Should my family stop eating fish to avoid mercury?

Cara Natterson, MD Pediatrician & Author, shares advice for parents afraid of feeding their family fish due to mercury on a number of ways to obtain the benefits from fish but without the risks of mercury
Should Your Family Stop Eating Fish To Avoid Mercury?
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Should my family stop eating fish to avoid mercury?

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I'm a big fan of fish because fish has a lot of omega-3 fatty acids. Those are really important building blocks for our body, especially for our brains. It is understandable that people are avoiding fish because of the heavy metals and the mercury. What has happened is the industries pollute our environment and there are lots of heavy metals in the air. It falls into our ocean and ends up in our fish. The big catch here is that mercury needs muscle, it needs protein to hang on to. So you can have a fish oil and that will be mercury free. Some people decide to go with the fish oil, instead of the fish and they get all those omega-3 fatty acids. Vegetarians sometimes to use flax or flaxseed, instead of fish. Those are good sources of omega-3 fatty acids. In my own home, I give my kids lots of low mercury fish. We are a big salmon family. Salmon is a great oily fish and it tends to be lower in mercury. I'm a big fan of fish and I think we can consume it without all of the heavy metals. The bigger thing is that we need to clean up our environment so our fish isn't contaminated in the future.

Cara Natterson, MD Pediatrician & Author, shares advice for parents afraid of feeding their family fish due to mercury on a number of ways to obtain the benefits from fish but without the risks of mercury

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Cara Natterson, MD

Pediatrician & Author

Cara Natterson, MD has treated thousands of children and guided their parents as well. She was a partner at Tenth Street Pediatrics in Santa Monica, California, a large group practice serving infants, children and teenagers. She now runs Worry Proof Consulting, the first of its kind pediatric practice that offers parents open-ended time to review everything from medical questions and biology basics to child development and parenting issues. Cara is also the author of several books on parenting and child health. She has a unique ability to translate cutting edge research into understandable terms for parents and their kids. More recently, Cara’s consulting has extended beyond individual families to include fortune 500 companies seeking expert advice on safety issues, child health, and crisis management.

Cara has appeared on television, in print, and on the web. She is a graduate of Harvard College and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and she trained in pediatrics at the University of California at San Francisco. Cara is a Board certified pediatrician and a Fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics. And anyone who knows her knows that Cara is, by nature, one of the most risk-averse people on earth. She lives in California with her husband and two children.

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Transcription: 
I'm a big fan of fish because fish has a lot of omega-3 fatty acids. Those are really important building blocks for our body, especially for our brains. It is understandable that people are avoiding fish because of the heavy metals and the mercury. What has happened is the industries pollute our environment and there are lots of heavy metals in the air. It falls into our ocean and ends up in our fish. The big catch here is that mercury needs muscle, it needs protein to hang on to. So you can have a fish oil and that will be mercury free. Some people decide to go with the fish oil, instead of the fish and they get all those omega-3 fatty acids. Vegetarians sometimes to use flax or flaxseed, instead of fish. Those are good sources of omega-3 fatty acids. In my own home, I give my kids lots of low mercury fish. We are a big salmon family. Salmon is a great oily fish and it tends to be lower in mercury. I'm a big fan of fish and I think we can consume it without all of the heavy metals. The bigger thing is that we need to clean up our environment so our fish isn't contaminated in the future.