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| MMMM....look at all that tasty mercury! |
Another installment in a series: Red Pill Reality Dispelling Blue Pill Delusions
Don't know about the rest of the world, but here in Hawaii, we are constantly advised by our mass media to limit eating fish because of the trace amount of mercury found in many open ocean species. Since we are an island state, surrounded by water, and the Pakipika (Pacific Ocean) is home to some very tasty and nutritious fish; and since fish consumption is a long time cultural tradition amongst the many different races that now call this place home; these endless warnings of mercury poisoning from eating too much fish have always seemed rather ludicrous to me. This was long before gaining a deeper understanding of just how influential the deception and propaganda our mass media doles out as "public service announcements" has pervaded conventional wisdom.
It's also part of all nutritional guidelines and literature from our Health Care cartel members....especially the advice doled out to pregnant women. I remember sitting in on one of my wife's pre-natal checkups, waiting for the OB/GYN to come in for the appointment, and I was reading over the pamphlets on prenatal nutrition. One thing that really stuck out in my mind was the admonishment: DON'T EAT MORE THAN ONE SERVING OF FISH A WEEK TO AVOID MERCURY EXPOSURE TO YOUR INFANT.
Damn. I must of missed the epidemic of babies born with mercury poisoning in Hawaii...or all the folks dropping dead from all that mercury poisoning.
One website, The National Resources Defense Council, goes so far as to publish an "Eating Tuna Safely Chart" based on your weight.
Sounds like every other natural human behavior we are told must be PRACTICED SAFELY.
Safe Sex. Safe Sun Exposure. Safe Driving. Now we have Tuna Safety.
Safe to say, the State of Hawaii is certainly one of the worst offenders of practicing "Tuna Safety!"
I just ate a half pound of Inamona poke (raw yellowfin tuna with ogo seaweed and roast kukui nut garnish) and some poi for dinner the other day. Uh oh...am I in mortal danger of mercury poisoning since I do that kind of meal more than once a week?
Another website, Medical News Today, offers this dire warning:
Children should be consuming considerably less canned tuna, otherwise their risk of serious mercury poisoning could become a public health issue in years to come, the Mercury Policy Project explained in a report issued yesterday.
The authors added that albacore tuna should never be given to children.
What? I know kids in the neighborhood where I grew up, who used to eat canned tuna fish sandwiches nearly every day. I don't recall ever hearing about any cases of mercury poisoning...like, ever.
I know of pregnant women who ate raw fish, sushi and cooked fish on a near daily basis. Never heard of any of their babies having mercury poisoning either.
Seriously, if eating open ocean fish more than once a week lead to mercury poisoning, half the population in the State of Hawaii would be keeled over, dead or dying from mercury poisoning. We love our fish.
Sushi. Sashimi. Poke. Deep fried. Baked. Poached. Grilled. Fish Soup. Dried. Jerked. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that we have a lot of people in Hawaii that eat Fish more than 5 times a week, let alone more than once a week.
So what gives? Apparently paleo blogger Chris Kresser found some research that explains both the mercury content of fish and why all us fish eating lovers the world over are actually not dying of mercury poisoning despite all of the dire warnings of our mass media. Yes, fish do contain detectable levels of methylmercury...but they also have selenium:
- Selenium protects against mercury toxicity, and 16 of the 25 highest dietary sources of selenium are ocean fish.
- If a fish contains higher levels of selenium than mercury, it is safe to eat.
- Most species of commonly eaten fish in the U.S. have more selenium than mercury.
- Fish are not significant sources of PCBs and dioxins when compared to meat, dairy or vegetables.
- The benefits of eating fish regularly far outweigh the potential risks, which are negligible
Pregnant mothers and young children should eat 2-3 servings of oily ocean fish each week
Here's a link to the PDF document Kresser cites: Dietary and tissue selenium in relation to methylmercury toxicity:
This study finds that measuring methylmercury exposure is not sufficient to provide accurate and precise information regarding potential risks unless selenium intakes are factored into the evaluation. Blood Hg:Se {methylmercury : selenium} ratios appear to provide more interpretable and physiologically meaningful indications of risks from methylmercury exposure than blood mercury alone. Consideration of mercury–selenium relationships in diet and tissues of exposed individuals will clarify risk:benefit relationships associated with fish consumption.
