Healthy Fishing For Kids - Big Y® World Class Market®

Registered Dietitian Carrie Taylor, RD, LDN and Nutritionist Andrea Samson, BS

Are you completely confused when it comes to feeding your kids seafood? Is it safe? Is it not safe?

Let’s Set the Record Straight.
The benefits of seafood, specifically fish, are plentiful. Overall, seafood is a low-saturated fat, lean source of high-quality protein. For fish, heart-healthy omega-3 fats make them all-stars.

White fleshed fish tend to be leaner choices, as they are typically lower in total fat. Deep, dark-colored flesh fish often provide more fat. Don’t swear off darker fish simply due to its fat content. Do the opposite.

Include darker colored, fattier selections into your fish repertoire on a weekly basis. They provide heart-healthy unsaturated omega-3 fats called docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) and eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA). Although there are plant sources of omega-3s (flaxseeds and walnuts), the health benefits of omega-3 fats come primarily from diets rich in DHA and EPA.

Some individuals worry about eating fish, fearing they and their children will be exposed to environmental contaminants. Fueling the fear of environmental contaminants in fish is mercury.

Although it occurs naturally in the environment, mercury is also a byproduct of air pollution caused by industrialization. Once in the air, mercury makes it into our waterways and is stored as methylmercury in the fat and muscle of the fish that live and grow there.

When consumed in high levels, over time, methylmercury can lead to mercury poisoning and an impairment of the nervous system. Due to this, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have provided advice (see column to the right) for the consumption of fish in populations considered sensitive to methylmercury — young children, pregnant and nursing women, and women who are able to become pregnant.

With this guidance, both agencies put to rest questions about whether parents should or should not be offering fish to their children — they should! It simply becomes a matter of which kind and how much.

FDA & EPA ADVICE
Offer your child fish within the 2004 FDA & EPA recommendations:

Eat up to 12 ounces of a variety of lower-mercury- containing fish and shellfish each week.

Lower-mercury-containing fish and shellfish include shrimp, canned light tuna, salmon, pollock and catfish.

Do not eat large predatory fish like shark, swordfish, king mackerel or tilefish.

Be aware that albacore “white” tuna has more mercury than canned light tuna, so only eat up to 6 ounces of albacore tuna per week. This holds true for tuna steaks as well.

Check local advisories about the safety of fish caught in your local lakes, rivers and coastal areas.

For locally caught fish, if no advice is available, only eat up to 6 ounces per week and do not consume any other fish during that week.

Feed children smaller portion sizes during meals than you would adults.
In the end, there’s no need to eliminate fish from your child’s diet. The nutritional benefits of incorporating low-mercury-containing fish, in moderate amounts, into your child’s diet far outweigh the risk of environmental contaminants.

Have a nutrition question? Ask Big Y’s Wellness Team:
Visit BigY.com’s Living Well Eating Smart webpage and post a question.
Send e-mails to: askcarrie@bigy.com

Write to Ask Carrie
2145 Roosevelt Ave.,
PO Box 7840
Springfield, MA 01102

Big Y’s Registered Dietitian, Carrie Taylor, RD, LDN, and Nutritionist, Andrea Samson, BS