From the advice of several members of this forum (most notably aus_tri, thanks Mark!), I have recently revamped my diet to include a lot more protein. So now I am eating a fair amount of tuna (at least 1 can per day), because it is cheap, I like it, and it has lots of protein. Have have heard of problems with heavy metals in fish like this. Am I eating too much? I don’t really want metal poisoning. I have heard that you should stay away from albacore, so I’ve just been eating plain tuna. Thoughts?
Well, there was the tainted tuna epidemic in 1985 on the east coast. I ate a tuna fish salad in a restaurant in NYC on vacation. A few days later I returned home sick as hell and that night was in the hospital wired to intravenous antibiotics. As close to death as I’ve ever come. Was out of commission for six weeks and developed a septic arthritis in my right knee from the bacterial toxins. That knee still bothers me today if I run too much, which explains one reason why I much prefer the bike. But I was one of the lucky ones because I survived. Many others didn’t.
It took about ten years before I dared eat tuna again.
i’m not pickin’ on the dairy industry mind you. its just that we get bombarded with so many residual bio this and steroid that levels from dairy, beef, poultry, and yeah fish…introduced on purpose, as well as environmentally absorbed, its a wonder we don’t either get the badge dogs barking at the airport just by walking by, or turn on our own light bulbs as proximity fuses.
if we really knew how much crap we take in each day…we’d cry.
that still won’t get me to race at a nearby event i call lake macatoilet. floaters still give me the heebe jeebies and never did taste like albacore
Mercury poisoning is what folks are most concerned about with regard to Tuna and other predatory fish. It’s not just the pregant women, mercury poisoning can cause other neurological problems from what I understand. I eat a lot of tuna and other locally caught fish so I am concerned too. Right now Greenpeace is doing National testing and if you go to their web site you can buy a mercury sampling kit for 25 smackers. You have to cut off some hair and send it in to a lab to get the results. I did it and stupidly cut big patches into the back of my head - my wife had some laugh. The things I do to keep the marriage lively.
I recently went to a sports nutritionist to help me with my diet/protein intake. I too started eating tuna every day and she has since told me not to eat it more than three times a week because according to her, aside from the mercury issue, it is better to vary your protein sources - try other fish, chicken etc. That being said, I ate it every day this week.