About Seafood

When I think if Time magazine, or even Time.com for that matter, I dont think of agenda driven hacks or sloppy sensationalists trying to out do the competition. I think of solid journalists who, for the most part, let their work speak for itself. For cryin out loud, this is the publication that names the Person of the Year. Youll probably sense my disappointment in the following letter although it may be masked by a dash of snarkieness brought on by frustration. Have a look:

February 23, 2010

Daniel Eisenberg

News Executive Editor

Time.com

VIA Email

Dear Mr. Eisenberg,

I am writing to draw your attention to several issues regarding a failure of basic journalistic standards as they relate to Time.coms article on the Top 10 Most Dangerous Foods.

The issues begin with generous editorial hyperbole and a lack of proper sourcing and end with out right inaccuracy. It is a great concern of ours that such a respected news outlet would allow for such substandard reporting.

For starters the list of Dangerous Foods subtitled eat at your own risk lists tuna at number seven under the header Tuna Terrors. The Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics states clearly that reporters and editors should make certain that headlines, news teases and promotional material, photos, video, audio, graphics, sound bites and quotations do not misrepresent. Even Time.coms own reporting does not suggest there is an imminent risk of anything close to terror associated with tuna. This type of tabloid exaggeration is beneath Time.com and should have been recognized by editors as a lazy attempt at alliteration that was wholly inaccurate.

The initial impression left by the compilation Time.com published is that the list is somehow part of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) policy statement on hotdogs when there is scarcely even a tangential tie to the AAP story.

Further more the text of Alyssa Fetinis write-up on tuna is rife with errors. In the very first paragraph she reports that the U.S. government advisory warned consumers against eating too much of the fish out of concern that the high mercury levels could damage the nervous system and increase the risk of cardiovascular disease. This is absolutely false.

The FDA and EPA jointly advised not consumers broadly but a very specific sensitive subpopulation made up of women who might become pregnant, women who are pregnant, nursing mothers and young children to avoid 4 rarely eaten fish Shark, Swordfish, King Mackerel and Tilefish. The very same advisory states that women and young children should eat up to 12 ounces (2 average meals) a week of a variety of fish including as much as 12 ounces of light tuna and up to 6 ounces (one average meal) of albacore tuna per week.

In the very next sentence Fetini cites an incriminating 2008 New York Times investigation: about mercury in tuna. The lack of research done into this particular part of the repot is confounding on a number of levels. First, the very New York Times report she refers to has been publicly criticized for its journalistic and scientific failures by not only Slate.com and The Center for Independent Media but the Times own ombudsman, who wrote that the original article missed and was less balanced than it should have been, given the state of existing research.

Whats more Time.com itself published an article the day after the New York Times report titled The Danger of Not Eating Tuna, in which a noted expert is quoted as saying overall, the dangers of not eating fish [including tuna] outweigh the small possible dangers from mercury. How is it that Time.com goes from publishing a thorough well-researched interview with a renowned Harvard cardiologist who says, I really think we are experimenting with people’s lives when we give recommendations or write stories or reports that make people eat less fish, to calling tuna a terror?

Unfortunately the issues do not stop there. In the final sentence of the report that calls tuna a terror readers are told that theres a danger from Scombroid. How much of a danger and what that entails is never reported. For starters the CDC notes that for this illness, the majority of patients have mild symptoms that resolve within a few hours and that treatment is generally unnecessary. Likewise, the latest available CDC statistics on Scombroid toxin show that a little more than a hundred Americans are sickened by it annually and thats from all sources, not just tuna. While literally thousands fall ill from Salmonella, commonly found in things like beef, poultry and vegetables. A Terror?

We ask that you immediately remove this portion of your Top 10 Most Dangerous Foods report and review it with your editorial standards in mind.

Thank you for your attention to this issue.

Gavin Gibbons

National Fisheries Institute

cc Sora Song, Time.com Health & Medicine Editor

Richard Stengel, Time Magazine Managing Editor

For starters, who is Michael Byrd and what is he talking about?

Well, according to his column in the American Chronicle he’s a former physical therapist who doles out nutrition advice that is apparently not well researched and not vetted by a dietitian.

