I’ve been trying to sit down and write some posts about these links for days, and I’m just never going to get to the ranting. Just not enough time in the day for much ranting right now! But I do want to get these links out there, because it’s stuff people need to know.

In 2004, Dufault began researching the mercury cycle from an environmental management perspective for the FDA. With an extramural colleague, she analyzed a number of food products listing HFCS as either the first or second ingredient on the label and organic food products for mercury. Shockingly, results pointed to low levels of mercury in all of the products they analyzed containing HFCS while the organic foods did not contain any detectable levels of mercury.

As one might expect, her researched was frowned upon. Can’t have anyone pointing out that high fructose corn syrup might not be a good thing to have in every single food product on the market! She kept at it and eventually published her peer-reviewed findings.

One of an array of factory-made additives, cellulose is increasingly used by the processed-food industry, producers say. Food-product makers use it to thicken or stabilize foods, replace fat and boost fiber content, and cut the need for ingredients like oil or flour, which are getting more expensive.

Although the notion of eating fine grains of wood pulp might make some consumers blanch, nutritionists say cellulose—which gives plants their structure—is a harmless fiber that can often cut calories in food. Insoluble dietary fibers like cellulose aren’t digestible by humans so add bulk to food without making it more fattening.

I am not a termite. Neither are you. While eating cellulose hasn’t yet been shown to have any negative health effects, it isn’t food. The next time you buy processed food of any sort, ask yourself what you are paying for … food or wood pulp and artificial flavorings pretending to be food. I’d prefer to not eat wood, thank you very much.

The flying pips, shattered shells and wet shrapnel still haunt farmer Liu Mingsuo after an effort to chemically boost his fruit crop went spectacularly wrong.

Fields of watermelons exploded when he and other agricultural workers in eastern China mistakenly applied forchlorfenuron, a growth accelerator. The incident has become a focus of a Chinese media drive to expose the lax farming practices, shortcuts and excessive use of fertiliser behind a rash of food safety scandals.

Before everyone gets their eyes rolling and their tongues wagging about the Chinese and their abundant use of chemicals in farming, please be aware forchlorfenuron is also used in the USA on grapes and kiwis (and is being tested on other food crops) … though thoroughly banned in other parts of the world due to its being implicated in cancer and neurological illnesses.

And in closing … have a look at what students around the world are having for lunch at school as compared to what Americans kids get served. If you are American, it won’t make you happy.

Americans have been going crazy for tilapia for a number of years now. It’s plentiful in both fish markets and the frozen goods aisles of grocery stores, it’s cheap, and health organizations keep telling us to eat more fish. Unfortunately, tilapia isn’t the best choice for either human consumption or environmental safety.

“When people talk about the need to eat more fish, they are using that as a metaphor for fish oil, DHA and EPA,” said Edgar R. Miller III, associate professor of medicine and epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. “So what do we do about the fact that tilapia and catfish, which are farm raised, have very low levels of these compounds?”

While a portion of tilapia has 135 milligrams of omega-3 fatty acids, a portion of salmon has over 2,000 milligrams. And farmed tilapia may have even less than wild tilapia because fish acquire omega-3s by eating aquatic plants and other fish. “They are what they eat,” Dr. Bridson said.
–NYT: Another Side of Tilapia, the Perfect Factory Fish

In addition to having very low levels of omega-3 fatty acids, there has also been research showing farm-raised tilapia have very high levels of omega-6 fatty acids, which actually increase the risk of heart disease. Add to this the fact that fish farming is one of the least regulated food production methods in the world, you can also be assured of getting hormones, antibiotics, and other chemicals in every bite.^†

Then there’s the environmental impact of farm-raising tilapia (and by extension many aquatic species). Since the field is widely unregulated, damage to natural water sources (lakes and rivers) is rampant. Whatever chemicals fed or introduced to the growing fish stock enters the local water supplies destroying the habitat for local species of flora and fauna. Additionally, tilapia is a known invasive species which easily out-breeds and out-eats any competition, so escapees can quickly overtake a natural water resource and crowd out native species, which I hope we can all agree is a bad thing.

Environmentalists argue that intensive and unregulated tilapia farming is damaging ecosystems in poor countries with practices generally prohibited in the United States — like breeding huge numbers of fish in cages in natural lakes, where fish waste pollutes the water. “We wouldn’t allow tilapia to be farmed in the United States the way they are farmed here, so why are we willing to eat them?” said Dr. Jeffrey McCrary, an American fish biologist who works in Nicaragua. “We are exporting the environmental damage caused by our appetites.”
–NYT: Another Side of Tilapia, the Perfect Factory Fish

Last year, more than 52 million pounds of fresh tilapia were exported to the United States, mostly from Latin America, as well as 422 million more pounds of frozen tilapia, both whole and fillet, nearly all from China, according to the United States Department of Agriculture.

Americans consumed 475 million pounds of tilapia last year. More than 52 million pounds were imported from Latin America, 422 million pounds from China and Asia, and the tiny little percentage left over was produced within the borders of the United States. The few fish from the United States are considered the best choice, if one wants to eat tilapia, and those from Latin America are considered a good alternative. What about those coming from China? Best avoided. Looking at the numbers listed in this paragraph, I think it’s easy to see how very difficult it would be to avoid tilapia from China, a problem compounded by the fact labeling of fish origins at stores and markets is not only inconsistent, it is quite often simply nonexistent.

Do I have any advice? Don’t eat tilapia, unless you know it came from the USA. I’ve personally never seen any labeled as having been raised in the USA, so my household just doesn’t eat tilapia. In fact, the problems with farm-raised tilapia aren’t confined to just that one breed of fish but are also problems with all farm-raised fish, so we just don’t eat much fish. We had been eating only fish and shellfish wild caught in the Gulf of Mexico, but well … that huge oil spill has made me wary of even allowing myself to eat too much of that now, so pretty much, unless we are at a party where fish is being served or at a restaurant we know sources their fish from the only fish market in town I’d trust, we don’t eat fish. This is a sad state of affairs, seeing as I happen to love fish and shellfish.

All of these issues combined with the already well-known levels of mercury is fish has lead me to believe that fish is quite possibly best avoided altogether. I am rarely one to suggest supplements in place of healthy eating, but in this case, omega-3 supplements or the old standby of cod liver oil may be the healthiest road to take right now^†† … though it’s not nearly as tasty or as wonderful as sitting down to a plate with a slab of steaming fish on it, now is it? Wish it wasn’t so, but we’ve successfully managed to screw up the world’s waters and the things that live in it so badly, I’m leery of eating any of it until we somehow find a way to improve the situation.

Lin and I are doing research and considering putting in a small tilapia pond and raising our own. They truly are easy to raise, tolerate crowding very well, and if we get the environmental aspects right, won’t need much in the way of added feed. Wouldn’t it be nice to walk into the back yard and grab a couple fish that contain no mercury or other unneeded additives for dinner? We think so.

1. † Remember, fish are raised in water, and whatever is in the water does end up in the fish. Think about the countries you might go to and NOT drink the water, and then consider whether or not you would eat fish raised in this water. Many of those countries are large producers of tilapia. [↩]
2. †† Though do be sure to find out where the supplements/oil is made and whether or not it’s been tested for mercury. If it’s in the fish, it’ll be in the oil as well. [↩]