User:Theleot/sandbox

Seafood

Reasoning for the selection of the sections below

The health benefits section was added to the seafood article more than 10 years ago and had only two sentences when I began editing. Those two sentences cited a study that had since been updated as of February 2020 coming to an opposite conclusion. This section desperately needed fleshing out and a fresh coat of paint. The health hazards section was created eight years ago and yet, save for two sentences about allergies, had not been updated since 2012. Again, something needed to be done! The seven year old mislabelling section had five sentences, two citations, and a dreaded tag. While the best off of the three, it still wasn't in great shape. I'm happy to mention I was able to work one of Peter Marko's articles into this section; while he wasn't able to help me present my ecolabelling discussion, his work still benefitted Geography of Sustainable Seafood.

I hope I did these sections justice and I'm eager to publish them after consulting with the Seafood talk page.

Note: Text marked by a strikethrough was already present in the article. All other text, citations, and images (in compliance with Wikipedia's image use policies) are new additions. If you're looking for part two of the final project (focusing on COVID-19) you can find that here.

Health benefits

The US FDA recommends moderate consumption of fish as part of a healthy and balanced diet.

There is broad scientific consensus that docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) and eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) found in seafood are beneficial to neurodevelopment and cognition, especially at young ages. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization has described fish as "nature's super food." Seafood consumption is associated with improved neurologic development during gestation and early childhood and more tenuously linked to reduced mortality from coronary heart disease.

The parts of fish containing essential fats and micronutrients, often cited as primary health benefits for eating seafood, are frequently discarded in the developed world. Micronutrients including calcium, potassium, selenium, zinc, and iodine are found in their highest concentrations in the head, intestines, bones, and scales. Public health advocates have popularized claims that fish and seafood consumption can reduce, prevent, or cure numerous diseases including Alzheimer's, diabetes and obesity, asthma, arthritis, cancer, and depression. Most of these claims have been rejected in modern nutritional research citing over-reliance on self-reporting, inadequate sample sizes, and weak statistical significance. It has been widely claimed that eating oily fish containing long-chain omega-3 fatty acids helps prevent heart disease. However, a 2018 Cochrane Systematic Review, based on moderate‐ to high‐quality evidence, finds little to no support for this widespread claim.

There is some debate regarding the fish's particular health benefits, especially regarding the relationship between seafood consumption and cardiovascular health. However, government recommendations promoting limited seafood consumption are relatively unified. The US Food and Drug Administration recommends moderate (4 oz for children and 8 - 12 oz for adults, weekly) consumption of fish as part of a healthy and balanced diet. The UK National Health Service gives similar advice, recommending at least 2 portions (about 10 oz) of fish weekly. The Chinese National Health Commission recommends slightly more, advising 10 - 20 oz of fish weekly.

Health hazards

Barracuda found in Florida are avoided due to a high risk of ciguatera. The same fish found in Belize presents a lesser risk due to the lower prevalence of ciguatera-causing dinoflagellates in the Caribbean. Thus, knowing a fish's origin and life history is essential to determining its health hazards.

Organic and inorganic compounds including methylmercury, microplastics, and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) can bioaccumulate to dangerous levels in apex predators like swordfish and marlin.

There are numerous factors to consider when evaluating health hazards in seafood. These concerns include marine toxins, microbes, foodborne illness, radionuclide contamination, and man-made pollutants. Shellfish are among the more common food allergens. Most of these dangers can be mitigated or avoided with accurate knowledge of when and where seafood is caught. However, consumers have limited access to relevant and actionable information in this regard and the seafood industry's systemic problems with mislabelling make decisions about what is safe even more fraught (see: mislabeling).

Ciguatera fish poisoning (CFP) is an illness resulting from consuming toxins produced by dinoflagellates which bioaccumulate in the liver, roe, head, and intestines of reef fish. It is the most common disease associated with seafood consumption and poses the greatest risk to consumers. The population of plankton which produces these toxins varies significantly over time and location, as seen in red tides. Evaluating the risk of ciguatera in any given fish requires specific knowledge of its origin and life history, information which is often inaccurate or unavailable. While ciguatera is relatively widespread compared to other seafood-related health hazards (up to 50,000 people suffer from ciguatera every year), mortality is very low.