Yesterday Byrd took aim at “Myths You Must Know About Tuna” and claimed that, “in order to get the appropriate amount of omega that you would need to get dramatic cardiovascular results and memory enhancement, you would have to eat pounds of tuna every day.” He gives no scientific citation for this claim, but here are a couple to refute it:

Archives of Neurology – Participants who consume fish once per week or more have 60 percent less risk of Alzheimer’s disease compared with those who rarely or never eat fish.

The Lancet – Mothers who ate 12 ounces (2-3 servings) of fish per week or more had babies with the best brain development and social skills.

Byrd goes on to suggest that “it is far easier and far healthier to simply take an omega-3 fish oil supplement each day rather than try to eat the massive amounts of tuna necessary to get omega 3 benefits.”

Again, no studies to back this up. In fact the pill approach is at odds with the recommendations of the American Dietetic Association’s “food first” position, which states:

“It is the position of the American Dietetic Association that the best nutrition-based strategy for promoting optimal health and reducing the risk of chronic disease is to wisely choose a wide variety of nutrient-rich foods.”

Furthermore, Tufts Nutrition recently concluded that “at this time data does not support fish oil capsules as an equivalent substitute for fish” (page 10).

To suggest that it is healthier for people to take a supplement rather than eat high protein, high omega-3, lean tuna that is rich in vitamin D, B, and selenium is inconsistent with nutrition science and quite frankly rather reckless.

Sure-have the cheese burger and fries instead of a tuna sandwich… as long as you take a handful of fish oil supplements you’ll be fine!

He then addresses the issue of seafood during pregnancy by writing, “you’re probably aware that women are discouraged from eating tuna while they are pregnant because the mercury and other contaminants legally allowed to be in the fish can harm the baby.”

Um, maybe this is “common knowledge” in the physical therapist community, but the official guidance on eating fish from the FDA and EPA says in black and white that pregnant women and young children should aim for 12 ounces of a variety of fish a week, of which as much as 6 ounces can be canned albacore tuna. And as much as you want can be canned light tuna. The advice notes, “a well-balanced diet that includes a variety of fish and shellfish can contribute to heart health and children’s proper growth and development. So, women and young children in particular should include fish or shellfish in their diets due to the many nutritional benefits.”

A few weeks ago, we shared a preview of a Mother Jones article about Tuna and Mercury. Now, Mother Jones made the entire article available via the Web. Now that the piece is going to be distributed to a wider audience, it’s probably a good idea to look back at our original rejoinder to get up the speed on their arguments and our responses. In the meantime, it’s hard to stifle a laugh as other folks who have picked up on the story are noting that NFI, and me in particular, are coming down hard on reporters who write about tuna and mercury. Now, there was a time when journalism was something of a bullhorn and editors served as gatekeepers, deciding which facts the great unwashed masses were fit to receive. Thankfully, those days are long over. What we have here now is not a one-way broadcast, but rather a conversation. You ask us some questions, we answer and share those same answers with a wider audience. You print your story, we fact check it against what we know to be true, taking care to make note of the facts that you may have omitted. And when it comes to Mother Jones and a host of other journalists, most seem more than willing to ignore information that might not gibe with the story they’re trying to sell. I don’t know about anyone else, but I prefer the give and take that we enjoy now. And in that spirit of give and take, it’s probably a good idea for us to detail a number of other errors and distortions Mother Jones made in its most recent article:

(Tuna often exceeds even the weak US standard: In 2006, for instance, the group Defenders of Wildlife tested cans of tuna straight out of grocery stores and found that 1 in 20, particularly those imported from Latin America, had mercury above the fda action level and could, in theory, be pulled from the shelves.)

