ANCESTRAL EATING: Seafood Revisited

For one night only, I'm going to be talking about seafood again...

Welcome back to ANCESTRAL EATING. In my travels around the internet this week, I came across a new study about PFAS exposure and consumption of seafood. I thought it would make for a decent illustration of one of the main cautions I’ve issued about consuming a seafood-heavy diet like some of the healthiest peoples studied by Weston Price in Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. In the 1930s, the world’s seas and oceans had yet to become the giant latrines they are now, where all the worst chemicals and substances—polychlorinated biphenyls, PFAS, herbicides, pesticides, radioactive waste—end up.

You can still benefit from eating seafood, of course; you just need to be intelligent in your choices of what you eat and when.

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A new study suggests that people who consume more seafood face a higher risk of exposure to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), a broad class of harmful chemicals known to have endocrine-disrupting, obesogenic and carcinogenic effects.

"Our recommendation isn't to not eat seafood—seafood is a great source of lean protein and omega fatty acids. But it also is a potentially underestimated source of PFAS exposure in humans," said one of the study’s lead authors.

"Understanding this risk-benefit tradeoff for seafood consumption is important for people making decisions about diet, especially for vulnerable populations such as pregnant people and children."

This new analysis is particularly interesting, and relevant for our purposes, because it is among the first to look at PFAS levels in seafood rather than freshwater species. Although people do eat freshwater fish, the majority of fish and shellfish consumed in the US are taken from the sea.

The study had two aspects: first, an analysis of PFAS concentrations in fresh seafood; and second a survey of eating habits in New Hampshire. New Hampshire residents are known to be among the most prolific consumers of seafood in the US.