The Committee on World Food Security, meeting in Rome last week for its 41st session, has made “Encourage[ing] consumption of fish especially by pregnant and breastfeeding women, children…” a key recommendation in its report. The group of renowned world food and nutrition experts was created in 1974 as a forum for review of nutrition and food security policies.
“This recommendation is in line with the very latest in nutrition science,” said Rima Kleiner MS, RD, registered dietitian for the National Fisheries Institute in McLean, Va., US. “And while what the group says is important, where it’s said is also worth noting. It is literally found as part of the very first issue addressed. Encouraging maternal fish consumption should be a top nutrition policy issue for the public health sector and that’s reflected in this document.” The committee goes on to recognize seafood as a “primary source of protein and essential nutrients” and as a key contributor to “food security.”
In June the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) released its own draft of new advice to pregnant women on eating seafood.
“This new recommendation makes it all that much more important that the FDA get its final advice right,” added Kleiner. “Here we have a world body calling for encouragement of maternal fish consumption as a global nutrition priority. American women have been warned away from seafood with unclear, nuanced guidance for more than a decade. It’s time we come in line with volumes of published, peer-reviewed science and with the world’s top nutrition policy minds.”
The United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Committee hosted the World Food Security meeting from 13 to 18 October.
