Nutrition

October 21, 2014 — The FAO's Committee on World Food Security elected to prioritize higher fish consumption among its key dietary recommendations for pregnant women and young children, the latest contribution in a movement to promote seafood as a key part of a healthy diet.

During its forty-first session, held in Rome this week, the Committee made “Encourage[ing] consumption of fish especially by pregnant and breastfeeding women, children…” a key recommendation in its report. 

This recommendation is in line with the very latest in nutrition science,” said Rima Kleiner MS, RD, Registered Dietitian for the National Fisheries Institute. “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 report goes on to recognize seafood as a “primary source of protein and essential nutrients” and as a key contributor to “food security.”

The Committee is a group of renowned world food and nutrition experts that was created in 1974 as a forum for review of nutrition and food security policies. The NFI said the Committee's endorsement advances a push to get more Americans to eat more seafood as part of a healthy, well-rounded diet

In June the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) released its own draft of new advice to pregnant women on eating seafood. In their report the FDA said Pregnant and breastfeeding women and young children should eat at least 2-3 servings of seafood per week. This was the first time a a minimum seafood consumption standard has been set for this consumer group.
“This new recommendation makes it all that much more important that the FDA get its final advice right,” said 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.”

This story originally appeared on SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It has been reprinted with permission.

 

October 21, 2014 — Cafeteria lunches, to some, have never looked so good.

The Manchester Essex Regional School District has recently joined Gloucester High School in its efforts to serve fresh seafood regularly, and the students are on board.

The program, orchestrated by Cape Ann Fresh Catch, will receive its first shipment of fresh, locally caught fish this Friday.

“We did a food tasting for the students and the faculty last week and it went over really well,” said Donna Marshall, director of Cape Ann Fresh Catch. “It’s important for morale for everyone, it’s important to support the local economy.”

Manchester Essex School Nutrition Director Sheila Parisien noted that the program stands as an example of the regional school district’s commitment to sustainability.

“I think it’s great,” said Parisien. “It gives the community fresh, local caught fish, and it certainly helps our fishermen.”

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

October 20, 2014 — Past research has said that up to 42 percent of all treated cases of depression do not respond to antidepressants, although it has remained largely unclear why. Now researchers have found that diet can impact how a patient responds to their medication, where fish consumption can help.

That's at least according to a study recently published in the journal European Neuropsychopharmacology, which shows that increasing fatty fish intake appears to increase medication response rate in patients who do not normally respond to antidepressants.

According to lead researcher Roel Mocking, he and his colleagues took a closer look at "two apparently unrelated measures," the metabolism of fatty acids and the regulation of stress hormones – what is often unbalanced in people suffering from chronic depression.

"Interestingly, we saw that depressed patients had an altered metabolism of fatty acids, and that this changed metabolism was regulated in a different way by stress hormones," he explained in a recent release.

Read the full story at Nature World News

October 13, 2014 — Alaskan Coho salmon burgers and roasted monkfish steaks are mainstays of power lunches at Oceana, the upscale, marble-bedecked New York seafood shrine adjacent to iconic Rockefeller Center.

Since 2006, executive chef Ben Pollinger has lured in diners with his refined cooking. He’s held on to a coveted Michelin star, successfully transitioned Oceana into new, mammoth-sized digs, and now the ambitious New Jersey native has just released the informative School of Fish (Gallery Books) with Stephanie Lyness. Through more than 100 recipes, ranging from a baked dorade filet emblazoned with potato scales and paired with Swiss chard, to roasted lobster with basil-garlic butter accompanied by olive oil crushed potatoes, Pollinger squashes the myth for kitchen newbies and skilled home cooks alike that preparing seafood always makes for mystifying, grueling work.

What inspired you to start writing School of Fish?

I needed another challenge. Three years ago, when I first started thinking about writing it, I had been at Oceana five years. It was time to do something else that kept me an engaged and well-rounded chef.

Every chef has a cookbook these days. What did you hope to accomplish with yours?

One of the first conversations I had with my publisher and editor was about what kind of book this would be. We were going to take one of two routes: either a coffee table book with restaurant recipes—kind of like Oceana’s greatest hits — or a consumer-oriented book that would teach people how to cook fish with recipes they would actually use. Off the bat I preferred that route. I felt better being able to reach more readers and share what I have learned in a professional kitchen.

