Buzzfeed Should Stick to What It Knows Best: Puppies and Pop Culture

LOL. Win. Cute. omg!!

No, this is isnt my latest text message conversation. These are actually some of the sections on Buzzfeed, a website that specializes in viral content on favorite cultural pastimes, animals in costumes and celebrity gossip. If you want to see The 20 Best Carrot Hugs Of All Time, 22 Animals Who Are So Over Your Wedding and 15 Awesome Things You Can Make With A Stupid Pizza Box, Buzzfeeds your best bet.

But if you want serious information on topics like food safety, immediately stop scrolling through these lists and turn to the real experts. Its shocking that Buzzfeed even attempts to provide readers (or should we say photo gazers) with useful knowledge and its no surprise that it fails miserably in this department.

Consider a recent post, 11 Horrifying Facts About Your Groceries. It is so full of patently false and distorted information on fish that the only horrifying fact about it is that it was written in the first place. Here are the problems:

  • Tuna mercury poisoning is real. Author Kevin Tang cites Jeremy Pivens supposed case of mercury poisoning as proof.

There has never been a case of mercury poisoning from the normal consumption of commercial seafood in the U.S. published in a peer-reviewed medical journal. Fact is, thanks in large part to scaremongering like Pivens, Americans are entirely too deficient in seafood and miss out on countless health benefits. And when Piven first went on his shameful whirlwind publicity tour, we debunked his scaremongering over and over and over and over again. Even the Hollywood press called his bluff.

  • Whether the fish is canned or fresh, doctors don’t recommend more than 5 ounces of tuna a week.

This is completely fabricated advice. According to the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which were developed by doctors, nutritionists, and scientists, pregnant and breastfeeding women and children should consume 8 to 12 ounces of seafood per week from a variety of seafood types including canned light tuna and up to 6 ounces per week of canned albacore tuna. Meanwhile, the general population has no restrictions.

  • Farmed salmon is prone to parasites and contains eight times the level of cancer-causing PCB.

There are no nutrition or safety-based reasons to suggest wild over farm-raised seafood. Farmed and wild seafood are subject to the same regulatory measures for product safety. Currently, two-thirds of the salmon Americans eat is farm-raised and both types of sourcing are important for sustainability. The levels of dioxins found in farmed salmon are below the safety levels set by the World Health Organization (WHO), the European Union (EU) and the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The FDA limit for dioxins in seafood is 2,000 parts per billion. The average farmed salmon has 37 parts per billion, well below the FDA limit.

  • In 2011, the FDA said it inspected only 2% of imported seafood.

Reporters and editors who quote this statistic with no context have a fundamental misunderstanding of the FDA food safety model that governs imported seafood. The Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point model ensures that the safety of food is accounted for at several control points along the value chain, not just at the point of entry. The 2% are targeted shipments that are singled out for further review.

Bottom line? Fish is safe. Serious Buzzfeed articles are not.