Perhaps this explains why I live in a culture in which ocean fish is ubiquitous and eaten almost daily...yet we don't have an epidemic of mercury poisoning rapidly depopulating our islands?
Apparently, if you're like millions of other fish lovers out there, the only thing you should really concern yourself with, is if the fish you are eating has a higher level of selenium than methylmercury. Here's a chart showing various species of fish and their Hg:Se ratios:
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| Click to Enlarge |
After all, the more nutritionally deficient you are, the more medical bills you'll likely rack up for the medical/pharmaceutical/insurance industry cartel's profit...and the only true expense is your own health and quality of life should you decide to heed their "advice" and "guidelines."
The "system" is a literal vampire, a parasite feeding off of your life, profiting off your perpetual misery until you expire and can no longer require "maintenance."
Thanks to ObamaRomney Care, it's now UNIVERSAL. Don't forget to vote!
Don't eat Fish. Stay out of the Sun. Don't eat Salt. Don't ever use any kind of tobacco, EVER. Count your calories. Don't eat red meat. Don't eat meat. Don't eat fat. Fluoridate your water. Eat more grain. Eat a plant based diet. Don't worry, we have a pill for that....and your co-pay is only $15.
The pervasiveness of these memes, and the multitude of sources and media that it uses to percolate and propagate it's programming into the mass consciousness of we the sheeple is ubiquitous, insidious and devious. It's purpose, to enslave us and suck us dry until we are dead.
So forget yet another popular misformed disinformation campaign designed and promoted by our benevolent and caring Government/Corporate/Non-Profit/Foundation junta and their owned feedlot managers, and enjoy more of that healthy and nutritious, mercury-enhanced fish.
The healthier you are, the less time, money, pain and suffering they are able to extract from you over your lifetime by "caring" for your health.
16 comments:
Keoni,
Another factor is that the agri-business cartels have, through instigating various legal chicaneries, virtually wiped out the US fishing industry. Now, of they have a vested interest in promoting 'safe' alternatives to seafoods.
Of course, no one at the CDC ever talks about how dietary regulation is producing dangerous side-effects like megalomania in several political activists. A prime example is the arch-power junkie, Mayor Michael Bloomberg of NYC, who recently crowned all of his other nutcase achievements by banning soft-drink containers larger than a pint.
And in the mean time, ranchers use candy as feed, no doubt FDA approved:
Watson feeds his 1,400 cattle a diet of second-hand candy unfit to sell in stores that's been mixed with an ethanol by-product and a mineral nutrient. He says the animals haven't shown any health problems, and are on track with weight gain.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/21/cows-fed-candy-drought_n_1819366.html
You parse the phrase "health care" and thus the head of the phrase wrong. Think "car care" or "care for (not about) your child" or grandmother with Alzheimers. The word implies (and imo is meant to notify you of) an ownership or ward relationship.
I prefer medical services (which implies a contract relationship between equals) to health care.
I was just at Whole Foods, and while I was checking out I listened to some clown running a weight loss seminar in the area where people usually sit and eat. His spiel was all about the badness of meats, cheeses, and fats. I curled my paleo lip in contempt as I paid for my meats and cheeses!
Hi HL,
a bit off topic...but since you are one of the few MRAs with a brain perhaps you might want to ask Bill Price why he has refused to publish any story about the pope and the queen being summonsed to trial.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14L64r32ZbI
PS. Yes..this is a common law court just like I have been proposing for more than three years now.
I guess Kevin Arrnett is also just one of these radical crazies who thinks convening a court to put a criminal on trial is a good idea.
Funny that MRAs can not figure out that jury trials are how justice is done. Not a very smart lot are they.
