Tuna Talk: Is it Safe for Babies to Eat Canned Tuna with @consumerreports Michael K. Hansen, PhD

Michael Hansen, PhD (1m 0s):

So for example, a 44 pound child could have three and a half ounces of light tuna per week, 132 pound woman who isn't pregnant could have about eleven and a half ounces. And a typical can of tuna is five ounces.

Katie Ferraro (1m 15s):

Hey, there I'm Katie Ferraro registered dietitian, college nutrition professor and mom of seven specializing in baby led weaning here on the Baby-led Weaning Made Easy Podcast. I help you strip out all of the noise and nonsense about feeding, leaving you with the competence and knowledge. You need to give your baby a safe start to solid foods using baby led weaning. Hello there. Welcome back today we're talking about canned tuna and whether or not it is safe for babies to eat. And I know this is a touchy subject because canned tuna is an affordable and widely available source of fish protein and fish is one of the big nine allergenic foods that you do want to be offering to your baby early and often fish is a separate big nine food from the shellfish and the big nine are the nine foods that account for about 90% of food allergies.

Katie Ferraro (2m 10s):

So fish is one of them and shellfish is the other one, and we want to offer those foods early and often to babies in order to prevent food allergy, but both fish and shellfish do come in some canned varieties, some of which are safer than others. And from a safety standpoint, we're talking about heavy metals and in particular mercury in this discussion about canned tuna and mercury is a highly toxic element. Ideally we want no mercury in your baby's developing body or yours for that matter. But in infancy we know mercury is particularly neurotoxic it's nefrotoxic meaning injurious to the developing kidneys it's immunotoxic. So we're concerned about pregnant women's mercury intake also because in utero it can be damaging to the developing fetus.

Katie Ferraro (2m 53s):

Mercury is a pollutant. You can't get away from it. It bio-accumulates, and it's particularly concerning in the aquatic food chain, and this is a serious health hazard for children. So as a dietitian specializing in infant feeding, I've always said as do my other feeding colleagues, you know, when in doubt, leave it out. Okay. So why would you ever feed a food with potential mercury contamination to a baby? And that's really the crux of today's episode and interview. Why does the U S government guidance on quote unquote safe fish consumption for pregnant and breastfeeding women and young children still include mention of canned tuna as a, and this is their categorization quote unquote good choice. When it is well known that there are variable rates of mercury in canned tuna, including the chunk light tuna, which the chunk light always kind of gets that health halo when we're talking about mercury, because we know on average that cant albacore has more mercury than chunk light tuna, but chunk light tuna is not devoid of mercury.

Katie Ferraro (3m 48s):

And again, even small amounts can be concerning when in doubt, leave it out. So to help us kind of sort all of this out with, should I, or should I not feed my baby canned tuna or if I do which type, and if I do which type and how much today I'm interviewing Dr. Michael K. Hansen, the senior scientist at consumer reports. So consumer reports is very interesting in this tuna discussion because they recommend outright against the consumption of canned tuna by these high-risk populations because of their data on mercury levels. And that differs wildly from the U S government advice, which again is still categorizing canned tuna as a quote unquote good choice on their safe fish guidance.

Katie Ferraro (4m 30s):

So Dr. Hansen was integral to testing the canned tuna that consumer reports performed in response to the most recent update of the U S government agency. So the food and drug administration and environmental protection agency, those two agencies get together and jointly issued guidance on fish consumption for pregnant women, breastfeeding women and young children. So Dr. Hansen's team, as you guys will hear, he does an evaluations and analysis on the same set of data and the same tuna cans that FDA used with very different outcomes and recommendations on fish guidance. And he's going to explain why the consumer reports guidance is so different from the government guidance. And I think this is a really important interview and that we are hearing directly from the senior scientist behind all of the testing that poked huge holes in the government's recommendation.

