Saving Seafood

Nutrition researcher: The human diet needs more shellfish

October 29, 2018 — Numerous studies have shown that eating seafood is good for human health, but Professor Baukje de Roos, deputy director of the Rowett Institute at Scotland’s University of Aberdeen and an internationally recognized nutrition scientist, believes that shellfish are some of the most important contributors of essential nutrients and should be given a great place in the diet.

Professor de Roos, who is currently researching the effects of farmed seafood on heart health and micronutrient status, updated delegates at the recent Association of Scottish Shellfish Growers conference in Oban, Scotland, on the major health benefits of seafood and outlined the important involvement of shellfish.

Professor de Roos reminded her audience that omega-3 fatty acids help to protect against stroke and lower the risk of mortality from coronary heart disease, while vitamin D is essential for the growth and maintenance of healthy bones; and vitamin B12 is involved in the functioning of the nervous system, the formation of red blood cells, and in energy production.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Decades-long study ties omega-3s from seafood to healthier aging

October 25, 2018 — A study of over 2,500 adults between 1992 and 2015 has found that omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids present in seafood reduce the risk of unhealthy aging.

The study, published in BMJ, started with adults at an average age of 74 in 1992 and examined the levels of four different omega-3s – eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), docosapentaenoic acid (DPA), and alpha linolenic acid (ALA) – present in their body. Over the course of the study, participants were surveyed regularly, and in three periods – 1992-1993, 1998-1999, and 2005-2006 – had the omega-3s present in their blood measured.

The study found, after correcting for other factors such as age, sex, and race, that adults with higher levels of EPA and DPA had a better chance of healthy aging. Participants with the highest level of omega-3s present had an 18 percent lower risk of unhealthy aging. Participants with the highest levels of EPA and DPA, the omega-3s commonly found in seafood, had the best results: Those with high levels of EPA had a 24 percent lower risk of unhealthy aging, and those with DPA had an 18 percent lower risk of unhealthy aging.

“We found that older adults who had higher levels of omega 3 from seafood were more likely to live longer and healthier lives,” lead study author Heidi Lai of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University in Boston told Reuters. “These findings support current national dietary guidelines to consume more seafood.”

The study also found that levels of DHA from seafood and ALA from plants did not seem to have an impact on whether the participant would age healthily or not.

“Docosahexaenoic acid from seafood and alpha-linolenic acid from plants were not associated with a lower likelihood of unhealthy ageing,” states the report.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Omega 3 fatty acids found in seafood tied to healthy aging

October 24, 2018 — People may be more likely to age without health problems when they have more omega 3 fatty acids in their blood, a recent study suggests.

The study authors focused on so-called healthy aging, or the number of years people live without developing disabilities or physical or mental health problems. They examined data on 2,622 adults who were 74 years old on average, following them from 1992 to 2015. Only 11 percent of participants experienced healthy aging throughout the entire study period.

“We found that older adults who had higher levels of omega 3 from seafood were more likely to live longer and healthier lives,” said lead study author Heidi Lai of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University in Boston.

“These findings support current national dietary guidelines to consume more seafood,” Lai said by email.

Adults should get about eight ounces a week of seafood, ideally by eating it twice a week in place of meats, poultry or eggs, according to U.S. dietary guidelines. Some options that are high in omega 3s include salmon, anchovies, herring, shad, sardines, oysters, trout and Atlantic or Pacific mackerel.

Read the full story at Reuters

 

Fish Oil Drug May Reduce Heart Attack and Stroke Risks for Some

September 26, 2018 — Cardiologists may one day have a new tool to help prevent heart attacks and strokes in some high-risk patients: a prescription drug that contains large doses of EPA, an omega-3 fatty acid contained in fish oil.

A large clinical trial found that the drug, called Vascepa, sharply reduced the rate of cardiovascular events in people with a history of heart disease or Type 2 diabetes, according to early results that were announced on Monday.

The findings were particularly relevant for people with high triglycerides, a type of fat in the blood that has been linked to an increased risk of heart disease. The new trial, called Reduce-IT, focused on people whose cholesterol levels were well controlled with statins but whose triglyceride levels remained very high. Many cardiovascular experts were doubtful that adding fish oil on top of statins would produce much if any benefit because a number of smaller and less rigorous studies over the years had failed.

But the new trial showed that statin-treated adults with elevated triglycerides who were prescribed high doses of the purified EPA had a 25 percent reduction in their relative risk of heart attacks, strokes and other cardiac events compared to a control group of patients who received placebo.

