Can Pregnant Women Eat Tuna?
The concerns stem from harvesting fish from polluted waters. These fish are feared to have been contaminated with high levels of mercury and other heavy metals. Currently the EPA and FDA don’t include tuna on their list of fish to avoid during pregnancy, but they do say to eat no more than 12 ounces each week. These recommendations seem to have come from bad, old science. First off, there are no documented cases of Americans developing mercury poisoning from eating fish. On top of that, the American government’s recommendations were based on a single study which involved eating whale meat, not fish, and the researches behind that study acknowledge only positive health benefits for mothers and small children who eat fish. It turns out that the mercury scare has been fairly overhyped. Because of these concerns, many women stopped eating seafood during pregnancy at all. For lower income women this was extremely detrimental as canned tuna was their only access to affordable Omega-3 fats th