Katie Ferraro (5m 18s):

So there are a lot of reports and guidance documents mentioned in this episode. Some come directly from consumer reports and their independent testing. Some come from the federal guidelines. Some are from third parties that consumer reports is now working with as far as like mercury calculators, et cetera. So I'm going to link up everything we talk about in the show notes page for this episode, which you guys can find at blwpodcast.com/232. And if your family does eat animal foods, including fish and shellfish, I do just want to reiterate the importance of offering your baby safe food based versions of these food proteins in the effort to curb food allergy risk down the road. But also just acknowledging that the fish category in particular, maybe a little bit more difficult if we're considering removing the cheapest and most widely available form of fish, which is canned tuna.

Katie Ferraro (6m 6s):

And that is because of safety concerns for infants. So with no further ado, let's get started with Tuna Talk. This is, Is it Safe for Babies to Eat Canned Tuna with consumer reports? Dr. Michael K. Hansen

Michael Hansen, PhD (6m 22s):

It's my pleasure. I'm looking forward to it

Katie Ferraro (6m 25s):

Now, before we dive in talking about can tuna safety for babies, could you give us a quick introduction? How did you come to be the consumer reports, senior scientist? And what do you do on a daily basis in your work?

Michael Hansen, PhD (6m 37s):

Well, I've actually been working at consumer reports for over 30 years. And when I first came to consumer reports, I was working in a range of toxicity or issues, primarily pesticides and genetic engineering. And I just stayed around and over the years, actually, any time that consumer reports would look at some kind of hazard in food, whether it's pesticides, whether it's chemicals in food, because we've done a lot on or the heavy metals in various foods, we did that. And so I'm very well aware of all the heavy metal work that we've done on a whole range of baby foods and adult foods and other things.

Katie Ferraro (7m 20s):

And you guys have done a lot of work on heavy metals, and we actually had your colleague, Dr. James Rogers on, he was here with us talking about heavy metals in baby food, sharing the work that consumer reports has done. And if anyone's interested in listening to that that's episode 208. And in that episode, when I was kind of asking him about the heavy metals and we were talking specifically about can tuna, he was like, no, no, no, no, no. I mean, I'll answer it a little bit, but you need to talk to Dr. Hansen. And so that's why we kind of followed up. So thank you for taking this interview. I'm really interested to learn about canned tuna from you. So how long have you been at consumer reports again?

Michael Hansen, PhD (7m 55s):

Over 30 years.

Katie Ferraro (7m 57s):

Okay. So this heavy metals thing, it's funny. Cause it's, you know, when you become a parent, everything is new and you're like, oh, this is a new issue. And it's not really a new issue. So I was curious, like if we could go back in time, if we're talking about the FDA and the EPA, so the United States government agencies that are involved in, they issued joint advice about eating fish. Can you tell us before we get into where consumer report stands, where does the FDA in the EPA stand in regards to offering tuna to babies? And then if you don't mind, how does that differ from consumer reports?

Michael Hansen, PhD (8m 29s):

Well, actually what I should first say is consumer reports since 2010 or thereabouts has actually been pushing the cause of the whole issue of a mercury was pushing on both EPA to change their recommendations, to make them more protective, particularly for pregnant women and infants. And they finally updated. They finally made most of those changes that we suggested back in 2017. One of the things they didn't do is basically since the FDA and EPA are trying to get women to eat more fish, what they tell them is they said, look, there are fish that are high in mercury, medium and low.

Michael Hansen, PhD (9m 10s):

And they say, you should be eating

Katie Ferraro (9m 12s):

Eight to twelve ounces.

Michael Hansen, PhD (9m 14s):

Yeah. Eight to twelve ounces a week, and you can mix that. And so the idea would be you should eat more of the low mercury, right? And there are certain high ones that there are certain fish that they're, they're just so high in mercury, they should never be eaten. And now the issue is with the tuna, the canned tuna and based on the FDA's, you know, average levels that they find, they calculate that it would be safe for a pregnant woman to consume a certain amount of, you know, canned tuna per week. And I should say that deputies on testing show that there's higher levels of mercury and albacore compared to a, you know, chunk light.

