Low Cholesterol Diet Meals

If you care about your health and care about the planet then you should stop eating fish and seafood right now. There are very real health and ethical reasons to do so.

Why? Well, because we have a massive oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico.

I won’t pretend to know much about he technical details of the leak itself, but even if the well is successfully closed soon there is still the issue of the existing level of pollution and its impact on sea-living species.

Obviously the US government will not allow fishing in the water that is being directly affected by the oil spill, but that does not mean that we are ‘off the hook’ so to speak. What happens under the surface of the water is not obvious to the casual observer, but you can count on the pollution spreading further under water than on the surface.

There are two serious issues to consider when you decide whether you are comfortable eating seafood. Firstly what types of toxins could find their way onto your plate? Secondly, are you willing to accept the ecological disaster waiting to happen in the form of overfishing the remaining good fishing locations?

Due to the oil spill there are a number of different substances polluting the Gulf of Mexico area and surrounding waters. Firstly we have crude oil and secondly we have the dispersant being used, currently Corexit 9500. Constituents of crude oil include both mercury and lead which are two heavy metals that are highly poisonous to humans. Crude oil also includes benzene, toluene and polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), all of which cause cancer. Scientists do claim that PAH does not accumulate in fish, but concede that it does accumulate in shellfish. The Corexit 9500 dispersant is a highly toxic chemical, roughly four times more poisonous than oil.

Heavy metals (such as mercury and lead) dispersed in water accumulates in the bodies of fish as the water is filtered through the fish’s respiratory system. Additionally predatory fish tend to eat other fish, resulting in a greater heavy metal load. By the time a larger fish, prized by humans as a tasty morsel, is caught and sold as human food the heavy metals have been recycled and accumulated many times over.

Mercury is associated with brain impairments, both degenerative in adults and the development of autism and chromosomal disorders (such as Down’s syndrome) in children. Mercury crosses the placenta in pregnant mothers and has its greatest effect on babies and children due to being significantly more concentrated.

Lead affects the nervous system, brain, kidneys and reproductive system. In children it has been associated with low IQ, slow growth and hearing defects. In laboratory tests on animals, no minimum quantity of lead has been considered a safe dose; even the smallest quantities have had a harmful effect.

The chemical dispersant, Corexit 9500, used by BP to try to break up the oil from the surface of the water is known to be both more toxic and also less effective than other chemical disbursants, requiring a stronger application. I feel that we have a case of misaligned corporate ethics coming into this situation as Corexit 9500 was reputedly banned in Britain over a decade ago due to its highly toxic affects on both the environment and people. How ‘British’ Petroleum ended up with such a large supply then I do not know.

The use of this chemical in such quantities and at such oceanic depths is unknown in human history, and the exact contents of the mixture are a trade secret. Expected health effects are respiratory, nervous system, liver, kidney and blood disorders, again grossly affecting children due to their smaller size. At this time over 600,000 gallons of Corexit 9500 have been utilised in an attempt to clean up the oil spill. To make things even worse, the toxicity of Corexit 9500 in a solution of water increases with water temperature, and oil in the water is resulting in higher water temperatures.

Clearly the sea-creatures living in and around the Gulf of Mexico are going to be off the menu for some time. The government won’t willingly allow the people to eat contaminated fish right?

The answer is both yes and no. The govenment might not willingly allow fish to be caught from the worst polluted areas, but there will be a significant pressure to allow fishing in other areas nearby. The Gulf Coast is responsible for about half of the total US harvest in its high season. Fishing in the Gulf of Mexico is an estimated $2.4 billion industry, which is an invaluable addition to USA’s GDP especially given the current recession. Additionally, if the demand for fish does not reduce, the supply of fish from other waters nearby will need to increase.

In addition, many fish, particularly deep ocean fish are migratory and will pass through the Gulf of Mexico waters on their way to someplace else. Some fish will travel up to 200 miles for feeding and reproduction and so it is not possible to easily determine which fish will have been affected by the growing pollution.

In addition to the issue of caught fish containing human-toxic substances, there is also the significant issue of overfishing to contend with. Overfishing occurs when the commercial fishing operation in an area catches the fish faster than the fish can replenish their population. This is happening globally already and will only be made worse if the same number of fish are required from fewer and less-dense fishing areas. According to overfishing.org, almost 80% of the world’s fisheries are fully to over-exploited, depleted or in a state of collapse, and over 90% of the stocks of large predatory fish stocks are already gone. Who can tell what the full impact will be when the ocean ecology is already under stress, and we increase the stress by overfishing from the surrounding areas.

It is not only the fish that are affected by overfishing, sea birds and mammals both eat fish, and as the number of edible fish become harder to find, these animals are being increasingly caught in fishing hauls, killed and discarded.

So while those of us who are not yet affected by the disaster in the USA can sit back and watch everything unfold, it will be our fish stock that will be increasingly removed from the oceans to make up for the shortfall in US fishing.

In my opinion, the only healthy and ethical thing to do about the seafood issue is to completely stop eating fish and their byproducts. We need to look into getting our EFAs from other sources such as flaxseeds, spirulina, chlorella and phytoplankton. Fortunately fish do not create their own EFAs, but instead break down the EFAs in the microalgae food that they consume. Humans are able to do the same, and so we can replace fish in the diet with supplemental sources of EFA. I have previously used fish oil for DHA supplementation, but I am going to try out some vegan alternatives.

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