Flip-Flopping Fish Recommendations

A team of experts recently announced that pregnant and breastfeeding women should eat at least 12 ounces of fish weekly to help their baby’s brain development. That sounds nice, but unfortunately seems to contradict the FDA and EPA guidelines from 2001 and 2004 suggesting women eat no more than 12 ounces of certain types of fish a week. The only way to meet both guidelines is to eat exactly 12 ounces. I can practically hear the screams of frustration. When I was pregnant, I found those government guidelines on fish consumption maddening – and they were at least consistent.

My problem was that the FDA and the EPA told women to completely avoid eating shark, swordfish, king mackerel and tilefish in order to limit mercury intake, but I couldn’t tell a king mackerel from an anchovy, and I knew that one store’s tilefish is another’s golden bass. Like most soon-to-be-mothers, I was busy with a demanding job and doctor’s visits, and I had deeper questions to ponder; such as Huggies versus Pampers. I seriously doubted that at the moment of purchase I would remember whether I was supposed to have chosen canned light tuna (OK to eat), albacore or “white” canned tuna (slightly less OK), or tuna steaks (even less OK).

The new recommendations from the non-profit National Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Coalition, plus a group of 14 nutritionists and obstetricians, don’t delve too deeply into the mercury issue, and don’t give an upper limit of safe consumption. The Coalition also accepted a $60,000 educational grant from a seafood industry trade group, according to Reuters.

That said, the effort to get more women to consume the omega-3 fatty acids found in fish is worthy. A February study in The Lancet suggested that children of women who consumed no seafood during pregnancy had lower verbal IQs than those who consumed more.

And the group notes that more than half of women – like me—probably curb their fish intake too much due to mercury concerns.

For me, at least, the choice was clear. I could head to my local fish market and ask the grizzled fishmongers for tips on how to tell a deep-ocean fatty fish (which is low on the food chain, and thus accumulates less mercury) from a fish that lives to gobble up the small guys (and thus accumulates more mercury). Or I could give up.

The urge to forego fish entirely was strong. Mercury exposure sounds scary, even though I knew much of the data came from mass poisonings due to industrial waste in Japan in the 1950s and 1960s. So, I’m slightly ashamed to say, I did skip fish entirely during both of my pregnancies. The good news is that my kids seem fine despite their fish-free gestations.

In reality, the new guidelines are probably helpful. If I had to do it over again, I might select one type of “safe” fish that’s easy for taxonomically challenged folks like myself to identify. I’d probably pick salmon (easy to find and identify) and stick with it. Or I’d download a list of “safer” fish and keep it on hand when I go out to eat or shopping.

I’d aim for the middle: 12 ounces of fish per week. That’s roughly two to three servings, depending on your appetite and size. Then I’d hope the experts would avoid further complicating the subject until after I went into labor.