Read the full story from the Food Network's Healthy Eats

October 8, 2014 — The good news here is that for pennies we have an almost infinite local source for making crab risotto, etouffee, gumbo, soupe de poisson, cioppino, and bouillabaisse, any number of wonderful fish dishes made especially delicious with local crab stock at a cost of almost nothing. More good news: the crab risotto you serve your family does the ocean a world of good. 

The bad news is that the source of all this goodness — green crabs, Carcinus maenas — are an invasive species that threaten, possibly on one hand’s number of years, to destroy shellfish beds from Cape Ann to Canada. No more white cardboard boxes brimming with fried clams. No more plump steamers bathed in butter. No more wild mussels shining in white wine, parsley, and garlic.

Carcinus maenas, native to central Norway, the Baltic Sea, and a small part of Iceland, arrived here most likely as ship ballast as early as 1810. DNA tracing reveals subsequent invasions, maybe as ship ballast, or nestled into seaweed used for packing, or shipped aquaculture. The green crab now makes appearances around the world. They own the Eastern seaboard as far south as South Carolina and as far north as Nova Scotia.  They have infiltrated the Pacific coast from Baja, Calif., to Alaska, and far as Australia, earning the dubious accolade as one of the 100 most invasive species in the world. 

At a green crab summit last year in Orono, Maine, Dr. Brian Beal, professor of Marine Biology at the University of Maine at Machias, declared there would be no shipment of Maine clam stock for 2015, as green crabs had that much compromised Maine’s soft shell clam beds. Our local Massachusetts market depends on Maine shipments, as there are not enough soft shell clams dug here to supply the appetite for fried clams, clam fritters, and steamers.

One green crab can eat 40 half-inch clams a day, or 30 small oysters. A half-acre wild mussel bed in Plum Island Sound, that locals considered an easy visit for a bushel of mussels, is gone, according to Rowley Shellfish Constable Jack Grundstrom. Green crabs also destroy native eel grass, a critical nursery for marine life, by burrowing into the mud, thus shredding the grasses at their base. Grundstrom actually points his 83-year-old finger right at green crabs for the collapse of the entire fishing industry, as these voracious beasts are devouring the food chain at its base. 

“Most of the food for the entire ecosystem comes from the North Shore’s Great Marsh, (The Great Marsh is the largest continuous stretch of salt marsh in New England, extending from Cape Ann to New Hampshire, including over 20,000 acres of marsh, barrier beach, tidal river, estuary, mudflat, and upland islands extending from Gloucester to Salisbury.)  Once that food is cut off, as green crabs are doing, all of our fishing culture is destroyed.”

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

SEAFOODNEWS.COM [SCOM] — October 8, 2014 — The Seafood Nutrition Partnership (SNP), a non-profit whose mission is to teach Americans about the health and nutritional benefits of seafood, is launching two pilot public health education campaigns this week in Memphis, TN andIndianapolis, IN.

SNP will partner with a coalition of local stakeholders including chefs, community leaders, public officials and health professionals in each city to teach citizens about the health benefits of seafood.

The programs feature cooking demonstrations, free health fairs and screenings for Omega-3 Index levels, distribution of health education literature and recipes, and encourage citizens of both cities to take the Healthy Heart Pledge to eat at least two servings of seafood each week as recommended by the USDA Dietary Guidelines.

“These pilot programs allow us to be on the ground to build awareness and educate the citizens of Memphis and Indianapolis about the health benefits of a diet rich in seafood and help Americans gain the skills to select, order, prepare and eat seafood as part of a well-balanced, nutrient-rich diet,” said Linda Cornish, Executive Director of the Seafood Nutrition Partnership.

U.S. Congressman Steve Cohen (TN-9-CD) and City of Memphis Mayor A C Wharton, Jr. will kick off the
Memphis pilot program today at The Church Health Center.  “It’s important to have a healthy Memphis, and I’m very glad to partner with the Seafood Nutrition Partnership in this campaign,” said Mayor Wharton. “Seafood just twice a week will help combat things like heart disease and diabetes, which are prevalent silent killers in our community. I hope all Memphis citizens will take part in this effort. If we do, it could really change lives.”

The First Lady of Indianapolis, Winnie Ballard, will host a kick-off at the Indianapolis City Market on Friday, October 10th at 10:00AM to launch the pilot program in Indianapolis. She will be joined by SNP Board Members: NBA star and former Indiana Pacers Detlef Schrempf; renowned omega-3 scientist and Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee member Dr. Tom Brenna from Cornell University; and Linda Cornish.

