For many, Consumer Reports is synonymous with cars and electronics but when it comes to reporting on nutrition and fish its usually misreporting and manipulation. Heres their latest blunder.

February 4, 2014

Sue Byrne

Senior Editor, Health, at Consumer Reports

VIA EMAIL

Dear Ms. Byrne,

I am writing about an egregious manipulation of the facts about canned tuna in a recent direct mail piece for Consumer Reports onHealth newsletter.

Page 7 of the mailer labels a can of chunk light tuna as healthier and a can of chunk white tuna as not healthy with the explanation that light tuna tends to contain less mercury while albacore tuna can be high in mercury.

Missing from this health tip is any context about mercury and how it is both naturally occurring in all wild-caught seafood and the trace amounts in either species. Also missing is FDAs guidelines for concern and the fact tuna does not meet them. The FDA limit for mercury in seafood is 1 part per million (ppm). Canned light tuna has 0.1 ppm and canned white/albacore tuna has 0.3 ppm, each well below FDAs threshold for safety. In fact, the FDA mercury limit for seafood includes a 1,000 percent safety factor (“FDAs action level of 1 ppm for methyl mercury in fish was established to limit consumers methyl mercury exposure to levels 10 times lower than the lowest levels associated with adverse effects.) So there is no way to scientifically support your claim that albacore/white canned tuna is not healthy.

Also missing from your portrait of tuna is that both light and albacore tuna are important dietary sources of omega-3s with 200 mg and 700 mg omega-3s per 3 oz. serving, respectively. Simply put, a 3-oz serving goes a long way in helping American families meet their weekly seafood requirement. Not to mention, tuna is a convenient and affordable meal for many Americans. The bottom line: This health tip infers that albacore/white tuna is a food to avoid. Health tips like this actually create public harm, steering people away from a healthy food experts agree Americans are deficient in. Research shows that low omega-3/seafood consumption is the second-biggest dietary contributor to preventable death in the U.S. As important, Consumer Reports opinion goes against the mainstream of scientific consensus of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), theInstitute of Medicine(IOM) and theFood and Agriculture Organizationof the United Nations working with the World Health Organization (FAO/WHO), that a fish-rich diet is not only safe and healthy, but essential for optimum health.

We request that you remove this from your promotional mailing and any other collateral where it may be featured. When writing future stories about seafood, please make sure your advice encourages families to eat more of a variety of fish in line with the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which say Increase the amount and variety of seafood consumed by choosing seafood in place of some meat and poultry. If you insist on an eat this, not that format, perhaps you should compare the amount of DHA/EPA omega-3s in tuna (light or albacore) to the levels of these omega-3s in other protein choices and give consumers valuable nutrition information they can use to make truly informed and educated food choices.

Thank you.

Gavin Gibbons

Vice President, Communications

National Fisheries Institute