Food Group Says Mercury Fears Overblown

The Center For Consumer Freedom, an anti-litigation food industry/"consumer rights" group, says fears about mercury poison in tuna have been greatly exaggerated. "And in America’s poorest households, children are being left with the short end of the fish stick," according to an article in the Providence Journal.

Research data by ACNielsen reportedly indicates that "more than 4.4 million U.S. households earning $30,000 or less completely stopped buying canned tuna between 2000 and 2006. (These findings are detailed in a new report titled “Tuna Meltdown,” available at http://www.mercuryfacts.org/.) Why does a drop in low-income families’ tuna consumption matter? In addition to being the constant whipping boy for green-group mercury campaigns, canned tuna is often the only source of omega-3 fatty acids—the 'good fat' that boosts heart health and brain function — that fits in a low-income family’s food budget." So what? "More than 250,000 children were born into those 4.4 million underprivileged families. . . . Without omega-3s in utero, these children are 29 percent more likely to have abnormally low IQs. So says a landmark study, funded by our own government and published last year in the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet." Read more.