mercury

Here’s an Op Ed that ran today in the Washington Times by NFI Vice President Mary Anne Hansan:HANSAN: Enviros to babies: We hope you’re born dumbEco-falsehoods about mercury in fish expose activists who put politics before health

In case you came across this AARP blog posting today “Just How Healthy is Seafood?” You should know we did too. And we felt it was a touch light on… well… facts and science. So, NFI’s registered dietitian reached out with the letter you can read below.

Consumers have been hammered over the last few weeks with a slew of common and calculated pieces of misinformation about mercury in seafood. Not as part of a public education campaign gone awry or faulty reporting, but as part of a targeted lobbying campaign that has nothing to do with fish and that you won’t hear hide nor hair of next week. 

A recent Associated Press article out of Milwaukee got me thinking about last year’s holiday season and how the misguided activist group GotMercury? decided it would be a good idea to ask charitable organizations not to distribute donations of canned tuna to needy families.Yes, as ridiculous as it sounds they did.  Thankfully, food banks coast to coast ignored the sea turtle

The environmental group Sierra Club has long fought against pollution from power plants, but in its latest battle against coal, the group is using misguided rhetoric in an effort to link human exposure from power plant pollutants to tuna. In a new alarmist article to its supporters, Sierra club claims  tuna-sandwich-eaters throughout the country are now being poisoned by coal plants, going so far as to note that  “one-seventieth of a teaspoon [of mercury] can pollute a 20-acre lake to the point where its fish are unsafe.” 

No one likes being duped.  But that’s how it feels to read the posts on the blog, Mom’s Clean Air Force.  The site appears to be a place where mothers share their experiences more or less spontaneously.  One such item caught our attention today because its headline was so alarming,  “My Toddler’s Mercury Poisoning From Tuna.” 

An Oregon man named Allen Heckard once reportedly sued Michael Jordan and Nike because Mr. Heckard apparently looked too much like the basketball star in his Nike gear and the unwanted attention was apparently causing him "emotional pain and suffering." He thought a payment of $832 million would help him get over the horrors of being mistaken for arguably the greatest professional basketball player who ever lived.This is of course an example of an absurd abuse of the legal system that naturally did not pan out for the plaintiff.

It’s been all over the web and twitter today but I just wanted to make sure anyone reporting on health and nutrition who’s checking in has seen the latest. A Harvard University Study just published in the New England Journal of Medicine adds to the overwhelming library of current, independent, peer reviewed science that says, mercury exposure from eating fish doesn't raise your risk of heart disease.

When the U.S.

GotMercury? and the Sea Turtle Restoration Project are attacking the tuna marketing campaign, Tuna The Wonderfish. Their claims are flat out lies, and the people behind Got Mercury?