Michael Hansen, PhD (9m 56s):

And what it really has to do is the size of the tuna when they're killed. What the difference is is albacore has about two to three times the level on average of mercury, that shrunk light does. So basically what the FDA and EPA is saying is well, you can eat, pregnant women can actually eat some albacore and can eat chunk light tuna because it's fairly low, right? In mercury. The problem with that is we did an analysis of the FDA's data. And although the average, it is true that on average chunk light tuna is like one third, the level of albacore, right? It turns out that in some of the cans, like 20% of them, the levels of mercury are actually higher.

Michael Hansen, PhD (10m 43s):

You're getting spikes that are doubled the average level. So that means while on average cans of tuna looked like they're very low, certain individual cans can actually have twice that level or more. And since you don't know what can, you're getting to be particularly protector, particularly for pregnant women, we don't think that pregnant women should be eating chunk light tuna, because they might not get that now for children and young infants, we have a calculator on our website that for the various kinds of fish and it's based on your body weight, right? Because if you weigh more, you can eat more tuna because there's a certain amount of mercury in it.

Michael Hansen, PhD (11m 27s):

And you have to divide the mercury that's in the food, you're eating by the body weight of the individual, right?

Katie Ferraro (11m 34s):

Yeah. And then we're talking about this in a little tiny baby or in a pregnant woman where it's crossing the placenta and we're not sure. Right.

Michael Hansen, PhD (11m 41s):

So that's why we're saying for pregnant women, they should not be eating canned tuna.

Katie Ferraro (11m 47s):

Okay. What about for infants? What's the consumer reports

Michael Hansen, PhD (11m 51s):

For infants? What we say is we do have this list of how much they can eat. So for example, a 44 pound child could have three and a half ounces of light tuna per week, 132 pound woman who isn't pregnant could have about 11 and a half ounces. And a typical can of tuna is five ounces, right? So that's what we say for a 44 pound child, that it would be three and a half ounces. Now it's going to be at 22 pound trial. It would be half that level.

Katie Ferraro (12m 22s):

Oh, interesting. Okay. So I'm going to link to, this is a consumer reports table that they have on their website, and this is a recommendation, but the smallest age group is children less than 45 pounds. So obviously for our audience listening baby six to 12 months of age, they're significantly less than that. So if your kid was, I don't know, 12 pounds, I was like a quarter that would you take the four ounces of light tuna and divide it by four and say no more than one ounce, a week of chunk light tuna for a baby.

Michael Hansen, PhD (12m 47s):

Yes. But then, you know, part of the overall thing is what you might want to do is some of the fish that we have in our safer categories are at the lowest levels. You might want to feed more of that because children should be getting significant amount of fish.

Katie Ferraro (13m 4s):

Exactly. And that's what I wanted to talk about is that when it comes to tuna, now we like to offer a variety of recommendations for parents because not everybody has access to fresh tuna depending upon where they live or where they shop. And so Tuna is if we take the mercury out of it, which that's impossible, but out of the discussion, you know, tuna is a very affordable source of fish protein. And because we want the babies to be exposed to the potentially allergenic protein in dish, but there's nothing magical about Tuna other than it's readily available and it's affordable. But we might have to say from a safety standpoint, there are better options. And we actually want to steer clear of canned tuna, certainly for pregnant women and for babies. Because at that point, you know, one ounce, what's the point. Why don't you just go get another lower mercury fish and expose your baby to the fish protein that way.

Michael Hansen, PhD (13m 48s):

Right. So such as for example, our lowest mercury fish would be oysters. They're not going to be eating that for babies salmon.

Katie Ferraro (13m 55s):

Yeah. We do shellfish because it's one of the other allergenic food categories and it's a good source of iron so we can make those safe. So I will also link to your high-end low list, but what are some other lower mercury options for parents?

Michael Hansen, PhD (14m 8s):

Well, the lowest mercury options are oysters, salmon, both wild in Alaska and either canned or fresh. And for example, Alaska salmon, which is all wild caught some of the canned Alaska salmon it actually can be pretty cheap.

