Oysters, oysters, crabs… Delicious seafood and aquatic products always make people salivate. However, some people always say that seafood is easy to enrich heavy metals and is harmful to health.
Do seafood really exceed the standard of heavy metals? Can you still eat at ease?
Why is seafood related to heavy metals?
The sea!
Most of the heavy metals in seafood are enriched and absorbed by organisms from the marine environment through the food chain.
In other words, marine microorganisms ingest food with heavy metals, which is eaten by big fish and big fish is eaten by bigger fish. If you eat it all the time, big fish will [concentrate] a lot of heavy metals.
What seafood is most susceptible to heavy metals?
Shellfish have higher ability to accumulate heavy metals than fish. For example, oysters, oysters, shellfish, fish and other marine products are more likely to accumulate heavy metals in the body, which is related to their growth environment and physiological mechanism.
A large number of studies in our country also show that some seafood heavy metals do exceed the standard in most coastal areas of our country. However, the content of heavy metals in shellfish products in different sea areas, different species and different breeding seasons is quite different.
Can I still eat seafood?
In fact, whether seafood will cause harm to human body depends on how much people eat.
In fact, all foods contain heavy metals, which pose health risks to the eaters. The key lies in the size of the risks.
As a delicacy, most of us only eat seafood occasionally, and our intake is far less than that of staple foods such as fruits, vegetables, poultry meat and rice flour. According to the current research, although the concentration of heavy metals in seafood is relatively high, the health risk is not necessarily higher than that of other foods.
Consumers and regulatory authorities should pay attention to it. However, judging from the current consumption of people, it is usually safe. If you eat some occasionally, you don’t have to worry too much about the risks of heavy metals. After all, eating seafood is also a taste enjoyment.
How to eat seafood is the safest?
Although it is said that eating seafood properly does not need to worry too much about the risk of heavy metals, heavy metals are not good things in what. We can eat as little as possible if we can. So, how can we minimize the intake of heavy metals?
1. Seafood is delicious, but it should also be moderate and not too much.
Whether it is safe or not depends on how much we eat. Although seafood and aquatic products are easy to accumulate heavy metals, as long as the consumption is controlled reasonably, there is no need to worry too much about safety problems.
For example, Chinese residents’ dietary pagodas recommend eating 50 ~ 100g of fish and shrimp every day.
2. Eat less or no internal organs
A large number of studies show that in marine products such as bivalves and gastropods, the content of heavy metals in muscles is often the lowest, while the content of heavy metals in internal organs such as digestive system and reproductive system is often higher.
If you like seafood, try to eat more delicious muscles and eat less internal organs. For example, if you eat oysters, clams, razor clams, clams and mussels, you can choose to eat their muscle parts to remove internal organs.
3. Do not eat fish with high mercury content
Although it is said that the heavy metals in most seafood do not pose much safety risk, some fish have higher risks, the most common being some high mercury fish.
FDA advises pregnant and lactating women not to eat square head fish, sharks, sailfish and mackerel because their mercury content is often high.
4. Don’t eat seafood and aquatic products of unknown origin.
Many people claim that wild aquatic products are safer, but in fact, this is not necessarily the case. As the pollution level of the wild environment is not clear, the aquatic products in these places often have higher safety risks, so be careful to eat any wild seafood and aquatic products of unknown origin.