FISH-EATING, AND WHY AVOID ALMOST ALL FISH TODAY

by Dr. Lawrence Wilson

All information in this article is for educational purposes only. It is not for the diagnosis, treatment, prescription or cure of any disease or health condition.

Fish is a wonderful food, rich in protein, iodine and many other nutrients. It is also a required food for rapid development.

Unfortunately, all fish today are contaminated with mercury and we know of no way to avoid this problem. We do not agree with those who say you can overcome the problem by taking selenium or any other substance.

Miso. Eating some Cold Mountain brand Yellow Miso helps a little, but not enough to remove all the mercury in today’s fish. A little miso on occasion is fine. However, we do not recommend eating too much miso, which is somewhat yin and not needed for development.

As a result, the only recommended fish on a development program are very small ones, especially canned Sardines. This is a special food for development that is required for the fastest development.

If you won’t eat sardines, one may eat other very small fish such as herring, anchovies or smelt. These are not quite as good, but they are much better than eating no fish at all.

PROBLEMS WITH EATING FISH

1. Mercury contamination. The most severe problem with fish is mercury contamination. It affects all fish to some degree. Very small fish are better because they have less time to accumulate mercury and are much safer.

Tuna, swordfish, mackerel and ahi (used in sushi) are among the worst offenders because they are large fish. However, we find that anyone who eats fish such as salmon, trout, orange roughy or other popular fish, even once a week, has an elevated mercury level on their hair mineral test.

2. Other toxic metals. Another problem, especially in seafood and shellfish, is the presence of too much cadmium, arsenic, aluminum and nickel. This occurs because shellfish are often caught in coastal waters that are horribly contaminated in many nations. Also, shellfish seem to accumulate toxic metals more than fish with scales and fins.

Avoid ALL shellfish and seafood. This includes shrimp, scallops, crabs, lobster, eel, starfish, oysters, clams, squid, octopus and a few others. We know they are tasty and in some nations, few other protein foods are available.

3. Mislabeling. Another problem is that some fish that are labeled as wild caught are not what they appear. We do not trust “wild caught Alaskan salmon”, for example. Catching wild fish tends to be costly and difficult. Even if it is true, salmon is too high in mercury for regular consumption.

4. Freshness. Another problem with all fish is keeping it fresh. Fish spoil very quickly, even when packed in ice! This is why canned sardines or other small fish are often healthier than fresh fish that have been shipped hundreds of thousands of miles.

5. Bones. Another problem with medium-sized and larger fish is choking on a fish bone. One must be very careful when eating these fish for this reason.

6. Not kosher or clean. In the Bible, all shellfish are considered unclean foods. We strongly agree with this warning, as explained in the paragraph of Problem #2 above.

Biblically unclean can mean simply contaminated and toxic. It also often means that this food slows or stops development, an even more important concept.

7. Total filth on fish farms. Another very serious problem is that most fish today is farmed and most fish farms are extremely unhealthy places! The following article may make you nauseaus!

Asian Seafood Raised on Pig Feces Approved for U.S. Consumers

By Nguyen Dieu Tu Uyen and William Bi - Oct 11, 2012

Bloomberg Markets Magazine

At Ngoc Sinh Seafoods Trading & Processing Export Enterprise, a seafood exporter on Vietnam’s southern coast, workers stand on a dirty floor sorting shrimp one hot September day. There’s trash on the floor, and flies crawl over baskets of processed shrimp stacked in an unchilled room in Ca Mau.

Elsewhere in Ca Mau, Nguyen Van Hoang packs shrimp headed for the U.S. in dirty plastic tubs. He covers them in ice made with tap water that the Vietnamese Health Ministry says should be boiled before drinking because of the risk of contamination with bacteria. Vietnam ships 100 million pounds of shrimp a year to the U.S. That is almost 8 percent of the shrimp Americans eat.

Food Report: Food Sickens Millions as Company-Paid Checks Find It Safe

Using ice made from tap water in Vietnam is dangerous because it can spread bacteria to the shrimp, microbiologist Mansour Samadpour says, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its November issue.

Special Report: Food Poisoning and Safety

“Those conditions -- ice made from dirty water, animals near the farms, pigs -- are unacceptable,” says Samadpour, whose company, IEH Laboratories & Consulting Group, specializes in testing water for shellfish farming.

Ngoc Sinh has been certified as safe by Geneva-based food auditor SGS SA, says Nguyen Trung Thanh, the company’s general director.

No Record

“We are trying to meet international standards,” Thanh says. However, SGS spokeswoman, Jennifer Buckley, says her company has no record of auditing Ngoc Sinh.

Tilapia, One of The Filthiest Fish

At Chen Qiang’s tilapia farm in Yangjiang city in China’s Guangdong province, which borders Hong Kong, Chen feeds fish partly with feces from hundreds of pigs and geese. This practice is dangerous for American consumers, says Michael Doyle, director of the University of Georgia’s Center for Food Safety.

“The manure the Chinese use to feed fish is frequently contaminated with microbes like salmonella,” says Doyle, who has studied food borne diseases in China.

On a sweltering, overcast day in August, the smell of excrement is overpowering. After seeing dead fish on the surface, Chen, 45, wades barefoot into his murky pond to open a pipe that adds fresh water from a nearby canal. Exporters buy his fish to sell to U.S. companies.

Yang Shuiquan, chairman of a government-sponsored tilapia aquaculture association in Lianjiang, 200 kilometers from Yangjiang, says he discourages using feces as food because it contaminates water and makes fish more susceptible to diseases. He says a growing number of Guangdong farmers are adopting that practice anyway because of fierce competition.

“Many farmers have switched to feces and have stopped using commercial feed,” he says.

Frequently Contaminated

About 27 percent of the seafood Americans eat comes from China -- and the shipments that the FDA checks are frequently contaminated, the FDA has found. The agency inspects only about 2.7 percent of imported food. Of that, FDA inspectors have rejected 1,380 loads of seafood from Vietnam since 2007 for filth and salmonella, including 81 from Ngoc Sinh, agency records show. The FDA has rejected 820 Chinese seafood shipments since 2007, including 187 that contained tilapia.

To contact the reporters for this story: Nguyen Dieu Tu Uyen in Hanoi at uyen1@bloomberg.net

William Bi in Beijing at wbi@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jonathan Neumann at jneumann2@bloomberg.net

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