Saving Seafood

Fish oil turns fat-storage cells into fat-burning cells in mice, study finds

December 18, 2015 — Fish oil has long been known to confer a wide range of health benefits, including boosting the cardiovascular system and potentially even treating the effects of schizophrenia. Now a new study from Japan says it could also help people trying to lose weight.

Researchers from Kyoto University found that mice fed on fatty food and fish oil gained considerably less weight and fat than mice that consumed fatty food alone. The findings suggest that fish oil is able to transform fat-storage cells into fat-burning cells – and if the same process occurs in humans, fish oil could help us reduce weight gain, especially as we age, when our fat-burning cells are in lesser supply.

While we might think of our fat tissue as primarily a fat storage system, this isn’t always so. White fat cells store fat, but brown fat cells metabolise fat to maintain a stable body temperature. Our bodies metabolise fat more easily when we’re young, as we have a greater amount of brown fat cells in youth, but we start to lose them in maturity.

Read the full story at Science Alert

 

Fish oil could help prevent mental health problems in those most at risk

August 11, 2015 — Eating more fish or taking regular fish oil supplements may help prevent psychosis in those most at risk, researchers claim.

A three month course of daily fish oil capsules appeared to significantly reduce the rate of psychotic disorders in young people, an improvement that seemed to persist when doctors assessed their mental health seven years later.

But while the findings are intriguing, they come from a very small study of teenagers and young adults. The benefits must now be shown in a much larger group before doctors can make any recommendations about the use of fish oils to prevent mental health problems.

Paul Amminger at the University of Melbourne reported in 2010 that a three month course of daily fish oil capsules appeared to stave off psychotic illnesses in teenagers and young adults aged 13 to 24 deemed at high risk of developing the disorders. Seven years on, his group has now revisited 71 of the original 81 participants and shown that the protective effects seem to persist.

Writing in the journal Nature Communications, the scientists report that 4 out of 41 of those who took fish oil for three months had developed psychosis in the seven years since, compared with 16 out of 40 who received a placebo capsule during the trial.

Read the full story at The Guardian

THERE’S NOTHING WRONG WITH RAW FISH THAT HAS BEEN FROZEN

July 29, 2015 — There’s something about the clean taste and supple, sensuous texture of raw fish that is greatly appealing, but there are some risks you should be aware of, especially if you or anyone you wish to feed is pregnant, elderly, very young, or has a compromised immune system. That holds true for ceviche—which starts out with fresh seafood marinated in lemon or lime juice and then gets tricked out with whatever takes a chef’s fancy—as well as more obvious raw-fish dishes. The acid in the juice turns translucent seafood white and almost opaque, but even though ceviche may look cooked, it’s not. (Far less fraught for the home cook is a ceviche composed of lightly cooked seafood.)

There is, of course, the ever-present risk of harmful bacteria, so easily transferred to food through unhygienic handling or kitchen practices. “Most recently, sushi was believed to have caused at least 50 illnesses in a nine-state Salmonella outbreak,” reported Food Safety News on July 14, 2015. “In 2012, raw tuna contaminated with Salmonellacaused an outbreak that sickened more than 300 people in 26 states.”

And then there are the parasites that are present in certain kinds of fish. They’re a natural occurrence, not caused by contamination, and according to Seafood Health Facts—a joint project of Oregon State University, Cornell University, the universities of Delaware, Rhode Island, Florida, and California and the Community Seafood Initiative—two types of parasitic worms can infect humans: “Anisakiasis is caused by ingesting the larvae of several types of roundworm [aka nematodes] which are found in saltwater fish such as cod, plaice, halibut, rockfish, herring, pollock, sea bass and flounder. Tapeworm infections occur after ingesting the larvae of diphyllobothrium, which is found in freshwater fish such as pike, perch and anadromous (fresh-saltwater) fish such as salmon.”

Read the full story at Takepart