How To Eat Responsibly

(NAPSI)—This spring, the U.S. government put out its revised Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which strongly stressed the need for increased consumption of seafood.

But which seafood? Concerns about overfishing and environmental contamination may make people unsure of their seafood choices, so here are a few handy tips to make the choices clearer:

Sustainable fisheries: It is well known that some species of fish are in critical decline due to overfishing, so it’s best to eat fish from healthy, renewable sources.

• Sustainable: Sardines (brisling), Alaskan salmon, catfish, crab, Atlantic mackerel.

• Watch list: Atlantic halibut, shark, orange roughy, monkfish, bluefin tuna.

Wild-Caught: Food producers have reacted to depleted fisheries by “farming” seafood, either on land in pools or in shoreline pens. But while this limits ocean overfishing, it leads to other problems, such as sanitary conditions, environmental hazards, and cross-breeding with native species.

• Wild-Caught: Sardines, mackerel, Pacific cod, wild trout, Pacific rockfish.

• Farmed: Tilapia, farmed Atlantic salmon, imported shrimp.

John Engle, president of King Oscar USA, a Norwegian-based seafood company that cans both premium sardines and mackerel, said, “Making the right seafood choices is really important for consumers, but it is hard to thread the needle. They are looking for fish from healthy, sustainable stocks, that are also free of pollutXants and wild caught. Our fish happen to be in a can, which will surprise some people, but all are wild caught, contain no genetically modified ingredients and are harvested from sustainable stock. It’s a really simple and clean product.”

For some good resources on the healthiest and most environmentally correct seafood, you can visit www.seafoodwatch.org.

You can also view the USDA’s new dietary guidelines at http://health.gov/dietaryguidelines.

On the Net:North American Precis Syndicate, Inc.(NAPSI)