OKAY, BUT WHAT ABOUT MERCURY?
I eat a lot of fish, for reasons you see throughout this book. It’s good for
your brain, it’s good for weight control, it’s good for your heart. One of the
potential drawbacks, however, is that fish can contain the toxin mercury.
Recently, I found out that my levels were higher than they should be, and
there is some evidence that mercury can have a negative effect on your
brain function. I had to cut back on my consumption of larger fish, which
have higher mercury levels because they’ve lived longer and eaten more,
since they are higher on the food chain. While the risk isn’t totally
understood, you likely don’t need to reduce your fish intake, since most of
us don’t currently eat enough. If you get fish into your diet several times a
week, the benefits outweigh the potential risk. Overdoing it would likely
only happen if you became an everyday fish-eater, and mostly downed the
kinds that have high levels of mercury. Smaller species are safer since they
don’t gobble up lots of other fish and so don’t accumulate high mercury
levels. Now I eat low-risk and moderate-risk fish and seafood three or four
times a week and rarely eat the ones at the top of the list.