Katie Ferraro (14m 23s):

Okay. I wanted to ask your opinion. What do you think about the brand? I don't wanna say the name, but that claim that they are testing for mercury, and then they only sell products that this is their claim are 10 times stricter than the FDA mercury action limit. Do you think parents should be shopping specific brand names in order to get lower mercury tuna?

Michael Hansen, PhD (14m 44s):

For the lowest? Well, if it's for tuna, then that might be something again. But the brands say they're doing that. How is that being verified?

Katie Ferraro (14m 55s):

I know. Where can I see the data?

Michael Hansen, PhD (14m 57s):

Right. What you need since we also lock and rate labels, we don't think much of labels on a product. If it's just the manufacturer making the claim. If there's an independent third party, that's verifying it. So for example, the organic label, right, that has the USDA approved inspectors that have to verify the

Katie Ferraro (15m 20s):

That's for organic standard. We're not saying you can buy organic fish. That's still super high in mercury. They're not testing mercury levels. Yeah.

Michael Hansen, PhD (15m 27s):

Correct. But no, no, no, the point I'm making is for the claims. Yeah. So if there is a claim that this Merck, that this tone is 10 times lower, if they say that claim is verified by somebody else, you know, on their label, then that might be a useful product because label claims that are made, if there's not independent, third-party verification, how do you know the accuracy?

Katie Ferraro (15m 53s):

Exactly. It's just becomes another marketing ploy, to be honest, which most front of package labeling all front of package labeling is

Michael Hansen, PhD (16m 0s):

Well, that's actually why we're in the process of trying to get a new law in place that would require labels that are actually more honest and more health protected

Katie Ferraro (16m 13s):

As a Registered Dietitian I've been working. I mean, we've been working on that for over 20 years. I know. So, I mean, I think it's a great aspiration, but reality right now, like for parents that have babies, can we just say across the board, consumer reports recommends, do not feed any canned tuna to the baby? Is that true?

Michael Hansen, PhD (16m 31s):

Well, they said, no, we do have this calculator. And afterwards I can go to my page and I can send you a link to that. So you could post them because there is a little calculator that tells you for each type of fish, you put a weight in and it'll calculate for whichever kind of fish, how much should be eaten. So the lowest ones, for example, as I said, besides oyster and salmon or sardines, scallops, shrimp, squid, and tilapia.

Katie Ferraro (16m 58s):

All right. Can I ask another question regarding safety? Like as a parent dietitian, it just feels a little ridiculous to be arguing. What's a quote unquote safe limit for exposure to methylmercury at a tiny baby, but as a scientist, I'm curious if you, can you just share your thoughts on acceptable levels of mercury? Is there really such a thing when we're talking about very, very small developing human bodies with still actively developing brains,

Michael Hansen, PhD (17m 21s):

The way this works is there's basically been a lot of epidemiologists and all these other studies. And what they're trying to do is find what's the lowest level of mercury, where we can find an adverse effect, right? Because you know, that mercury is present in the environment. It tends to be higher now because of the industrial and missions, both president of class. But what this science shows is you have to wait until the science comes in, showing you what levels are, are safe. So ideally in an ideal world, you wouldn't want any, right. But the fact of the matter is, is this stuff does occur in the natural environment.

Michael Hansen, PhD (18m 5s):

Now levels tend to be higher, just like, you know, lead levels or in a lot of fruits that we see or root crops actually come from past use of leaded compounds. Some of the reason that there was more mercury happening in seafood is a lot of these industrial emissions. Right?

Katie Ferraro (18m 25s):

Correct. So there's no way we were mentioning organic earlier that even if you're purchasing quote unquote organic, which I know the organic requirements for seafood are obviously every food category is different

Michael Hansen, PhD (18m 36s):

And actually we don't think they have not come up with them. They're in a certain sense. There's no such thing as organic fish,

Katie Ferraro (18m 43s):

Correct? There's no organic standards for seafood in the United States.

