Here’s part two of my two-part interview with Roy Palmer, an organizer of the 2010 International Seafood and Health Conference & Exhibition in Melbourne, Australia, which kicks off on Saturday. Part one ran on Wednesday.
Hedlund: Is seafood increasingly viewed as a healthier alternative to beef and other center-of-the-plate proteins?
Palmer: Generally I would say “yes,” but every time the seafood industry fails to follow through on its [health] advantages, other groups [capitalize]. For example, in Australia the red meat industry is doing a mass-media campaign about the omega-3s in red meat, and the margarine industry is promoting omega-3s. There is some confusion occurring in the public.
Are omega-3 fatty acids driving the seafood-is-healthy trend more than any other health claim?
The thing most of our protein competitors fail to divulge is that seafood has long-chain omega-3s. What our competitors are promoting are short-chain omega-3s. From a health benefit perspective, long-chain wins by a country mile, but unless that is pointed out we lose our ground. Eating fish gives so many other great nutrients and vitamins, so I believe we need to promote eating a fish fillet to maximize the health benefits you get from seafood.
We have to be very careful about omega-3 promotion, as there is much more to seafood than just this, and it is the combination of all these that make seafood what it is.
For seafood, omega-3s seem to get more press than any other health claim. Do you agree?
I agree that is the case, but that is not a bad thing as long as we push the issue about long-chain and the food on the plate, ensuring you get the benefits of all the nutrients and vitamins naturally rather than constantly popping pills.
There are still a lot of consumer misperceptions about seafood and health, particularly when it comes to methylmercury. What can the industry do to reverse those misperceptions?
In short, be truthful unlike the people who are continuing to create unnecessarily bad media. Has there ever been a proven case of someone eating fish actually dying of mercury poisoning? Of course, I do not mean due to industrial accidents but from eating fish in a normal manner. The mercury spills are terrible, but they have nothing to do with eating seafood in a normal fashion.
In my opinion, industry and governments should take the whole matter back to CODEX Alimentarius [a collection of internationally recognized standards relating to food] and get the mercury position reviewed based on all the current research. It was through that decision at CODEX that created all the warnings, and in my opinion that was a bad error. The decision through CODEX was based on two major studies, one of which was from the Faeroe Isles where pilot whales were consumed. Personally speaking, I have never eaten a pilot whale and nor do I intend to. I can understand that back in those days there may have been issues with certain species, but we have better science now, especially the work on selenium, which was not available at the time of the original decision. We eat more [farmed seafood] than we did then. And, frankly, most Western countries like Australia, the United States and United Kingdom do not eat enough seafood to have any issues.
I am looking forward to the mercury workshop session we are running at the conference, as I am hopeful this will start putting the writing on the wall in respect to getting this issue put to bed once and for all.
