The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) current guidance on seafood consumption during and before pregnancy – and for young children – highlights the importance of omega-3s, but according to nutrition expert Maya Maroto, it is still focusing more on the fear than the facts.
The U.S. FDA recommends eating seafood during pregnancy and while breastfeeding as a means of supporting a child’s brain development. The agency has created a chart which showcases seafood but also leads with the importance of “choosing a variety of fish that are lower in mercury.
During the Seafood Nutrition Partnership's (SNP) State of the Science Symposium – running for its ninth edition on 23 September – Maroto said that continued focus on mercury and the fear of potential harm is costing children in terms of their development.
Maroto, a nutrition scientist and public health strategist, the former chief of the education and outreach branch at the FDA, and vice president at nutrition policy agency FoodMinds, said the story behind the current focus on mercury was partly born out of a tragedy over 50 years ago that is still costing children today in terms of brain and eye development.
“There was a mercury poisoning event in the 1950s in Minamata, Japan, due to an industrial poisoning event, where exposure reached hundreds of times greater levels than what you would see in ocean species with devastating consequences,” Maroto said.
Maroto said another suite of research on mothers in the Faroe Islands who ate pilot whales during pregnancy added to the fears of mercury, and those two unique and unusual circumstances became the foundation for some of the advice on mercury that is still used in seafood consumption guidelines.
“It’s driving fear, even though these stories don’t apply to fish,” Maroto said. “We’re letting the ghosts of the past deprive our future generations of reaching their full potential.”
That focus on the negatives and the focus on methylmercury has itself been studied academically, showing the same thing. Jean Golding, the founder of the Avalon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, found the evidence against the current warnings regarding seafood consumption is clear.
“The evidence has become convincing … advisories warning about methylmercury have likely resulted in children failing to reach their full neurodevelopmental potential,” Golding said.
Maroto shared several examples of research conducted on seafood consumption during pregnancy and while children are between the ages of 0 and 5. Across over 30 studies of what amounts to hundreds of thousands of mother-child pairs, eating more fish during pregnancy and early childhood only benefited physical and mental development.
Ideally, all Americans would consume 8 to 12 ounces of fish and seafood per week – but the average mom in the U.S. is only consuming 1.8 ounces per week.
“This is not just falling short; this is a huge missed opportunity that translates into measurable IQ points that are being lost at the population scale,” Maroto said.
Studies have shown varied benefits to IQ from seafood consumption, and Maroto said a recent study found that sufficient intake of seafood and omega-3s during critical periods of brain development in early childhood could result in average gains of 7.7 IQ points.
Maroto said applying that gain to real life is the difference between standardized test scores being in the 50th percentile and the 70th percentile, and it also translates to economic gains later in life.
“So, 7.7 IQ points is just off the charts in terms of what this means on a population scale,” Maroto said.
Despite the clear benefits, the FDA advice is still focused too heavily on mercury, Maroto said.
“The fish advice really focuses on best choices, good choices, and choices to avoid and is really framed around mercury. It makes fish seem a little bit scary. You might look at that and just say, ‘You know what, I’m going to avoid all of these choices,’” Maroto said. “Our current advisories are categorizing fish by mercury level and not by omega-3 content.”
The U.S. is not alone in its focus on mercury in seafood.
Recently, eight cities in France decided to remove tuna from its school menus due to concerns about mercury.
Maroto said that continued uncertainty is the reason the U.S. needs to update its guidelines and the messaging around seafood.
“What we need to do, and I urge everyone who is listening, is to update the message,” she said. “We need to update this message to rely on scientific consensus and not old fears and to equip pregnant people with confidence that they are making a good choice when they are choosing to eat seafood during pregnancy.”
