I was enjoying a nice salad of kale, chard and spinach, with a handful of almonds set aside for a snack, when I read about the new study that links a Mediterranean diet to a significantly reduced risk of heart disease. The health benefits of olive oil, nuts, fruits and vegetables, beans and fish have been suspected for years, but they now have been confirmed by a major study, at least as much as medical science, with its necessary caveats, is willing to confirm anything.
With Americans already encouraged to eat two or three servings of fish each week by the likes of the American Heart Association, and to eat less red meat, sugar and processed foods, the study published Monday by the New England Journal of Medicine seems likely to prompt more fish consumption in the United States, since for most Americans the option of going vegetarian is no option at all. Just be aware that you might not be eating the fish that you think you’re eating.
A survey released last week reinforced the suspicion that seafood is commonly mislabeled in the United States. From 2010 to 2012, the ocean conservation group Oceana conducted DNA testing on 1,215 seafood samples bought from grocery stores, seafood markets, restaurants and sushi restaurants in 21 states, including Texas, where samples were collected in Austin and Houston. One-third of the national samples tested (401 of 1,215) were not what they were labeled.
Nothing was mislabeled more than snapper, Oceana reported. Eighty-seven percent of the samples labeled snapper turned out to be a fish of another scale and three-quarters of the fish sold as snapper didn’t even belong in the snapper family. Tuna also was frequently mislabeled. Salmon, by contrast, was the fish species least likely to be mislabeled.
The group tested a few dozen fish samples from Austin and Houston. Based on these samples, Oceana concluded that “Texas had the second-highest seafood substitution rate in the country, with 49 percent of the 43 fish sampled in Austin and Houston found to be mislabeled.”