Catch and Release?

The FDA followed suit a few years later with a fish advisory for pregnant women, which it reissued in 2001 and again in 2004, in partnership with the EPA. Some observers wonder if the frequent headlines reassuring consumers about “fish safety” and reissued guidelines explaining the difference between canned light tuna and albacore may have actually created more confusion than they resolved.

Still, the health benefits of fish have kept rising to the surface.

Last fall, the Harvard School of Public Health reviewed existing studies and declared that eating two portions of fish a week—for example, three ounces of farmed salmon or six ounces of mackerel—lowers the risk of death from heart disease by a third.

In February, The Lancet, a British medical journal, compared the children of 8,000 women who ate more than twelve ounces of fish and seafood a week during their pregnancies with kids whose moms didn’t eat as much fish. According to that study, the children with fish-favoring mums scored higher on development, behavior, and verbal IQ scores between toddlerhood and the age of eight than the other group. (While some commercial fish lobby groups have hailed this as a sign that mercury warnings for pregnant women are all wet, it’s worth noting that the women in the study ate the low-mercury fish recommended by such guidelines. The study also relied on mothers to self-report their children’s intelligence and social skills—assessments that ought to be taken with a grain of sea salt, if not a squeeze of lemon.)

In March, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh’s medical school reported that the omega-3 fatty acid DHA found in some fish boosts gray matter in the mood centers of the brain, where depressed people tend to have the least gray matter. Though researchers are still cautious about claiming that fish can fight depression, previous research has shown that high levels of DHA can improve brain function, mood, and memory, and may even cut the risk of developing dementia by half. 

Such findings may explain why the people who have really gone to school on the topic still favor fish. Daniel Engstrom was part of the international team of mercury scientists that recently released the so-called “Madison Declaration,” in the Swedish science journal Ambio, calling for a worldwide general warning about mercury in fish, especially for children and women of childbearing age. But far from being afraid of eating fish, Engstrom believes that being cautious about our catch might prove healthy for us in other ways.

“Our concerns about fish should be a kind of wake-up call that what we have set into motion has repercussions in the food we can eat,” he says, pointing out that fish isn’t the only food that’s exposed to pollution. “We need to be aware of what’s happening out there so we can begin to change it.”

And what’s his personal preference for that walleye on the line?

“Broiled,” he says. “Definitely broiled.”

Laura Billings’s health reporting has appeared in Self, Health, Cooking Light, and Parenting. Her Fit for Life column appears monthly in Mpls.St.Paul Magazine.