CLASS #2 FOOD
How do I avoid (as much as possible) the PCB’s, mercury, dioxins, antibiotics, and pesticides found in seafoods and meats?
© Lara Adler, LLC
Blueprint For A Healthy Life™
RECAP: Salmon
• 70% of global salmon market is farm raised, and in the US 2/3rd of that is imported
•
To combat pest infestations & disease, farmed seafood operations dose fish with pesticides & antibiotics
© Lara Adler, LLC
Blueprint For A Healthy Life™
RECAP: Salmon
• Organophosphate pesticides: CNS toxicant • Scottish fish farms increasing amount of OP pesticides used by 110%
© Lara Adler, LLC
Blueprint For A Healthy Life™
RECAP: Bioaccumulation & Biomagnification
• Farmed Salmon have higher levels of PCB’s & Dioxins than wild caught
•
Methylmercury bioaccumulates in seafood and biomagnifies up the food chain
© Lara Adler, LLC
Blueprint For A Healthy Life™
RECAP: Tuna
•
5 different species of tuna with varying levels of mercury level
• Sushi tuna (due to mercury, mislabeling, and overfishing) should ideally be avoided
© Lara Adler, LLC
Blueprint For A Healthy Life™
RECAP: Shrimp
•
Most shrimp is imported
• Asian & SE Asian shrimp are raised in filthy conditions, often using banned chemicals and raw sewage
© Lara Adler, LLC
Blueprint For A Healthy Life™
Why it’s time to get serious...
• Between toxins that biomagnify up the food chain, and issues like
radiation leaks, we have reached a point in time where we have to take our bioaccumulated toxin load seriously
•
Our greatest source of exposure to PBCs, dioxins, and mercury come from eating seafood & other animal foods with high levels, so it’s important to weigh the risks & benefits
© Lara Adler, LLC
Blueprint For A Healthy Life™
The FDA, EPA, WHO, and National Academy of Sciences all agree that the best way to lower personal PCB, dioxin, and mercury levels is to reduce dietary exposure.
© Lara Adler, LLC
Blueprint For A Healthy Life™
Rule #1
• When we do include animal foods in our diet, it should be lean and lower on the food chain: SMASH fish:
Salmon, Mackerel, Anchovies, Sardines, Herring
© Lara Adler, LLC
Blueprint For A Healthy Life™
Only 10% of all forage fish caught are for human consumption. 90% of forage fish are used to grind up into fish meal for farmed fish operations, livestock feed, pet food, and as baitfish
© Lara Adler, LLC
Blueprint For A Healthy Life™
Our Purchasing Power
•
By using our purchasing power we can start to have an impact on the ways our oceans are fished
© Lara Adler, LLC
Blueprint For A Healthy Life™
How much?
• Be mindful & limit consumption of the larger species of fish - tuna steaks or sushi tuna, for example - to a few times a year, if at all
•
SMASH fish can be eaten regularly throughout the week
•
Someone with known heavy metal issues should avoid all tuna and be mindful of quantity of smaller fish too
© Lara Adler, LLC
Blueprint For A Healthy Life™
Fish Consumption & Pregnancy
Omega-3 rich fish is critical for good fetal development!
© Lara Adler, LLC
Blueprint For A Healthy Life™
2014: Environmental Working Group report: Advice on seafood consumption related to mercury & Omega-3‘s is flawed.
© Lara Adler, LLC
Blueprint For A Healthy Life™
Report Findings on Omega-3 Fatty Acids
• You would need to eat:
- 60oz of tilapia (nearly 4 lb.)
- 100oz (over 6 lb.) of shrimp WEEKLY to supply the necessary 1,750 mg of omega-3’s
© Lara Adler, LLC
Blueprint For A Healthy Life™
Tilapia
• 95% of tilapia in the US is imported •
73% of those imports are from China
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Blueprint For A Healthy Life™
Tilapia
© Lara Adler, LLC
Blueprint For A Healthy Life™
Children & Seafood
• Children who eat 2 medium servings of
albacore or white tuna per week could be exposed to as much as 6x the dose that federal guidelines considers to be safe
© Lara Adler, LLC
Blueprint For A Healthy Life™
Children & Seafood
• Children & women of child bearing age,
especially pregnant women, should avoid eating ANY albacore tuna.
• Children under 55 lb. should limit “light
tuna” (skipjack or yellowfin) to ONE MEAL PER MONTH
© Lara Adler, LLC
Blueprint For A Healthy Life™
Know Your Fish Species:
• Making more informed choices about
seafood, means getting more familiar with where the seafood you’re eating lies on the food chain
•
Bluefin Tuna can be TEN TIMES the size of a skipjack tuna, which makes a big difference in the amounts of accumulated toxins
© Lara Adler, LLC
Blueprint For A Healthy Life™
Popular fish guides:
© Lara Adler, LLC
Blueprint For A Healthy Life™
These guides tend to focus on: SUSTAINABILITY, not relative TOXICITY
• • How abundant or depleted fish stock are • Whether there are by-catch issues How the fish are caught
© Lara Adler, LLC
Blueprint For A Healthy Life™
That’s why I created...
