These Are The Types Of Fish You Should Avoid

We all know that fish is both delicious and healthy. However, there are certain fish that will do you more harm than good. These are the 9 types of fish you should avoid.

Catfish

Catfish can grow to considerable size. To accelerate their growth, many fish farmers feed them hormones, especially those fish imported from Asian countries. Free-grown catfish are much less dangerous and more nutritionally valuable.

Mackerel

Mackerel contains mercury, which is not cleared from but accumulated in the human body, causing various diseases. The Atlantic mackerel is the least dangerous in this regard, and you can eat it as much as you like.

Tuna

Tuna contains lots of mercury, especially blackfin and bluefin tuna. Additionally, there’s precious little free-grown tuna in the stores because it’s nearly extinct. All the fish comes from farms where it’s fed with antibiotics and hormones.

Tilapia

There aren’t many healthy fatty acids in tilapia, yet the concentrations of harmful fats in it are almost as high as in lard. Excess consumption of this fish leads to an increase in cholesterol levels and makes the body more sensitive to allergens.

Eel

Eels have lots of fat, and thus easily absorb industrial and farm waste in the water. American species have the highest level of such intoxication. European eels are also known for being contaminated with large amounts of mercury.

Pangasius

Most of the pangasius we see in our stores is brought from Vietnam, namely from the Mekong River that is considered one of the most contaminated water bodies in the world. Moreover, pangasius fillet contains an elevated level of nitrofurazone and polyphosphates (carcinogens).

Tilefish

This fish is the leader in mercury contamination, and it’s often caught in breach of the rules, increasing the risk of food poisoning.

Sea bass

Sea bass contains an ample amount of mercury. Sometimes, especially when it’s served as fillet, instead of sea bass you get pangasius or some other cheaper fish.

Dollarfish

This fish, more commonly known as oilfish, contains gempylotoxin — a waxy substance that is not metabolized at all. The toxin doesn’t do much harm, but it can cause indigestion. To reduce the levels of gempylotoxin, the fish should be fried or grilled.

HOW TO CHOOSE FRESH FISH
Fresh fish always has shiny scales and clear eyes. Take a fish in your hands and look — a spoiled fish will have its tail lowered weakly. Dry fins and gray gills instead of bright red ones also point to staleness.

When buying live fish from a tank, make sure the water is clear. Choose fish that aren’t near the surface but closer to the bottom.

If you like fishing and then cooking the catch, check the water for mercury. It’s simple to do when you have a mercury analyzer.

When buying salmon, choose chunks with white threads in them: if a chunk is completely red, it’s probably been dyed. Also, don’t take fish that has bright spots on its skin: it was caught during the spawning season, and its meat is bland.

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The Surprising Benefit of Eating Fish

Ordering off the seafood menu may help ease the aches and pains of rheumatoid arthritis (RA), according to a new study in Arthritis Care & Research. People with RA who ate fish at least twice a week reported less joint swelling and tenderness than those who rarely or never did—and the findings suggest that the more fish they ate, the less active their disease.

The study involved 176 people with RA who answered questions about their diet over the past year. Specifically, the authors looked at responses to questions about how often people ate tuna, salmon, sardines and other fish prepared raw, broiled, steamed or baked.

They did not look at how often people ate fried fish, shellfish or fish in mixed dishes (like shrimp stir-fry, for example), because these meals tend to be lower in omega-3 fatty acids—a type of fat with anti-inflammatory properties. Previous studies have shown that taking fish-oil supplements (which are rich in omega-3s) may benefit people with RA, but this is among the first studies to look at the consumption of actual fish.

The researchers also looked at the patients’ disease-activity scores, a measure that takes into account the number of swollen and tender joints they have, as well as a blood marker of inflammation.

Disease-activity scores were an average of half a point lower for people who ate the most fish (twice a week or more) compared to those who ate the least (once a month or never). This was found after researchers adjusted for a number of factors that may otherwise affect the results, including age, sex, body mass index, depression, marital status, medication use and fish-oil consumption.

That may not sound like much. But for the scale used in the study, a score of less than 2.6 indicates remission, while a score greater than 5.1 indicates active disease. A half-point reduction is clinically significant, say the researchers; it’s about one-third the amount of improvement reported in clinical trials for methotrexate drugs, which are considered the standard of care for RA.

“With that type of improvement, we would generally expect that a patient would feel noticeably better,” says lead author Dr. Sara Tedeschi, associate physician in rheumatology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

The study also suggests that people don’t have to eat fish twice a week to get some benefit, and they don’t have to stop at twice a week, either. Each serving of fish per week was linked to lower disease activity.

The authors concluded that higher intake of fish may be associated with lower disease activity in people with RA, although they caution that the study—which only looked at fish consumption and disease activity at one point in time—could not show a cause-and-effect relationship. While Tedeschi can’t say whether eating fish might have anti-inflammatory benefits for people without RA, she does point to previous research that has suggested a small protective effect.

“If our findings can be replicated in other populations and over longer periods of time, we may be able to show one specific reason for people with RA to eat more fish,” says Tedeschi. That’s in addition to plenty of other reasons that eating fish is a smart choice, she adds, whether you have arthritis or not

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