In addition to cooking demonstrations and free health screenings, the Indianapolis effort will partner with the Indianapolis Restaurant and Lodging Association on Friday, October 17th for a “Fish is the Dish” event with many of the city’s restaurants featuring and highlighting seafood specials.

This story originally appeared on SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It has been reprinted with permission.

October 6, 2014 — We have all heard it: we need to be eating more fish. Cooking fish at home is relatively simple and always more affordable than ordering it off a restaurant menu, but gauging the freshness and quality of fish can be tricky for home cooks: Where did this fish come from? When was it caught? Is that color natural?

“I think the consumer should be a little suspicious of whatever fish they’re buying from at any market in general,” says Chef Ed McFarland, of Ed’s Lobster Bar in New York City.

“That’s not to say that the fish that you’re getting in the supermarket is bad,” he explains. The problem is that the shrink-wrapped filets you see stacked in a row of Styrofoam simply leave too much mystery. “It’s generally something from the large tail, so it’s mass-produced product….They’re buying in such bulk that really, I don’t think they’re inspecting the way they would at a local fish store would.”

“In the beginning the only option really is a fish monger,” he concludes.

Shopping at a market that has its own fishmonger—McFarland, a New York native, recommends Whole Foods, Dean & DeLuca and Wegmans—is a great chance to educate yourself about anything you are buying. Even consulting a fishmonger about the shrink-wrapped stuff will teach you more about the product.

Still, the idea of “freshness” can be a bit of a misnomer. Yes, a fish caught that morning, then put on ice and handed to you smelling pleasantly like the ocean is great quality. But even fish that was caught a few days ago is good. “If it was caught on Monday, got to the fish market on Tuesday and got to the fish store on Wednesday and you’re buying it Wednesday afternoon, it’s a still a fresh fish on Wednesday afternoon, nothing wrong if it’s been packaged correctly.”

Read the full article and watch the videos at Forbes

 

 

WASHINGTON (Saving Seafood) — October 3, 2014 — It’s no secret that seafood has major health benefits. From increasing memory in seniors to improving brain wellness in babies and reducing the risk of heart disease for all, seafood helps your well being. 

The Seafood Nutrition Partnership, a nonprofit working to inspire a healthier America, just launched the Healthy Heart Pledge. In this campaign, supporters pledge to eat seafood twice a week from now until American Heart Month in February to help raise awareness of the health value of seafood, particularly in fighting cardiovascular disease.

There are two steps to help support this campaign and the seafood industry. First, sign up and take the pledge on the Seafood Nutrition Partnership website. Second, share the news of your pledge. Help spread the word through social media (Twitter, Facebook, and/or Tumblr) by joining the Heart Healthy Pledge Thunderclap. The Thunderclap will program your social media post of support to be released at the same time as the posts of all other supporters, making a strong, simultaneous message, but only if the goal of 100 participants is reached.

One in every four deaths in the United States is caused by heard disease, making it the leading cause of death for both men and women in this country. Poor diet can put people at a higher risk for this disease, which speaks to the importance of increasing awareness of healthy, highly nutritious diet choices like seafood.

Read more about the Seafood Nutrition Partnership here

Take the Heart Healthy Pledge here

Show your support through social media here

 

September 29, 2014 — Next week, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is hosting a three-day forum focused on the increasingly politicized topic of mercury contamination in fish. Why should you care? Because of all the scattered skirmishes in the ongoing food wars—from soda sizes to trans fats —the activist-led attack on seafood is unique. That’s because if you stop eating those other foods, nothing bad is going to happen to you. But if you stop eating seafood, you’re actually putting yourself at risk.

This warning would be easy to dismiss as rhetoric were it simply coming from the seafood industry. But it is based on countless independent, peer-reviewed studies showing that when we don’t eat enough seafood we see cognitive impediments in children, and more preventable cardiovascular deaths in adults. It’s a warning repeated by the World Health Organization, the United Nations, and the National Institutes of Health, among others.

But for too long, these cautions have been drowned out by well-funded activist groups whose ideological agenda—and whose bottom line—depend on scaring the daylights out of Americans.

Their boogeyman of choice is mercury. And they have been beating that drum for decades, warning that amidst the witches brew of pollutants spewed by coal-fired power plants, mercury was making its way into the fish on our plates. All manner of dreadful, irreversible health consequences were alleged to follow, for ourselves and our children. We’ve all heard the scare stories and dire warnings for pregnant women and the lectures from wannabe celebrity gurus. It’s scary stuff, and as the activists themselves readily admit, an effective fundraising message.