• The Icky Fishy Guide to Toxins in Seafood • Great basic reference, but not the end all be all
•
Many variables at play when looking at levels of toxicity in seafood: fish are mobile creatures & some parts of the ocean/bodies of water are less polluted than others.
© Lara Adler, LLC
Blueprint For A Healthy Life™
Know the Food Chain:
• The general rule of thumb you
always want to follow when eating seafood, with some exceptions: eat lower on the food chain
•
WE are APEX predators
WE are at the top of the food chain
http://www.nature.nps.gov/air/aqbasics/understand_toxics.cfm
© Lara Adler, LLC
Blueprint For A Healthy Life™
Country of Origin Labeling
• Federally required for all seafood sold in RETAIL establishments
• The can or the package of fish, will always say WHERE it’s from
•
This gives a general sense of how full of contaminants it might be
© Lara Adler, LLC
Blueprint For A Healthy Life™
© Lara Adler, LLC
Blueprint For A Healthy Life™
Start reading labels!
© Lara Adler, LLC
Blueprint For A Healthy Life™
Out of the 90% of the seafood in the US that’s imported, LESS THAN 2% is inspected! When it is, it’s often just a visual inspection, looking for obviously rotten product.
© Lara Adler, LLC
Blueprint For A Healthy Life™
The Government Accountability Office stated that
“the FDA tested about 0.1 percent of all imported seafood products for drug residues.”
© Lara Adler, LLC
Blueprint For A Healthy Life™
Different types of certifications
© Lara Adler, LLC
Blueprint For A Healthy Life™
Why it’s difficult to trust labels...
• The Global Aquaculture Alliance issues the Best Aquaculture Practices label
• BAPis a fishing industry group
whose board members consist of representatives from Monsanto, Cargill, and the Chilean farmed salmon industry
© Lara Adler, LLC
Blueprint For A Healthy Life™
© Lara Adler, LLC
Blueprint For A Healthy Life™
There is no singular, government mandated certification for seafood
© Lara Adler, LLC
Blueprint For A Healthy Life™
© Lara Adler, LLC
Blueprint For A Healthy Life™
The Food Service Industry
• Federal labeling laws are NOT mandatory in the food service industry
• If a menu just says “salmon” its going to be farmed salmon
Restaurants know they can charge a premium for wild caught Pacific salmon
© Lara Adler, LLC
Blueprint For A Healthy Life™
© Lara Adler, LLC
Blueprint For A Healthy Life™
“Organic” Salmon • USDA National Organic Standards Board never developed a set of standards for “organic” seafood
•
What they did determine though, is that even if there were standards, it’s impossible to categorize wild-caught seafood as organic because there’s no way to enact any sort of controls over pollutants, diet, etc. since they are swimming in the wild.
© Lara Adler, LLC
Blueprint For A Healthy Life™
Organic seafood certifications DO exist in: • Scotland • Sweden • Germany • United Kingdom
• Switzerland • Canada • Ireland • Chile
BUT there is NO international standard for what defines “organic aquaculture.” © Lara Adler, LLC
Blueprint For A Healthy Life™
© Lara Adler, LLC
Blueprint For A Healthy Life™
What Salmon Should We Eat? PACIFIC SALMON
• • • • •
King (chinook) Sockeye (red) Coho (silver) Pink (humpback) Chum (keta)
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✓
X
Blueprint For A Healthy Life™
Wild Atlantic salmon does NOT exist in the marketplace
All Atlantic salmon is FARMED
© Lara Adler, LLC
Blueprint For A Healthy Life™
Cooking fish at home... Toxins may be reduced by:
• • trimming the fat • broiling or baking the fish so fat drips away removing the skin
© Lara Adler, LLC
Blueprint For A Healthy Life™
Bottom Line for Salmon
• Wild Caught, Pacific, when possible • Avoid Atlantic salmon Pregnant women and children can safely consume a few times a • week (along with sardines, mackerel, and other low-food chain fish)
© Lara Adler, LLC
Blueprint For A Healthy Life™
Bottom Line for Tuna
• If eaten, choose Skipjack, and consume rarely (1-2x per month) Avoid larger species like Bluefin, Yellowfin, Bigeye, and Albacore • If you only eat tuna once or twice a year, don’t worry too much • about it!
• Pregnant/ breastfeeding women and children should avoid all tuna
© Lara Adler, LLC
Blueprint For A Healthy Life™
Bottom Line for Shrimp
• Make sure it’s domestic (and do your research) • Avoid from Asia & SE Asia
© Lara Adler, LLC
Blueprint For A Healthy Life™
Bottom Line for Shrimp
•
•
Domestic Wild:
• MSC Pink Oregon Shrimp / Pacific Northwest • British Columbia
Farmed OK if:
• • ponds that mimic natural habitat
closed water system (land based)
© Lara Adler, LLC
Blueprint For A Healthy Life™
© Lara Adler, LLC
Blueprint For A Healthy Life™
© Lara Adler, LLC
Blueprint For A Healthy Life™
© Lara Adler, LLC
Blueprint For A Healthy Life™
“We're now in a situation where doctors and nutritionists are asking us to double our seafood consumption… Where is all that seafood going to come from?”
