Too much tuna?

[CanadianIron]

So I know pregnant women arent supposed to eat shit loads of it, but how about us guys?

I've taken a liking to eating it right after I workout because its a solid source of protein and its easy to get down before my drive home from the gym (cheap too)

Is the mercury content really that bad, is eating it 4-5 days a week actually dangerous?

[baza]

I don't think 4-5 times a week is bad. I ate it every day for a long long time. Not saying it was bad before me thoug, lol

PS. Whey is better right after your work out.

[C-money]

I ate so much tuna in my lifetime that i dont think ill ever eat it again... answering your question 4-5 times a week would be fine imo

[ubcpower]

i think the quality of the tuna has a lot to do with the mercury count as well. I know that the yellow fin chunk tuna (the poorer quality) comes from tuna who are more bottom feeders who tend to have higher mercury count as opposed to the higher quality white albacore

[CanadianIron]

I eat the cheap crap from superstore.

I dont like to do shakes after I workout because my workout is done around 5 and a shake will kill my appetite for dinner, tuna is just to get me home from the gym (30 min drive)... sometimes ill eat a protein bar, but i prefer real meat and its pretty much the same price.

I also heard you shouldnt take protein post workout because its cause conflict with post workout creatine.

[O-Train]

i think the quality of the tuna has a lot to do with the mercury count as well. I know that the yellow fin chunk tuna (the poorer quality) comes from tuna who are more bottom feeders who tend to have higher mercury count as opposed to the higher quality white albacore

I think it's actually completely opposite. I've heard the more expensive white albacore have higher mucury levels. It has to do with the size of the fish. Larger, generally more expensive fish have higher mercury levels. Tuna are not bottom feeders, they are highly adapted predators.

[O-Train]

I eat the cheap crap from superstore.

I dont like to do shakes after I workout because my workout is done around 5 and a shake will kill my appetite for dinner, tuna is just to get me home from the gym (30 min drive)... sometimes ill eat a protein bar, but i prefer real meat and its pretty much the same price.

I also heard you shouldnt take protein post workout because its cause conflict with post workout creatine.

You should absolutely take protein post workout and creatine too if you feel like it but definitely protein. It really doesn't matter when you take creatine. People may argue there are optimal times, but in the grand scheme of things it doesn't matter.

[Felinecougar]

I ate the cheap canned tuna and the very expensive Tuna steaks on top of other fish 5-6 x a week or more. My hair dresser pointed out I had bald spots in the back of my head. The next time she saw me she said they were bigger.

Then I developed alot of pain in my mouth..sore gums, tongue and just plain soreness. I went into the Dr and he called me in asap after the blood work came back. Mercury levels were high. I told him I thought this was a possibility so he checked it.

I cut out all canned tuna. Limit my tuna steaks now to once every few weeks. (money said I had to limit them too...broke) Salmon is now 2 x a week, eggs, talapia and chicken are now my main protein sources.

Pain in my mouth is gone..the bald spots are not worse but the same 4 months later.

[CanadianIron]

Crazy, not what I wanted to hear, but good none the less.

Ill look out for that. I havent even finished growing all my facial hair, so Im not too worried about balding. But ill watch out for the mouth pain thing.

I probably wont eat it more than 3-4 days a week, but ill stay sharp watching for stuff like that if I am.

[LIVEHARD]

Crazy, not what I wanted to hear, but good none the less.

Ill look out for that. I havent even finished growing all my facial hair, so Im not too worried about balding. But ill watch out for the mouth pain thing.

I probably wont eat it more than 3-4 days a week, but ill stay sharp watching for stuff like that if I am.

Try the canned chicken real breast meat around 4-5$ a can

[CanadianIron]

Thats crazy expensive, are you kidding?

[baza]

I think he means the big huge cans.

[CanadianIron]

Fair enough, I was imagining portioned cans.