“People start to care much more, and understand the threat to the ocean, when you tell them that their tuna fish is contaminated,” one activist told Fortune magazine about the focus on mercury. “It’s a dramatic, eye-opening moment for people.”

There’s only one problem: essentially none of this narrative is true.

Read the full opinion at Forbes

 

SEAFOODNEWS.COM [SCOM] — September 22, 2014 — The Seafood Nutrition Partnership (SNP) has kick started another program to further its mission to promote more seafood consumption in the US; this time taking aim at promoting heart health among women through seafood.

At the 10th Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) Annual Meeting, the SNP announced the successful launch of a pilot program called Eating Heart Healthy: A Cardiovascular Risk Reduction Program for Women. The program is designed to help women understand and mitigate their risk of heart disease through a seafood-rich diet. The program was introduced as part of SNP’s Commitment to Action, a plan for addressing significant global challenges made by CGI members.

The Commitment to Action announced at the CGI Annual Meeting is just the beginning, according to Linda Cornish, executive director of SNP.

“Eating Heart Healthy is the first of what we hope to be many examples of broad-based partnerships that address America’s public health crisis,” she said. “We are committed to building awareness of seafood-based omega-3 deficiencies in the U.S., and we’re excited for the opportunity to show more communities how adding seafood to one’s diet can be a simple, affordable and enjoyable way to help prevent chronic diseases. We invite interested partners to learn more about the program and to help us scale this to a national level, targeting communities with the greatest needs.”

The Eating Heart Healthy pilot program, launched in June 2014, was conducted in partnership with two Boston-based organizations: Brigham & Women’s Hospital (BWH), a major teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School and consistently recognized by U.S. News & World Report as one of the nation’s top hospitals; and Roxbury Tenants of Harvard (RTH), a 2,000-resident community providing affordable housing for low- and moderate-income people of diverse backgrounds.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the leading cause of death for women in the United States is cardiovascular disease (CVD). Therefore, female residents of the RTH community with at least some risk of CVD were pre-screened to qualify for the program. The objective of the program was to help these women build skills to incorporate healthy fats and nutrient-dense foods into daily meals, with the long-term goal of lowering their risk for CVD and increasing awareness of heart health.

At the start of the pilot program, participants were surveyed to gauge their baseline knowledge of heart-healthy practices and to determine their current level of seafood consumption. (The U.S. Department of Agriculture and Department of Health and Human Services’ dietary guidelines recommend that Americans eat seafood twice a week; this level has been shown to reduce risks of dying from CVD by 36%, according the Journal of the American Medical Association.)

With guidance from Dr. JoAnne Foody, medical director for the Pollin Cardiovascular Wellness Center at BWH, the participants were also measured for factors ranging from weight and BMI to blood levels of omega-3 fatty acids—an important supporting nutrient for heart health, one found primarily in fish and seafood.

“One of the most significant scientific findings was a general low level of omega-3 fatty acids in our first group of participants,” said Dr. Foody.

Participants then attended talks on cardiovascular health and food budgeting presented by BWH, and engaged in a series of interactive cooking sessions led by Kelly Armetta, executive chef at Hyatt Regency Boston. Over the course of the program, Chef Armetta demonstrated eight simple, affordable seafood-based recipes, each costing around $10 to feed a family of four.

“I was very encouraged to hear that the women have been sharing the recipes with their family, friends and neighbors,” said Chef Armetta.

According to Aileen Sauris, nurse practitioner at BWH, early feedback from program participants has been positive. The women have expressed to her that they are “feeling more energetic and making positive lifestyle changes,” she reported. Post-program, the participants will receive follow-up surveys and health screenings over the course of one year to measure long-term progress in health knowledge and in overall physical health.

“The Eating Heart Healthy program is an effective way to achieve our critical goals of supporting a healthy and vibrant community,” said RTH Executive Director Karen Gately. “The buzz around our community about the initial program has been impressive,” added RTH Director of Program Development Roxanne Haecker. “I have a waiting list for the next program in October.”

Dr. Judith Rodriguez, SNP board member and 85th president of the Academy for Nutrition and Dietetics, provided guidance for the development of the Eating Heart Healthy program curriculum. She credited part of the initial success of the program to its teaching method.

“We believe the key to having a long-term impact is to ensure that healthy eating habits are taught not in an abstract way but in a very practical, grounded and engaging way, specifically designed for the adult learner."

This story originally appeared on SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It has been reprinted with permission.