A review of this old study reveals a number of problems. For starters, there is no such thing as Latin American tuna. Tuna is a migratory species and where it is caught or processed has virtually no effect on the levels of mercury one sample might contain. A tuna spotted off the coast of Ecuador could be swimming 100 miles out to sea closer to the latitudes of Columbia, Peru, or even Mexico in a matter of days. To suggest tuna is a country-specific fish and that the country might have an effect on its mercury level is irresponsible. Mercury levels in tuna may vary based on the age and size of the fish, but where this highly migratory fish is caught plays little role in that variation. Throughout the report, the meaning of federal mercury levels is grossly mischaracterized, and the full science used to calculate those levels is only partially explained. The study maintains that, eating just one six-ounce can of this tuna a week would cause a 140 pound womanand nearly all children to exceed the EPAs reference dose for mercury. This characterization is wrong. The EPAs reference dose pertains to a daily exposure over a lifetime. The authors also fail to explain that the EPA reference dose has a built in 10-fold safety factor, meaning that for anyone to even begin to approach mercury levels associated with theoretical concern, he or she would have to eat a sample with mercury levels exceeding the EPA reference dose by 10 times everyday for the rest of his or her life.

The original draft listed canned tuna as a high-mercury product. But then, fda officials met privately with representatives of the country’s three largest tuna companies (Bumble Bee, Tri-Union, and StarKist), the US Tuna Foundation, and the National Food Processors Association.

There is no such thing as a private meeting with the FDA. Minutes from all official meetings should be available by request through the Freedom of Information Act.

Still, the industry has blamed the advisory for a 10 percent drop in sales within a year, and it’s worked hard to mute the message. In 2005, the tuna companies launched a $25 million campaign to counteract the FDA’s advisory, with full-page newspaper ads touting the brain-building benefits of omega-3 fatty acids (“Tuna: A Smart Catch”) and reassuring women that “No government study has ever found unsafe levels of mercury in women or young children who eat canned tuna.” (True, but none has ever looked.)

This is not true. The tuna companies have never launched a $25 million campaign that directly addresses the advisory. Whats more the industry has also never publicly blamed the advisory for a 10 percent drop in sales, while the media has.

Luke Lindley is one of the people Gibbons says it would be irresponsible to write about. As an undergrad at Stanford, the now-24-year-old medical student was “deeply immersed” in bodybuilding, so he ate “tuna for breakfast, tuna for lunch, tuna for dinner” for years.

The totality of Gibbons interaction with this reporter can be found here, nowhere is it mentioned Mr. Lindleys name.

Fatal in high doses, mercury at lower levels has been linked to heart disease in older men and developmental problems in babies.

If referencing traces of mercury from eating seafood, as opposed to ingested alone, published studies show a significant net benefit from eating fish on heart disease and brain development. Hence the American Heart Association recommendation to eat fish, particularly fatty fish, at least twice per week and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations advice that without enough omega-3s from fish, normal brain development does not take place.

The new FDA advisory warned pregnant and nursing women to eat no more than 6 ounces of albacore, and no more than 12 ounces of chunk light tuna, per week. The FDA recommended following the same guidelines for children, with the vague suggestion that they eat “smaller portions.” A 44-pound preschooler who follows the FDA guideline would consume four times the mercury the EPA considers safe.

The Institute of Medicine exhaustively reviewed the benefits and concerns of eating fish, and reported in 2007 that children up to age 12 can consumer up to 6 ounces of while albacore tuna per week. Available data suggest levels of MeHg are not associated with adverse health effects if consumption is limited to two 3-ounces servings per week.

Dr. Jane Hightower has made something of a cottage industry out of treating fish consumers suffering from elevated mercury levels. In 2003 the San Francisco physician published a paper in Environmental Health Perspectives after surveying her entire patient load and testing more than 100 people whose questionnaires suggested they consumed a lot of fish. The majority had blood mercury levels well above what the EPA considers safe. One was a 10-year-old named Matthew Davis who suffered serious neurological problems his doctors suspected were from the three to six ounces of canned albacore he ate daily. His fingers curled involuntarily, and his hands shook when he tried to write. The problems mostly resolved after he quit eating tuna.

Dr. Jane Hightower has published the natural conclusion that eating fish increases blood mercury levels, but her opinion that mercury caused symptoms she observed in patients, is just that, opinion, and not a published, peer-reviewed result. I’m sure it’s hard to believe that there’s more, but there is. I’ll handle a number of our other objections to this story in Part II.