Im gonna chuck a tub of Whey Iso in the trunk of my car tommorrow and try a shake with water tommorrow. I still like tuna better though.

[tex]

i eat tuna as well but i found a local provider.......you guys that live in victoria look for elma k tuna.....its local caught.....when you open the can its a solid ****ing chunk of tuna and you have to break it up before you can get it out the goddamn can!! good shit.....a bit pricey tho.....but worth it if you like good food on the go....i have a hookup and get a case of 24 for 80....they sell it for 6 a can at fishermans wharf.....

[BAM]

I agree with .. too much tuna is bad

It made me feel sickly after a while.

[canadianmuscle0803]

i will only eat fresh grilled tuna.. i can not stand that canned stuff anymore.. too much mercury because of the size of the fish, i would stay away from it if you can, i know its cheap protein but still.. once a day is ok though..

[canadianmuscle0803]

affects of mercury, in the 2007 or 08 Mr.Olympia, Jay Cutler dieted on 5lbs of orange ruffy a day, the day of the show he looked like a bag of shit and suffered a shit load.. too much fish is not a good idea unless its something like Cod, stay away from talapia to, they fricken bleach the fish!!!

[canadianmuscle0803]

farm raised fish= gross.


Fish farming involves raising fish commercially in tanks or enclosures. Fish species raised by fish farms include salmon, catfish, tilapia, cod, carp, trout and others.

A study published in the July 2008 issue of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association reports that the popular farm-raised fish known as tilapia and cat fish may actually harm your heart, due to the low levels of healthy omega-3 fatty acids and high levels of unhealthy omega-6 fatty acids. This combination could be particularly bad for patients with heart disease, arthritis, asthma and other diseases involving overactive inflammatory responses. There is evidence that you may harm yourself by eating farmed tilapia and catfish.

The American Dietetic Association recommends that we need to improve the way of farming fish. At the moment, fish are fed an inexpensive, inferior feed and this is having an adverse effect on the nutritional quality of the fish. Until farming techniques have improved, wild fish is recommended over farmed. Farm-raised fish are only as good as the food that we feed them, and the contaminants that the fish are exposed to in poorly maintained / dirty tanks will ultimately end up in those who eat them.



Contaminants in Farmed Fish:

Up to ten times more contaminants have been found in farmed fish when compared to wild fish. These contaminants include PCBs, dioxins, pesticides and PBDEs, which are used as fire retardants. Aquafarming also raises a number of environmental concerns, the most important of which may be its negative impact on wild salmon. It has now been established that sea lice from farms kill up to 95% of juvenile wild salmon that migrate past them.(Krkosek M, Lewis MA. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A.)

These toxins increase people's risk of cancer and immune system and reproductive disorders. The high toxic levels caused by bringing concentrated, contaminated fish feed and adding more chemicals while farming results in farm salmon being one of the most contaminated protein sources in the world.

•Nutrition: Farmed fish are inferior nutritrionally compared to their wild counterparts. Despite being much fattier, farmed fish provide less usable beneficial omega 3 fats than wild fish.



•Dye: Farmed salmon are given a salmon-colored dye in their feed, without which, their flesh would be an unappetizing grey color. Wild salmon get their salmon color from their natural diet.



•Pollution & Toxins: Farmed fish are kept in concentrations never seen in the wild (e.g. 50,000 fish in a two-acre area.) with each fish occupying less room than the average bathtub. Due to the feedlot conditions of aquafarming, farm-raised fish are treated with antibiotics and exposed to more concentrated pesticides than wild fish. This causes several forms of pollution through raw sewage, drugs and chemical contamination.

◦Administration of Antibiotics, Drugs & Pesticides: Threats include lethal sea lice infestations; parasites and viral and bacterial disease outbreaks. Because of the most common threat -- sea lice infestations - some aquaculture operators frequently use pesticides to eliminate the sea lice and strong antibiotic drugs to keep the fish alive. In some cases, these drugs have entered the environment. Additionally, the residual presence of these drugs in human food products has become controversial. The use of antibiotics facilitates the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and drugs are passed to the other marine life and to humans.
◦The fish are packed tightly, rubbing against each other and the sides of their cages, damaging their fins and tails and becoming sickened with various diseases and infections.