Michael Hansen, PhD (18m 47s):

That's correct. And we would argue that you can't really develop because part of what the organic whole model is based on is it's, you know, healthy soils, feed, healthy plants and create healthy ecosystems. Whereas when you're talking about fish, that's not collected the soil and it's fish that are in the wild. It all depends on where they are. Right. If fish are in an, an environment that's near, for example, where plants are producing contaminants and other things that is going into the water, those fish can all be contaminated.

Katie Ferraro (19m 21s):

Yes, absolutely. And I know sometimes again, I know some people choose certain food choices because of environmental sustainability, et cetera. But some would argue that actually choosing fish from a farmed fish operation is safer from a mercury standpoint because the environment is so highly controlled and then the feed is controlled. So that we're certain they're not eating other high mercury fish. Right.

Michael Hansen, PhD (19m 42s):

Well, yeah, you could argue that, but then there's the issue of what are the fish being fed, right? So for example, for salmon, those fish, where do they eat normally in the wild, other fish, right? And so they're eating all that, but when you bring them into captivity, you get them to grow large. What are you feeding them? Primarily

Katie Ferraro (20m 3s):

Fish, right?

Michael Hansen, PhD (20m 6s):

It's primarily corn and soy beans. And then what happens is if you look at the omega-3 to omega six ratio, right, because what you want are the omega three fatty acids, that ratio was significantly higher in like three times higher in a wild fish compared to a farmed

Katie Ferraro (20m 23s):

One. And that's because of the feed that they're being fed,

Michael Hansen, PhD (20m 25s):

That's because of the feed. And that's also why cows, for example, that are completely, grassfed also have a better ratio because where the, the way to think about it is that the omega three fatty acids, for example, they tend to be flexible. So they're in membranes of things. So, so for example, all plants have that. And actually in fish, it's the phytoplankton and the others, right? Because the predatory fish are eating other fish for eating phytoplankton, which have chlorophyll, but they also have a lot of those omega threes would help make cell membranes more flexibles where is the omega sixes tend to be more stiff and those are, can be associated with the inflammation.

Michael Hansen, PhD (21m 14s):

So that's why they tell you that the omega threes are heart healthy and fish. You get a benefit from that. But if the fish is sometimes farmed, there's much less of that than if they're wild.

Katie Ferraro (21m 26s):

Got it. Back to pregnancy. The federal advice still tends towards the line. The benefits of eating fish outweigh the risks and they still recommend that pregnant breastfeeding women should consume between eight to 12 ounces per week of a variety of seafood for choices that are lower in mercury. So if we agree that canned tuna is not on the low mercury list. Do you still think it's safe for pregnant women to be consuming eight to 12 ounces from the low mercury lip?

Michael Hansen, PhD (21m 52s):

Oh yes. Yes. And there are certain things for eight to twelve ounces we've said, for example, let me give you for the lowest mercury fish. Or we talked about oysters, salmon, sardines, scallops, shrimp, squid, and tilapia, 132 pound woman, she could eat 36 ounces a week for the low mercury fish, such as Atlanta, Kroger, macro catfish, crab, crawfish, flatfish flounder and soul haddock, mullet, pollock, and trout. They could eat up to 18 ounces a week. So those lowest mercury fish, you can really eat a lot. And if the woman's not pregnant right, since that's what the real concern is, if she's not pregnant, she could eat some tuna as well.

Michael Hansen, PhD (22m 36s):

It's just, the concern really is, is during the pregnancy period, that impact if it's at the right time in development, the impact of the mercury, because what it does is it can cause a half neuro behavioral effects in the children. So there is a crucial window and that's why the pregnant women should avoid that. Now, normally for the average, you know, canned chunk light, that normally would be fine for them, but if they happen to get one of those cans, because the FDA data just shows the average, right. And rather than a normal distribution, there's actually, as I said, you know, one fifth of them can have these spikes.

