Moms know best: Fish is 'brain food'

By: David Martosko
Newspaper: Baltimore Sun

Andrea Kavanagh's quibble over industry funding of a recent seafood-science review ignores the reality that the review itself was spot-on correct ("Fishy report shows danger of industry-driven research," Opinion • Commentary, Nov. 12). This sort of sober look at the latest and best science is just the kind of work the federal government should be doing, but isn't.

The only study with which Ms. Kavanagh takes issue, published this year in The Lancet, is the most robust look to date at the impact on children of pregnant women who eat fish. It found, quite convincingly, that avoiding fish during pregnancy will result in a child with diminished IQ and motor skills. And vice versa.

I suspect that Ms. Kavanagh, like many environmental advocates, is attacking the study because it's effective at countering the unjustified hysteria over what amount to harmless mercury levels.

When I was a kid, my mother (a nurse) insisted that fish was "brain food." It was considered just about the healthiest thing people could eat, pregnant or not. And guess what? It still is.