•Ecological Impacts.


◦Pollution: Fish farms are producing waste equivalent to the sewage of a city of 100,000. There is a very real risk of disease transfer from farmed salmon to the wild stocks. Norway provides a devastating example, where almost 30 river systems have had to be deliberately poisoned in order to stop farm-bred disease. The costs of the loss of ecosystem and regeneration are impossible to measure and will be borne for generations. The direct effect on other marine species is still in question.
■The very large number of fish kept long-term in a single location produces a significant amount of condensed feces, often contaminated with drugs, which affect local waterways. Open-net-cage salmon farms dump raw sewage directly into the sea and onto the sea floor. The amount of sewage that B.C. salmon farms spew on the delicate marine life is equivalent to a city of 100,000.
■This untreated waste is laced with antibiotics, pesticides and other chemicals. These toxins contaminate sea life in and around the farms, cause toxic algae blooms and deplete the oxygen in the water that then asphyxiates marine life.
■The nets used to contain the fish are treated with chemicals so toxic that when the nets are cleaned, the resulting sludge is shipped to a toxic waste site. What is the cost of the environmental effect of these nets hanging in the ocean, as well as the buildup of land-based toxic waste sites?



◦Infestations: Wild salmon populations have been devastated by sea lice parasite infestations originating from salmon farms. Another groundbreaking scientific study was published in the peer-reviewed journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that confirms that sea lice from salmon farms in the Broughton Archipelago killed up to 95 percent of wild salmon during the springtime migration.



◦The world's fish stocks are being depleted to raise farm salmon. It takes two to eight kilograms of wild fish to raise one kilogram of farmed salmon. This causes a global net loss of protein. Most of the fish, like anchovies, that are used to make feed come from off the coast of Peru and Chile. So fish that could be otherwise eaten by people in developing countries, and which is often the main source of protein for them, is instead being overfished and used to raise a luxury product.



•Many salmon farms are adding artificial color to make the salmon flesh appear more pink or red because that's what consumers will buy. Imitation crab meat has artificial colors added to make part of the meat look red.


Shellfish Operations:

Ecological Impact: High densities of shellfish operations are associated with a decrease in species richness, altered species abundance and distribution, change in community intertidal structure to one composed primarily of bivalves and greater accumulations of surface sediment, silt and organic matter. A steep decline in starfish, crabs and some species of jellyfish, as well as a marked decrease in the diversity of marine and non-marine species; and unprecedented deterioration of summer water quality has been observed.

Farmed shellfish is frequently contaminated with cadmium. Cadmium, and its compounds, are extremely toxic even in low concentrations, and will bioaccumulate in organisms and ecosystems. Ingestion of any significant amount of cadmium causes immediate poisoning and damage to the liver and the kidneys. Compounds containing cadmium are also carcinogenic. The bones become soft (osteomalacia), lose bone mass and become weaker (osteoporosis).



(Source: Minutes from the Meeting by the SPECIAL COMMITTEE ON SUSTAINABLE AQUACULTURE, Tuesday, October 17, 2006
12 noon - Province of British Columbia - 38th Parliament – 2005-06
Special Committee on Sustainable Aquaculture

[L3]

I agree with .. too much tuna is bad

It made me feel sickly after a while.

+1

[Dave]

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/manitoba/story/2007/02/19/tuna-testing.html

http://www.nrdc.org/health/effects/mercury/tuna.asp

[Sean Summers]

I eat 2 cans of the cheap stuff every day.
SS

[Skyblob]

My friend eats 3 cans per day for years and he doesnt have any health problems related to mercury. But everyone is different!