Read the full story at The New York Times

Bountiful Bunker? Advocates Clash with Big Fish Oil in New York Harbor

September 10, 2018 — Advocacy groups are sounding the alarm on Virginia-based fishing fleets coming into the New York bight to harvest menhaden — a bait fish better known as “bunker” — but NOAA Fisheries says the species is not at risk of overfishing.

The boats work for Omega Protein, a company based in Reedville, Virginia, that runs the largest menhaden fishing operation on the east coast.

Menhaden are abundant now, but they’d been severely overfished in the past and advocacy groups like Menhaden Defenders and Gotham Whale are concerned about that happening again — especially since whales have returned to New York City waters. The cetaceans feed on menhaden, and fewer fish could mean fewer whale sightings, they say.

Advocates also worry about by-catch. The boats use huge purse seines that round up millions of fish at a time, and there’s concern that dolphins and other marine life could get caught up.

In a press release, Omega Protein charged that advocates are making “false statements” about their fleet, noting that there’s currently no concern about bunker overfishing and that their operations are completely legal. The company turns menhaden into commodities for fish oil supplements, dog food, fish meal, and other products.

Jennifer Goebel, a spokesperson for NOAA Fisheries, confirmed that there’s no current threat of overfishing for menhaden.

“There has been concern over the years from certain environmental groups regarding localized depletion in Chesapeake Bay, but studies have not found any evidence that localized depletion is occurring,” she said in an email. “The coastwide assessment shows the Atlantic menhaden stock is not overfished and overfishing is not occurring.”

She added that Omega Protein “follow[s] the schools and right now, if those schools are off New York, that’s where an industry vessel could be fishing.”

Read the full story at New York Media Boat

 

Fish oil pills during pregnancy may lead to stronger, healthier children

September 5, 2018 — Taking fish oil supplements during pregnancy might translate into healthier growth in children during their first six years of life, a new study suggests.

“This study highlights the fact that in utero exposure can have a profound effect on the fetus that lasts through childhood,” said Dr. Jennifer Wu, an obstetrician-gynecologist from Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City.

“For the past decade, the importance of fish oil and the omega-3 fatty acids have been stressed to patients,” explained Wu, who was not involved in the study.

“The use of fish oil in the latter part of the pregnancy has an impact on bone and muscle mass. Though these children are larger, they do not have increased rates of obesity,” Wu added.

In the study, the researchers followed 736 pregnant women in Denmark who took either fish oil or olive oil supplements daily from week 24 of their pregnancy until one week after they gave birth.

Read the full story at United Press International

 

For Infants With Rare And Scary Disorder, FDA Approval Of Fish Oil Could Be Life Saving

August 7, 2018 — The following is excerpted from a story published by WGBH:

The FDA approved a drug last month that provides nutrition to children born with a scary condition. That approval is the result of 16 years of work by doctors and researchers at Children’s Hospital in Boston.

When Gib Brogan’s daughter Ellie was born, he says at first everything seemed perfect. But things changed quickly.

“Soon after she was born, early, early one morning, she got very ill. She started vomiting dark green,” Brogan said.

Ellie was rushed to the neonatal ICU, where doctors quickly realized something was very wrong.

“They told us she had short bowel syndrome. She was missing 90 percent of her small intestine and 30 percent of her large intestine,” Brogan said.

The NIH says short bowel syndrome affects about three out of every million people. Ellie had surgery to connect her intestines, but there wasn’t enough there to really work right.

“On that first day the surgeon told us that she can be fed by I.V., but there is a bit of a race that comes when you feed an infant through an I.V.,” Brogan said.

That race is to get them eating regularly as soon as possible. Because while you can feed newborns through an I.V, over an extended period of time, the fat that they’re given, which comes from soybean oil, can damage their livers, meaning they’ll likely need a transplant.

By the time Ellie was transferred to Boston Children’s Hospital, at just a few weeks old, she already had the yellowed skin and eyes of jaundice — a sign of liver damage.

“And one day we were sitting at Children’s and a doctor knocked on the door and he came in and said, ‘My name is Dr. Mark Puder. I have something I’d like to talk to you about,'” Brogan remembered.

“And I approached the family,” Puder said, “because we had developed something in the laboratory that we’d already given to some patients and had reversed that liver injury.”

“He sat down and he told us that there were a little over 20 kids that they tried using fish oil with,” Brogan said, “and that in that limited number of kids they had seen great things with their livers — that the damage had not progressed, and in some cases it had cleared up.”

The Brogans agreed to be part of the trial. And it worked.

Read and listen to the full story at WGBH

Balancing the Needs of People and Marine Ecosystems: Saving Seafood Looks at Aquaculture Sustainability

June 12, 2018 — WASHINGTON — Leading aquaculture experts discuss what sustainability looks like in farmed fishing and how we achieve it in the latest episode of Saving Seafood’s video series, Aquaculture Today. 

