Fish that are good for you...and for the environment!

Sunrise at a Florida marsh

Living with G, we try to make sure to follow all the health advice about keeping your heart healthy (even if I side with Michael Pollan and think that real food shouldn’t make health claims). This includes eating fish once a week. Being environmentally conscious, I also try to avoid over-fished and endangered fish. I spent weeks convincing her to switch from farmed salmon to tilapia. It’s cheaper and more environmentally friendly, even if it tastes like dishwater.

Two weeks into eating tilapia, she sent me an article about how its farmed, corn-filled diet makes it have a large amount of bad fatty acids and only a small amount of good fats. Not all fish are equal, apparently, which they don’t tell you when forcing health advice down your throat.

So here is my table of the top ten fish/seafood consumed in the USA and how they rate for both health and the health of the environment.

Top ten information from: http://www.aboutseafood.com/about/about-seafood/top-10-consumed-seafoods

Health and sustainble information from: http://seafood.edf.org/ (a very helpful webpage, go check it out!)

Top fish eaten in the USA

Fish	Populations	Status	Health Benefits and Risks
Shrimp	Pink shrimp (Oregon)	Very Good	low omega-3s low mercury
	Spot prawn (Canada)	Very Good	low omega-3s low mercury
	U.S. farmed and wild shrimp	OK	low omega-3s low mercury
	Northern shrimp (U.S., Canada)	OK	low omega-3s low mercury
	White shrimp	OK	low omega-3s low mercury
	Spot prawns (U.S.)	OK	low omega-3s low mercury
	All other Shrimp	Bad	low omega-3s low mercury
Canned tuna	Albacore tuna from US and Canada (not long line!)	Very Good	high omega-3s moderate mercury
	All other Tuna	OK to Bad	low omega-3s high to moderate mercury,
Salmon	Canned Salmon	Very Good	high omega-3s low mercury
	Wild Alaskan Salmon	Very Good	high omega-3s low mercury
	Wild Salmon (CA, OR)	OK	high omega-3s low mercury
	Wild Salmon (WA)	OK	low omega-3s low mercury
	Farmed Salmon	Bad	low omega-3s low mercury
	All other salmon	Bad	Low to high omega-3s low mercury
Pollock/ Imitation crab	Atlantic pollock (Norway gillnet and purse seine)	Very Good	low omega-3s low mercury
	Atlantic pollock (Norway/Danish seine, trawl) Atlantic pollock (Norway/Danish seine, trawl)	OK	low omega-3s low mercury
	Alaska pollock (U.S.)	OK	low omega-3s low mercury
	Atlantic pollock (Canada, U.S.)	OK	low omega-3s low mercury
	Atlantic pollock (Iceland gillnet)	OK	low omega-3s low mercury
	All other pollock	Bad	low omega-3s low mercury
Tilapia	U.S.	Very Good	low omega-3s low mercury
	Asia and Latin America	OK	low omega-3s low mercury
Pangasius/ Basa	Asia	OK	low omega-3s low mercury
Catfish	Catfish (U.S.)	Very Good	low omega-3s low mercury
	Tra	OK	low omega-3s low mercury
Crab	Stone crab	Very Good	low omega-3s low mercury
	Dungeness crab	Very Good	low omega-3s low mercury
	Red/Blue King Crab (U.S.)	OK	low omega-3s low mercury
	Snow crab	OK	low omega-3s low mercury
	Blue Crab	OK	low omega-3s low mercury
	Red/Blue King Crab (imported)	Bad	low omega-3s low mercury
Cod	Alaska cod (longline)	Very Good	low omega-3s low mercury
	U.S. Pacific cod (trawl)	OK	low omega-3s low mercury
	Atlantic cod	Improving	low omega-3s low mercury
Clams	Farmed	Very good	low omega-3s low mercury
	Wild	OK	low omega-3s low mercury

So the best fish to eat, health-wise and environmentally are:

• Albacore (U.S., Canada)
• Salmon (canned)
• Wild Alaskan salmon
• Atlantic Mackerel (Canada)
• Pacific sardines (U.S.)
• Sablefish/Black Cod (Alaska, Canada)

Go forth and eat healthy, in every sense of the word!

Talking About Global Warming...with people who don't believe in Global Warming

The other day, one of my crunchiest, down to earth friends told me that she thought that Global Warming was just another normal fluctuation in normal Earth temperatures. Eh, what?! Thankfully, she’s a good friend, so we were able to have a good conversation about it without insulting each other.

A nice spot for a spirited peaceful discourse on Global Warming.

Here are some tips from my conversation. Feel free to add some!

Don’t:

• Go into the conversation trying to convert them.
• Yell at them. Go take a calm-down break if you need to.
• Turn the conversation into a political debate.
• Insult their intelligence.

Do:

• Respect their religious beliefs/view of the world. (Creationism, [Insert deity] wouldn’t allow us to mess up Creation, Young Earth, etc)
• Make sure you’re on the same page about what geological history existed in their world view.
• Do see things from their point of view.

Remember that any good debater has to look at things from everyone’s point of view, even if you don’t believe it. They probably think that you are irrational and nuts, too! If you think that Global Warming isn’t happening or that it’s perfectly normal, like the Ice Age, it’s downright scary to have a president who believes in it. Humanity has a history of buying into doomsday cults after all. Now all these educated liberals are buying into it, throwing money at it, and think that you’re uneducated and ignorant if you don’t convert. No wonder they’re defensive!

My viewpoint: Even if Global Weirding is just a 50-100 year trend, it will still change the world in drastic ways. Small climate fluctuations contributed to the rise of the Mongol Empire, the fall of the Roman Empire, and the Viking expansion and decline. Currently, the US is not very prepared for fluctuations, in weather or resource prices, and I worry.

So go forth, debate, and, most of all, have fun!