June 1, 2012 – Quick quiz: Which fish has less mercury — salmon or tuna, or are they both just as likely to be contaminated? If you’re ecologically conscious, is it better to buy farm-raised fish or deplete populations in the wild? If you don’t know the answers to these questions, you’re one of the majority, according to a new Harvard Medical School study which found that consumers are usually given confusing advice when it comes to buying fish.
The paper, published Friday in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, reviewed information on a host of websites run by government agencies and environmental activist groups and found that consumers who want to know which fish to eat often encounter contradictory advice. (That’s not even taking into account the problem of mislabeled fish, a subject of a recent Globe series.)
“When we started looking, we were unable to find one comprehensive source of advice,” said study leader Dr. Emily Oken, an associate professor of population medicine at Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute and Harvard Medical School. “A lot of messages communicated about which fish to eat tend to come from a particular perspective, whether it’s concern for the environment or about risk to pregnant women.”
Read the complete story from The Boston Globe.