Lean plate club: Seafood in pregnancy is a net plus
A new report says benefits outweigh risks in eating seafood.
By Sally Squires, Washington Post
Pregnant and nursing American women, as well as those who want to conceive, are advised to avoid certain types of seafood and to limit consumption of other varieties to reduce potential ill effects from mercury and other contaminants.
But a new report from a huge research project in Britain suggests that skimping on seafood during pregnancy may be detrimental to kids.
Conflicting nutrition advice can be confusing, particularly for pregnant women, who often feel that they must become nutritional experts overnight as they start to eat for two.
Eric Rimm, a professor of epidemiology and nutrition at Harvard University's School of Public Health, said some female relatives of his were so worried about reports on fish that they were ready to give up all seafood once they became pregnant. "I said, 'No, no, no, you have to eat fish,' " Rimm says.
The latest findings confirm his advice. Drawn from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, a continuing project involving about 14,000 women and their children, the research found that eating most types of seafood during pregnancy far outweighs any risks.
What surprised scientists most is that women who ate 12 ounces or less of seafood per week -- the amount that pregnant and nursing mothers are advised to stick to by the Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency -- "were almost 50 percent more likely to have children with low verbal IQ scores compared with women who exceeded the advisory," said Joseph Hibbeln, a researcher at the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and co-author of the report.
At age 3, kids whose mothers ate less seafood during pregnancy were more likely to have social and communication problems with their peers, Hibbeln said. By ages 7 and 8, they tended to have more behavioral problems and trouble with fine motor skills and were more likely to have lower academic scores, he said.
Goal, not a limit?
Not only did skimping on seafood during pregnancy fail to protect children from adverse effects, but it appears to produce the very problems that scientists feared could occur from eating too much seafood with mercury. The findings suggest that "advice to limit seafood consumption could actually be detrimental," concluded the team, which includes scientists from Bristol University.
The report is the third in recent years to find little or no adverse effects from consuming most types of seafood during pregnancy.
Will they these reports change the current advice? That's not yet known. Neither the EPA nor the FDA has reviewed the latest findings. So for now, they're sticking with the same advice: Pregnant and lactating women, women who want to conceive and young children should eat no more than 12 ounces of seafood per week and avoid the species highest in mercury.
Some scientists, including Rimm, think that editing the message could help women see the current advice as a goal, not a limit. "The warnings are not meant to discourage fish consumption," he said, adding that "we don't want women to think that they should be eating zero to 12 ounces per week."
Also important, experts say: Hedge your bets by choosing a variety of seafood lowest in mercury. So skip shark, swordfish, king mackerel and tilefish (found mostly in Hawaii). Limit albacore tuna to 6 ounces per week. Smart choices include salmon, herring, sardines, anchovies, catfish, shrimp and light tuna.
There's no need to sweat the nutritional consequences of wild vs. farmed fish. A recent Harvard School of Public Health report found that farm-raised fish contains as much, if not more, of healthy, omega-3 fatty acids found in wild species. Also, skip fried fish, especially from fast-food restaurants. They contain little omega-3 fatty acids and may have unhealthy trans fat.
Other advice is to avoid all raw fish, such as sushi, clams on the half shell or lox. They can be a source of various bacterial and viral infections.
Finally, fish oil supplements can be an option for those who don't like seafood. Since most supplements contain oil from very small fish, Rimm said, "they have almost no, if any, mercury."
You can subscribe to the free Lean Plate Club e-mail newsletter at www.leanplateclub.com. Sally Squires is a writer for the Washington Post.
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