Katie Ferraro (23m 16s):

And so did consumer reports go and get the actual data that the FDA used to do the updated guidance about eating fish for women and pregnant, and you had the exact cans. And then

Michael Hansen, PhD (23m 27s):

What we did is we downloaded. We got all the FDA's data that they published, both FDA and EPA on their casting of mercury levels in fish. Cause this has done as you know, part of the total dietary studies. So we took all of that data. And the only way our different is FDA's analysis was just based on the average, the average values. And we noticed that for chunk light tuna, even though the averages were low, unlike other things, you would see these spikes and the individual beta, most of the clams are really low, but then some of the cans would be,

Katie Ferraro (24m 3s):

And was that across different brands or did it skew like one brand was the one responsible for all this

Michael Hansen, PhD (24m 9s):

Probably with their data is they don't tend to do brands. They just stayed from ounce cans.

Katie Ferraro (24m 14s):

Oh, that would be really interesting to know because there's so few players in the national, like it's kind of a consolidated market with regards to canned tuna. Yeah.

Michael Hansen, PhD (24m 20s):

And I suspect what the issue is, is it's just where the fish are being caught and the size. Right. So,

Katie Ferraro (24m 30s):

But you don't know as a consumer, when you don't know how big that fish was or where it was caught, it's just in the starkist can or whatever it is.

Michael Hansen, PhD (24m 37s):

Right? So unless the StarKist or whatever, the manufacturers is testing that toy themselves and they have their own internal things. The fact that they might get a fish that's high, there's nothing that an individual company can do about that if they're not testing. So it's not like one company that it's one company caused their problem, not others, because most of them, they're not doing their own casting. The companies that claim that they're having casting and it's, you know, kind of times lower. That's great. If that claim is being verified by somebody else besides the manufacturer, then that might be actually something that's useful.

Katie Ferraro (25m 18s):

I'm not aware of any brands that are doing certainly not big major brands because of course they're not required to. And to be honest consumers, clearly aren't asking for it enough. Thank you.

Michael Hansen, PhD (25m 28s):

Major brands are not going to tend to do that for the light tuna because the data shows on average, like tuna is really good.

Katie Ferraro (25m 35s):

Yeah. Because everyone knows that that on average light, tuna is lower in mercury than albacore. But this is so interesting that what you're saying, if you look at the actual, the variations and you can't be sure, why would you want to risk it?

Michael Hansen, PhD (25m 46s):

Right. Because there's, you know, for other fish, you, we don't see the same thing. The averages are all sort of, but there is this phenomenal with the, you know, chunk light that, that there is this long pale on the high end as it works.

Katie Ferraro (26m 2s):

Can I ask you about the timeframe? So the most recent update from the US government FDA issuing revised advice about eating fish for women who are, or might become pregnant breastfeeding mothers and young children is from 2019, the consumer reports test that batch of tuna. Or was it, are we talking about earlier data?

Michael Hansen, PhD (26m 22s):

Well, some of that earlier data up until about 2017 or 18, 2019, I mean, did the average, for example, for a chunk light change,

Katie Ferraro (26m 35s):

That's what I was gonna ask. Like, have there been any changes since then? It's not that old of data and I assume tuna doesn't change that much.

Michael Hansen, PhD (26m 42s):

Right. I basically looked at it, but I would suspect that there would also be this issue of a potential spikes in the chunk light. Cause I think when we did our testing years ago, we noticed something similar that even though some of the tuna cans would be low, you would get, if you sample enough of them, you find the

Katie Ferraro (27m 2s):

It's consumer reports working on new data because a lot of your stuff on your site, and again, I'll link to all of it, but it's, it's 2012. It's 2014, again, probably still very current. But I think this is especially with everything's happening from a legislative standpoint in this, the baby food safety act, parents are really interested in heavy metals in foods. And they're not just commercial baby food because we're talking about can tuna, which is a food that babies can't eat as well as adults. Are you guys working like actively working on tuna or is that not a current priority?

Michael Hansen, PhD (27m 32s):

Because part of what the issue is is if we try to do our own testing on this, that would just be prohibitively expensive. I mean,

Katie Ferraro (27m 40s):

You can't do it all the time. Right.

