The Healthiest (and Unhealthiest) Ways to Eat Fish

Health authorities around the globe, from the American Heart Association to to the UK’s National Health Service to the Australian Dietary Guidelines, all recommend eating 2-3 servings of fish per week. 

Fish is a great source of protein and it’s low in saturated fat.  It can be a good source of zinc, selenium, and omega-3 fatty acids. Fish consumption has been linked with lower risk of heart disease, depression, Type 2 diabetes, and Alzheimer’s. 

But there seems to be a little more to this story, as was revealed in a meta-analysis of 14 studies, involving almost a million subjects and published in the journal Public Health Nutrition. 

Will Eating More Fish Help You Live Longer?

Several studies have found that people who eat more fish live longer, healthier lives, with a linear relationship between fish consumption and life expectancy: The more fish you eat, the longer you live. (Statistically anyway; individual mileage may vary).

And yet, other studies have found no relationship between fish consumption and reduced disease risk or mortality. In other words, if you put a dot on a graph for each person, with servings of fish per week on one axis and age of death on the other, you can’t connect the dots in anything that looks remotely like a line.

[Some] studies have found no relationship between fish consumption and reduced disease risk or mortality.

Even more bizarrely, some studies have observed a J-shaped curve in the association between fish consumption and mortality. That means, you can connect all the dots in a line, but it’s not a straight line. As servings of fish increase from zero to 1 serving per week, the risk of early death goes down slightly. But then, the risk of early death starts to increase again as fish consumption increases. At 2 servings per week, your risk is the same as if you didn’t eat fish at all. From there, your risk of early death increases slightly with every additional ounce of fish that you eat. 

What on earth is going on here?

You might guess that that it has something to do with mercury or other contaminants, But this does not seem to be the case. The subjects in these pooled studies with the...

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