When the U.S. Dietary Guidelines (DGA) came out yesterday there was a torrent of coverage; USA Today Catch of the week: 8 ounces of fish in your diet , Time Magazine New Dietary Guidelines: Cut Salt and Sugar, Eat More Fish, Washington Post New federal dietary guidelines released, WebMD For First Time, Help Avoiding Bad Foods Added to Help Eating Good Foods, Bloomberg Most U.S. Adults Need to Cut Sodium Intake, Exercise More, Government Says, NPR New Nutrition Guidelines: Read Between The Lines On Red Meat and the list goes on and on.

And guess what. The vast majority of the media got the story right, from the heavy hitters who buy ink by the barrel to the local TV News stations like Fox 23 in Albany who nailed the DGAs message. The basic take always were eat less salt and eat more fish.

Just like whole foods, whole stories are better for you. Yes, in one narrative salt was a big loser but in the whole narrative seafood was a big winner. Uniformed handwringing over exaggerated scare stories about mercury have for some journalists been the norm when writing about seafood. With that issue in mind heres hoping the clear science and clear advice delivered by the DGAs and the subsequent responsible reporting on them will usher in a new era of coverage on seafood that starts with page 5 of the Guidelines that states unequivocally, “the benefits of consuming seafood far outweigh the risks, even for pregnant women.”