Michael Hansen, PhD (27m 42s):

You know, we could test maybe one or two, we could maybe test like 20 different fish or 30 different fish and maybe two or three samples of each. That's something very different than the FDA, which actually has a sort of large database. Right? And so that's what we're doing, looking at that database. And it's great if there's 2019 days, we could look that, but I doubt that the numbers are going to be significantly different enough to cause changes in the list of the various fish. Since the issue of mercury has to do with this level of the background environment. And often the, for you, the highest levels like in tuners are found in the bigger older fish.

Michael Hansen, PhD (28m 22s):

So that's for example, why the tuna, you see in sushi can have pretty high mercury level

Katie Ferraro (28m 29s):

Because it's coming from a huge, huge fish that are higher up on the food chain. They've eaten the smaller fish and bio accumulated all their mercury.

Michael Hansen, PhD (28m 35s):

When we first started working on this, there was actually a case of, there is some guy who, who thought since it was better to eat that, you know, fish is good for you. And he was very wealthy. He was eating sushi every day and he ended up getting mercury poisoned, mercury poisoning.

Katie Ferraro (28m 53s):

Yeah. Which I think just goes back to the answer that there is no one food that as far as superior and we should be eating a variety of foods for lots of different reasons. But that one was pretty eye-opening.

Michael Hansen, PhD (29m 2s):

Right.

Katie Ferraro (29m 3s):

Okay. I just want to know, cause your consumer reports for 30 years, FDA puts out stuff. That's like, oh, it's fine for everyone to eat tuna. And you guys are like, well actually if you look at it, there's these huge spikes. And most parents are like, whoa, when in doubt, leave it out. Like most parents are going to interpret that. I think to say, gosh, I don't want any level of mercury in my baby, but does the FDA then respond when you come back and say, listen, we took all your data and we looked at it and then there are these spikes like, or do they just leave the recommendations the same?

Michael Hansen, PhD (29m 29s):

You know what this is, is look when FDA made their recommended changes back in 2017, we applauded them because we had been suggesting them to do that for years. Because initially what they had said is the average woman only eats like four ounces that they need to eat more. And so we don't want to discourage them. That's why, you know, with some of these, we wanted to give them more their belly. So we didn't, we didn't want them to go near, you know, tuna or other things. And there were other fish that we thought should be in the middle or high categories if they had in sort of the, okay.

Katie Ferraro (30m 3s):

So what you applauded was basically their striation of high, medium and low mercury. That was a change. Right?

Michael Hansen, PhD (30m 10s):

And the other change is they try to do this quote. We have benefit that it's more beneficial to eat a lot of fish bay rather than less fish.

Katie Ferraro (30m 21s):

That is exactly what dietitians are still being taught. And we turn around and repeat it, which

Michael Hansen, PhD (30m 27s):

Not yet, what we did is we said, no, you need to do there's now enough data on toxicity coming in that we can start to do risk assessments, right? So you can start to calculate how much tuna is in there. How much, you know, would you have to eat to get to what APA says is a, a level that's no longer safe. And that's what we were doing, right?. We're saying you can use the data that you have at rather than cause what they were doing before. It was, as hand-waving as you're saying, wait, we don't want to scare people away from eating fish. And our thing was no, yes, they should be encouraged to eat more fish, but you want them to eat more efficient, has lower mercury.

Michael Hansen, PhD (31m 8s):

So we wanted them to separate that out more and make it very clear that there a list of fish that you should just avoid or that pregnant women should not be.

Katie Ferraro (31m 17s):

Okay. And I do just want to remind parents that there are lots of other safe, low mercury ways that you can offer your baby fish protein because the protein is the component of the food that we want to introduce, especially because there's data to show for other allergens, not so much for fish and shellfish, but that, that can help prevent food allergy down the road. So I do like to recommend a variety of foods and affordable ones. However, it does not appear that canned tuna is a good, safe option for your baby, because you just don't know how much mercury is in that particular can of tuna. And when we're talking about babies and mercury, when in doubt, leave it out. But you can select from the other low mercury fish and shellfish list.