Peter Nolan:
Here's a few MRAs sympathetic to the idea:
http://www.antifeministtech.info/2012/09/join-a-voice-for-mens-judicial-accountability-committee/
I'm sure they'll welcome your input.
This is a clear attempt at monopolizing fish production and distribution. The want everybody to buy the same type of fish produced by the same company, just as Nestle is monopolizing mineral water production and distribution.
Nestorius
As a dietitian and expecting mom, it’s so wonderful to see people with a science-based and also common sense approach to this issue. Seafood is one of the most healthful choices we can make during pregnancy and beyond, and the vast majority of Americans are not getting nearly enough. A couple other resources you should take a look at:
-Findings and Recommendations of the 2010 Hawaii Seafood Symposium
http://www.hawaii-seafood.org/Symposium-Statement/
-Seafood Deficiency in the American Diet video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_HfV6D6bEc&feature=plcp
I just moved from Hawaii to the mainland, but if I still lived there, would love to meet up for ahi and eggs!
Aloha,
Jennifer McGuire, MS, RD
National Fisheries Institute
Ah, what a great post, but sadly thirteen years later than I needed it. When I was pregnant with our first daughter, I craved tuna fish like I have never craved anything in my life, but I didn't dare to eat it because I had read that pregnant women ought not to eat fish. The craving for it would keep me awake at night, but I settled for eating dried sheets of seaweed. A friend from Russia advised me to eat fish regularly, as it is recommended to pregnant women in Russia to do, but I was too brainwashed at the time.
-sunshinemary
Just moved to Portugal, as we know one of the "poorest" nations in Europe. I grow my own fruits and veggies and eat fresh fish to 5 - 7 times a week. LIfe is good. While driving in the interior tonight I saw one of the largest new buildings I have ever seen in this country: A new private hospital. Nuff said.
Dropped in from Richard's. Thanks for the fish Selenium:Mercury poster. I've not eaten Albacore Tuna for years. That is now going to change, biggie time.
cheers.
The thing I learned about government is it is the "why beyond the why" that yu have to look out for.
It is almost always a vendor/corporation/contractor/ or the like who desires to get a huge sell of cash. So they give "donations" to their chosen rep (who they think can beneift them most; and another donation to their political party. Voila, for ever 20 million they give, they receive as much as billions in tax money returns.
The fact they do this with our lives should surprise no one. What surprises me is how few people actually question their surroundings. It is the like that movie from Ricky Gervais where he lives in a socieety that does not lie; and then promptly tels a gorgeous woman that if she does not have sex with him-the world will end. He thanks her for her 'service" after.
That woman, is strikingly a great reminder to me of some other people I know?
Great post!
I grew up in a coastal area where many of us ate fish simply because it was cheap in the sense that all you had to do was catch it yourself. This was long before all the regulation we have now, so as you said you'd think by watching these PSAs that we would have all been dead in a matter of days from eating all this "polluted" seafood.
Sunshinemary,
Tuna is a great choice for expectant mothers; oysters, mackerel and sardines are even better! The fish oil is what you were actually craving.
The ancient Greeks believed that their own comparatively low infant-morality rate and and low numbers of women dying in childbirth was due to their largely seafood diets.
It's also beneficial for men. Studies in Europe confirmed what our forefathers already knew: that men who eat seafood regularly have higher testosterone levels and higher, stronger sperm counts than men who don't. I read a long time ago somewhere that the old Catholic custom of eating fish on Friday was instituted partly as a health issue.
I actually do know someone who ended up hospitalized for mercury poisoning. He was a health nut and was consuming 2-3 cans of tuna a day. Though, since he had some orthorexic tendencies (He was my SPANISH professor, yet he spent most his class periods preaching the Mediterranean diet. To the point where he put questions regarding the diet in EVERY SINGLE TEST AND QUIZ), I wouldn't be surprised if he had other nutritional deficiencies that may have contributed to his mercury poisoning.
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