Thursday, April 16, 2009

The ironies of sustainability

I'm sure all of you have heard that eating fish is good for your health, that the omega-3 fatty acids are quite important for brain development and prevention of coronary disease, that expecting mothers are not eating enough fish and several other concerns on nutrition and public health (check this for an example). These claims are not just the 'popular knowledge' advices you'll get from grandma', there is an extense and well documented share of evidence on the subject (look at this paper published in JAMA) so it might be a wise move for you to belive it and start consuming more fish... not much of a problem, right? just change that steak or chicken breast for some tasty salmon or some juicy mackerel once in a while and you'll improve your health just by adjusting your eating habits a little bit. Things apparently work so well that it's been recommended that people in developing countries should double or even triple their fish intakes.

So, where's the catch? well, it just happens that not everyone agrees about fish oils being as nice as I just portrayed them and potential risks have been frequently listed (mercury poisoning is one of the most famous ones). Anyway, even if there are risks around the potential benefits seem to outweight them and so eating more fish still seems pretty reasonable.

"Ok, no problem then" you may say, but let's see this problem from an entirely different perspective. How many times have you heard about 'ovefishing'? (if you're reading this I guess the answer would be something like "once every two paragraphs") I think it is pretty obvious where I want to get: If we are already running out of fish and most management recommendations involve reducing catches (one way or the other) then WHERE THE HELL ARE WE GOING TO GET ALL THE FISH WE NEED? a very good question for which I have no good answer, but that's what a very interesting analysis by Dr. David Jenkins et al. published in CMAJ last month is about. Please, check it out here.

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