“One thing that’s true is the aquaculture industry is here to stay, has a very bright and important future for food security on the planet,” says Corey Peet, Managing Director of the Asian Seafood Improvement Collaborative. “But that has to be grounded in an objective view of how do we develop it sustainably.”

According to the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership’s 2017 overview of reduction fisheries – fisheries used for the production of fishmeal and fish oil – just over 83 percent of global catch from reduction fisheries comes from stocks that are reasonably well managed or better. Only an estimated 17 percent of reduction catch comes from poorly managed fisheries.

“20 years ago we were obsessed by this issue of fishmeal sustainability and inputs,” says Dan Lee, Standards Coordinator for the Global Aquaculture Alliance’s Best Aquaculture Practices Program. “We’ve pretty much solved that and it’s been through economic forces largely.”

According to Manuel Barange, Director of Fisheries and Aquaculture at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, the goal of sustainability should not be maintaining the status quo, but ensuring that aquaculture will be able to feed the world’s growing population while protecting marine ecosystems.

“Sustainability means to understand the needs of the people for this generation and in future generations, and therefore how to protect the marine environment and the freshwater environment so that they keep producing,” says Mr. Barange.

Experts also stressed the importance of more data to help fisheries managers make informed decisions about aquaculture, as well as the need for continued industry involvement.

“Fishery management is better the more data we can get, the more accurate modeling that we can get,” says Neil Auchterlonie, Technical Director at IFFO.

“Doing good science, having good industry participation, and recognizing that when there are challenging issues, that collaboration within the industry is probably one of the best ways to solve them,” says Tim Fitzgerald, Director of the Environmental Defense Fund’s Impact Division.

The video is the fourth and final in a series, Aquaculture Today, in which Saving Seafood interviews leading aquaculture experts about advances in farmed fishing and what the industry will look like in the future. Previous episodes of Aquaculture Today covered its role in feeding the world, its efficiency, and the nutritional benefits of omega-3 fatty acids.

Interviews for Aquaculture Today were conducted by Saving Seafood at the 2017 SeaWeb Seafood Summit in Seattle, Washington.

 

Fish Oil May Protect the Youngest Hearts

June 8, 2018 — Omega-3 fatty acids — good fats found in fish — can boost the heart health of adults, but a new study suggests that babies might also stand to benefit from them.

In the study from Australia, infants were given a daily fish oil supplement or a placebo from birth to 6 months. When they were 5 years old, researchers found that the children who had been given fish oil had smaller waists than the youngsters who were given a placebo. A larger waist circumference is a known risk factor for heart disease, according to the American Heart Association.

The researchers also found that boys given fish oil supplements in infancy had less circulating insulin in their bodies and less resistance to insulin when they were 5, though the study could only show an association between the two. Insulin is a hormone that carries sugars from the foods you eat into your cells to be used as fuel. Insulin resistance and higher levels of insulin play a role in the development of type 2 diabetes.

“It seems that using fish oil could help decrease waist circumference, which by itself, is a major cardiometabolic risk factor. But we can’t say for sure yet whether this will last,” said pediatric endocrinologist Dr. Siham Accacha. She was not involved in the study, but reviewed its findings.

“I’m also not sure why the insulin findings were only in boys. At age 5, there are no pubertal hormones, but obviously there was something there,” said Accacha, director of the pediatric diabetes program at NYU Winthrop Hospital in Mineola, N.Y.

Read the full story at U.S. News

Breakthrough in omega-3 understanding could revolutionize feed industry

May 31, 2018 — A new study, led by the University of Stirling in Scotland, has led to a major discovery about the way in which omega-3 long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids are produced in the ocean.

According to lead scientist Oscar Monroig from the university’s Institute of Aquaculture, the breakthrough challenges the generally held principle that marine microbes, such as microalgae and bacteria, are responsible for virtually all primary production of omega-3 fatty acids, which are essential for human health, and have been proven to be particularly useful in combating and preventing cardiovascular and inflammatory diseases.

Instead, an international team of scientists from the United Kingdom, Portugal, Spain, Japan, and Australia found that omega-3s can be created by many marine invertebrates.

“Our study provides a paradigm shift in understanding, as it demonstrates that a large variety of invertebrate animals, including corals, rotifers, molluscs, polychaetes and crustaceans, possess enzymes called ‘desaturases’ of a type that enable them to produce omega-3, an ability thought previously to exist almost exclusively in marine microbes,” Monroig said.

Read the full story at Seafood Source