Katie Ferraro (31m 59s):

My question for you, Dr. Hansen is do the low mercury lists of consumer reports equal what EPA FDA says, or do you guys disagree on what's quote unquote, low mercury?

Michael Hansen, PhD (32m 11s):

The only difference is really with this light tuna and albacore. And even then we say for children, you could give them one can. But part of the issue for that is when, when you calculate it, then levels are such that they're going to reach their limit of how it's worked with. They should be adjusting in a week very quickly. And it will be under the recommended amount. They should be eating in our a week. So why, while it might be fine to give them one serving of tuna once a week, a child, if you look at our calculations, that might mean that they could only eat that and no other fish for the entire week.

Katie Ferraro (32m 54s):

And that doesn't work for allergies. Cause we want to introduce it early and often in my programs, we introduced the allergenic food, six to seven different exposures across the course of a weekend. You don't want your baby eating that much canned tuna. You do want your baby exposed to that much fish protein. You'd got to just go find another low mercury option that is not canned tuna. So Dr. Hansen, what are the fish then that are too high in mercury to be safe for women who are of childbearing age, pregnant, breastfeeding, or small children.

Michael Hansen, PhD (33m 23s):

Okay. Big eye tuna, which is often used in sushi, gulf tile fish, king mackerel, marlin, orange roughy, shark, and swordfish.

Katie Ferraro (33m 34s):

Awesome. And where can our audience go to learn more about all of the consumer reports, recommendations regarding fish safety and consumption by pregnant breastfeeding women and small children?

Michael Hansen, PhD (33m 45s):

They can go to our most recent report. We also can have a, if you want to plan your weekly diet, there's a mercury resource page. And we even have a got mercury calculator that uses this data to actually, so you can calculate for yourself.

Katie Ferraro (34m 1s):

All right, the got mercury calculator. And we will link to all of that on the show notes page, which you guys can find. If you go to BLW podcast.com and just type in mercury, all of Dr. Hansen's links will show up Dr. Hansen. Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate this. This is not a simple topic, but I appreciate you boiling it down for us to make it easy for our audience to understand about safety and tuna, because parents have a lot of questions about this stuff.

Michael Hansen, PhD (34m 26s):

Well, thank you very much. I hope that this has been informative to your audience and is explained at a level that they can understand because I have a lot of technical expertise.

Katie Ferraro (34m 38s):

Yeah. He's a senior scientist with 30 years experience. I was like, you got to keep it simple for us only because a lot of, I mean, once you start getting into the milligrams and we're talking about adult women, it's really hard to translate on a podcast, but I think the calculator is really of interest to parents.

Michael Hansen, PhD (34m 52s):

Yeah. Easy thing. And it's sort of this nice sliding scale. But I think the main takeaway with tuna is justice realization for pregnant women, candlelight, which we think is safe. You might get one of the bad cans that has a spike in it. And so that might be why it's particularly good for a pregnant or breastfeeding to avoid.

Katie Ferraro (35m 13s):

Well, I hope you guys enjoyed that interview with consumer reports, senior scientist, Dr. Michael K. Hansen. He had so much to say about tuna. We went on and on and on after as well as just had to kind of get it down to talking about babies. But this is such an interesting conversation. I'm just fascinated by their re-analysis of the same data that the FDA used. And really just, again, we can look at averages when it comes to chunk light versus, but how do you know if that particular can, that you're choosing for your baby happens to be one of those ones that has a super high spike in a ton of mercury? You just don't know. So I know it's so frustrating as a parent to hear the advice when in doubt, leave it out. But I do think because there are other ways to get your baby fish protein, that if you can avoid canned tuna from this particular analysis, it appears that that is the safer bet.

Katie Ferraro (36m 2s):

So I'll be following up with lots of other tips on ways we can get fish into babies safely, but I do appreciate Dr. Michael Hansen on behalf of consumer reports coming here to explain why it shouldn't be from canned tuna. Again, all of the resources he mentioned linked up in the show notes. BLW podcast.com/232. Thank you so much for listening.