Your personal fish guide: How much can/should you eat?
Federal agencies announced earlier this year that people should eat more fish. In a break with the past, they even recommended minimum amounts for children and pregnant or nursing women, and they warned against a few species that are generally high in mercury.
But the agencies didn't go nearly far enough, said several environmental groups, who say people might still be confused about what they can and can't, or should and shouldn't eat.
"The guidelines could lead some people to consume too much mercury, and others, too few omega-3s," said Sonya Lunder, senior analyst with the Environmental Working Group, a national nonprofit.
Today, the EWG came out with an online calculator that will give people individualized recommendations. Enter your weight, age group, gender and whether you have heart disease, and out comes a list of fish.
The idea is to steer people away from fish that would be high in mercury, but also steer them toward fish that have a high level of heart-healthy omega-3 fatty acids. If you simply avoid high-mercury fish, you may not be getting the maximum health benefits that seafood has to offer.
Lucky for me, the calculator told me I can eat three servings a week of my go-to seafood choice: wild-caught Alaskan salmon. Yum! Another good choice that I used to eat a lot of, but haven't recently, is sardines. Good for travel, too, since they come in cans.
In general, the EWG's "best bets" are wild salmon, sardines, mussels, rainbow trout and Atlantic mackerel. Also good are oysters, anchovies, pollock and herring.
More is ahead: EWG says its analysis of mercury and omega-3 content of seafood will be integrated into a new food database and mobile smartphone app due out later this fall. It will include information on more 80,000 foods and 5,000 ingredients from more than 1,500 brands. Each item in the database will be scored based on three factors: nutrition, ingredient concerns and degree of processing. More info: http://www.ewg.org/fooddatabase/