Fish and shellfish have a natural tendency to concentrate inorganic and organic toxins and pollutants in their bodies, including methylmercury, a highly toxic organic compound of mercury, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and microplastics. Species of fish that are high on the food chain, such as shark, swordfish, king mackerel, albacore tuna, and tilefish contain higher concentrations of these bioaccumulants. This is because bioaccumulants are stored in the muscle tissues of fish, and when a predatory fish eats another fish, it assumes the entire body burden of bioaccumulants in the consumed fish. Thus species that are high on the food chain amass body burdens of bioaccumulants that can be ten times higher than the species they consume. This process is called biomagnification.

Man-made disasters can cause localized hazards in seafood which may spread widely via piscine food chains. The first occurrence of widespread mercury poisoning in humans occurred this way in the 1950s in Minamata, Japan. Wastewater from a nearby chemical factory released methylmercury that accumulated in fish which were consumed by humans. Severe mercury poisoning is now known as Minamata disease. The 2011 Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant disaster and 1947 - 1991 Marshall Islands nuclear bomb testing led to dangerous radionuclide contamination of local sea life which, in the latter case, remained as of 2008.

A widely cited study in JAMA which synthesized government and MEDLINE reports, and meta-analyses to evaluate risks from methylmercury, dioxins, and polychlorinated biphenyls to cardiovascular health and links between fish consumption and neurologic outcomes concluded that:

"The benefits of modest fish consumption (1-2 servings/wk) outweigh the risks among adults and, excepting a few selected fish species, among women of childbearing age. Avoidance of modest fish consumption due to confusion regarding risks and benefits could result in thousands of excess CHD [congenital heart disease] deaths annually and suboptimal neurodevelopment in children."

Mislabelling

Escolar is sometimes difficult to distinguish from tuna when cooked. Unlike tuna, escolar is associated with keriorrhea and severe cramping following consumption. In many restaurants, most fish labeled as tuna, white tuna, or albacore is mislabeled escolar.

Due to the wide array of options in the seafood marketplace, seafood is far more susceptible to mislabeling than terrestrial food. Generally speaking, the greater the conceptual, temporal, and physical distance between the organism and the consumer, the greater the risk of tampering, substitution, and fraud. There are more than 1,700 species of seafood in the United States' consumer marketplace, 80 - 90% of which are imported and less than 1% of which is tested for fraud. Estimates of mislabelled seafood in the United States range from 33% in general up to 86% for particular species.

Byzantine supply chains, frequent bycatch, brand naming, species substitution, and inaccurate ecolabels all contribute to confusion for the consumer. A 2013 study found that one third of seafood sampled from the United States was incorrectly labelled. Snapper and tuna were particularly susceptible to mislabelling, and seafood substitution was the most common type of fraud. Another type of mislabelling is short-weighting, where practices such as overglazing or soaking can misleadingly increase the apparent weight of the fish. For supermarket shoppers, many seafood products are unrecognizable fillets. Without sophisticated DNA testing, there is no foolproof method to identify a fish species without their head, skin, and fins. This creates easy opportunities to substitute cheap products for expensive ones, a form of economic fraud.

Beyond financial concerns, significant health risks arise from hidden pollutants and marine toxins in an already fraught marketplace. Seafood fraud has led to widespread keriorrhea due to mislabeled escolar, mercury poisoning from products marketed as safe for pregnant women, and hospitalization and neurological damage due to mislabeled pufferfish. For example, a 2014 study published in PLOS One found that 15% of MSC certified Patagonian toothfish originated from uncertified and mercury polluted fisheries. These fishery-stock substitutions had 100% more mercury than their genuine counterparts, "vastly exceeding" limits in Canada, New Zealand, and Australia.

References

Citations

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