© Lara Adler, LLC
Blueprint For A Healthy Life™
© Lara Adler, LLC
Blueprint For A Healthy Life™
Shellfish = exception to the “never eat farmed” rule Shellfish are filter feeders:
• Water from their habitat filters through their bodies • Shellfish (clams, oysters, mussels) are stationary. The levels of contaminants in their bodies are directly related to the specific body of water they inhabit.
•
Are used for bio-monitoring bodies of water along US costal regions.
© Lara Adler, LLC
Blueprint For A Healthy Life™
Bottom Line for Shellfish
• Choose domestic over imported
• Research farmed vs. wild in your area
© Lara Adler, LLC
Blueprint For A Healthy Life™
© Lara Adler, LLC
Blueprint For A Healthy Life™
Fish Oil • Most fish oil supplements have incredibly
low to negligible levels of mercury & PCB’s in them (GOOD NEWS - for a change!)
• Fish oil should be derived from LOW on the food chain, WILD CAUGHT species: sardines, mackerel, salmon, etc.
© Lara Adler, LLC
Blueprint For A Healthy Life™
Algae Oil •
Algae oil avoids problems with contamination & overfishing!
© Lara Adler, LLC
Blueprint For A Healthy Life™
© Lara Adler, LLC
Blueprint For A Healthy Life™
Radiation •
Levels of radiation showing up in seafood is barely measurable
•
Radioactive isotopes are quickly diluted in the ocean so high levels did not reach the US west coast or Hawaii
© Lara Adler, LLC
Blueprint For A Healthy Life™
Radiation
• Naturally occurring radiation is
everywhere, even in bananas!
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Blueprint For A Healthy Life™
Radiation
• Pacific Bluefin Tuna spawn & swim in Japanese waters
• Cesium-137, the specific isotope being
released from Fukushima has been measured in Tuna.
• Cesium passes quickly through the body • By the time fish are caught, cesium levels
have decreased by 10-20 times, and are less than background levels of radiation
© Lara Adler, LLC
Blueprint For A Healthy Life™
100% organic grass-fed meat & dairy
© Lara Adler, LLC
Blueprint For A Healthy Life™
But you should know that...
•
Even organically raised animals will have some levels of these toxins in their bodies, although typically much less
•
No one piece of fish, cheese, or steak is going to be the problem - the problem lies in the accumulation of the small amounts of toxins present in these foods over time
•
A lifetime of meat, fish, and dairy consumption means toxic build up IN us.
© Lara Adler, LLC
Blueprint For A Healthy Life™
Olestra
• Molecule is too large & irregularly shaped to pass
through the intestinal wall and get absorbed in the body.
• • Causes deficiencies in fat soluble vitamins D, E, K, Passes through the body, undigested, very quickly. and A
• To compensate, foods with Olestra were required to be fortified with these vitamins to make up for what was pulled from the body
© Lara Adler, LLC
Blueprint For A Healthy Life™
Olestra “pros” • Turned out to be GREAT at grabbing fat soluble toxins and ushering them out the body
• Could increase the rate of fat soluble toxin excretion by more than 10x
• Has been used in serious chemical toxin poisoning cases © Lara Adler, LLC
Blueprint For A Healthy Life™
Olestra “cons” Causes ANAL LEAKAGE!
© Lara Adler, LLC
Blueprint For A Healthy Life™
Thankfully, there are some less leaky options...
© Lara Adler, LLC
Blueprint For A Healthy Life™
Fiber Fiber in the diet helps escort waste (including some toxins) out of the body. Our colon is one of our organs of detoxification!
© Lara Adler, LLC
Blueprint For A Healthy Life™
Chlorophyll
• Chlorophyll is very effective at helping clear
out persistent chemical toxins from the body.
• Studies done on rats fed chlorophyll-rich
veggies: kale, spinach, mustard greens, broccoli, etc. resulted in PCB/dioxin elimination rates of 60%-1160% greater than rats who weren’t fed a chlorophyll rich diet.
© Lara Adler, LLC
Blueprint For A Healthy Life™
Rice Bran Fiber
Rice Bran Fiber has been shown to bind with PCB’s and other toxins, dramatically increasing the rate of excretion
© Lara Adler, LLC
Blueprint For A Healthy Life™
Arsenic in rice
© Lara Adler, LLC
Blueprint For A Healthy Life™
Matcha Green Tea • Matcha green tea can help to
eliminate toxins from the body
•
© Lara Adler, LLC
Rats given a diet of 10% matcha excreted between 2.5 - 9 times higher levels of PCB’s
Blueprint For A Healthy Life™
Antioxidant-Rich Foods
© Lara Adler, LLC
Blueprint For A Healthy Life™