While both seafood professionals and consumers have seemingly grasped the fact that the omega-3 fatty acids present in fish are beneficial to human health, the message that fish also contains vitamin D, which also has long-term health benefits, has not yet registered.
Vitamin D, sometimes dubbed the sunshine vitamin because it can be absorbed by the body through exposure to ultraviolet light, helps to prevent diabetes, certain allergies and heart disease, say medical experts. It also has a beneficial effect on the growth of babies before they are born, according to recent research carried out by the Metropolitan University in London.
The importance of vitamin D to human health was highlighted at the groundbreaking conference on seafood and health held at the beginning of last year in Fishmongers' Hall in London. It should be recognized as the next big aid in disease prevention after the long-chain omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids EPA (eicosapentaenoic acid) and DHA (docosahexaenoic acid), delegates were told.
Sarah Keogh, consultant dietician at the Albany Clinic in Dublin, Ireland, one of the distinguished line-up of international experts who addressed the conference, stated that vitamin D is traditionally associated with calcium balance and bone health.
However, deficiency is also linked to hypertension, Type 1 diabetes, multiple sclerosis, psoriasis, inflammatory bowel disease and prostate cancer. "Increasing vitamin D levels is an area of growing importance in the human diet," she said. At the same time, a report in The Daily Telegraph, a leading British newspaper, stated that giving vitamin D supplements to older people could help cut the risk of Alzheimer's disease.
According to a report in the same newspaper at the end of March, Barbara Boucher, a diabetes expert at Barts Hospital in London, said that the typical British diet is "useless" for providing vitamin D and recommended eating supplements. "Unless you have a herring a day, or a mackerel, or something, you really cannot get enough of it from food," she said.
Absorbing vitamin D from sunlight is also a problem in the UK and other north European countries, of course, coupled with indoor lifestyles and a natural fear of the harmful effects of the sun's rays.
The Daily Telegraphreported that virtually all people in the UK (up to 90 percent of the population) do not have optimal levels of vitamin D in their bodies. What effect this has on the nation's health isn't known, but it is obvious that everyone would be a lot healthier if they had higher levels of vitamin D in their diets.
Bearing in mind that it has taken about 30 years for the omega-3 message to catch on, one cannot imagine seafood executives plugging the fact that their products contain vitamin D anytime soon. And seafood doesn't just contain omega-3 fatty acids and vitamin D. The trace elements iodine and selenium needed to make thyroid hormones are also present.
In fact, selenium has many other beneficial effects, even acting against cancer. And, according to Margaret Rayman from the University of Surrey, selenium works against mercury toxicity, so pregnant women don't need to restrict fish consumption, a popularly held belief.
Taking all of these benefits into account, it is surprising that governments don't act to increase seafood consumption. Eating more fish and shellfish, particularly the latter, would save literally billions in treating illnesses that could be prevented if diets contained higher levels of seafood.
It was Bill Lands, a renowned medical expert from Maryland in the USA, who asked the obvious question at the London conference: "Why wait for disease to develop and then spend millions preventing it?"
However, governments around the world have so far failed to implement policies to increase seafood consumption, so don't expect action to do so anytime soon.
