genetically altered vegetables and fruits. You cannot even use their seeds to grow new ones; you have to buy seeds from e.g. Monsanto each year along with all the chemicals you need to grow that stuff.
You have to watch "We Feed the World"!
> We've been doing it this way for thousands of years
And for the bigger part of those thousands of years, on average we barely made it to the age of 30, let alone 40. It is good if you can trust local folk but it is better to have professional inspections because there is a lot that can still go wrong in farming and your local farmers might just miss or not know about something crucial. Or maybe I am just used too much to the German way of things already.... inspections and checks for everything.
With all that said, I could be at the white house for a state dinner in an hour if they ever asked me.
I don't know how possible it is to manage a large global society this way, but it works OK at a micro level.
The demand for tasty fresh food is there and in true capitalist spirit, farmers are rising to the occasion ;-)
Upvoted for mentioning FSM, in acronym form, and not providing any type of explanation. This implies an expectation that FSM is common enough knowledge at this point. I wonder how many people just skipped over it. Surprisingly, a google search of "fsm" actually brings up the relevant page in the first search result, beating out the wikipedia page for Finite State Machine.