Check out this article from Reader’s Digest it’s called Get Hooked on Fish. It’s actually an excerpt from a book called Cut Your Cholesterol it does a pretty good job of outlining the benefits of eating seafood but it raises an interesting issue. It suggests that you “buy your tuna packed in water; when you drain oil-packed tuna, you also drain as much as one-quarter of the omega-3 fatty acids; draining water-packed tuna removes just 3 percent.” In reality, the jury is still out on whether that’s true or not. But conveniently the office right next to mine houses NFI’s registered dietitian, Jennifer Wilmes – you might know her from such blogs as BlogAboutSeafood aka Eat Like Jennifer, when she’s not answering my mindlessly repetitive questions about the relative nutritional value of Pop Tarts she is a great resource for stuff like this. She says in reality, from a nutritional standpoint, the difference between tuna packed in oil and tuna packed in water is insignificant. So while omega-3 levels might be higher in canned tuna packed in water a three ounce serving of canned tuna packed in oil still provides between about 70 and 130 percent of the recommended daily amount of DHA+EPA omega-3s. That's fancy science talk for "the good stuff's still in there." She says, packed in water is just a lower fat, lower calorie option.
