Thursday, September 23, 2010

Eating Fish?

After being vegetarian for a few years, I made the decision to begin eating fish again, as science has overwhelmingly told me to do so in order to lead a healthier life. My problem is that fisheries are possibly the most unsustainable resources on the earth (a huge reason why I am/was vegetarian in the first place is because I hate how unsustainable meat production is). Anyway, I just wanted to say to you that I think it is very important that you read up on what you are consuming. Most countries have a guide (NZ one is below, and more information for NZ is HERE) that you can take with you in your wallet to help you know what to buy, and it is not very difficult to choose a more sustainable choice when faced with the option at a supermarket or restaurant if you have an idea of what the better choice is.

There is also a "red list" of fish which you should try not to eat under any circumstances (because of rapid depletion of the species, destructive fishing practices etc), and that is HERE.

Just to make it easier for you in other countries, I've found your guides, links to them are here:
Australia
Canada
USA (heaps of info here)
UK
Europe/Asia/Africa (various guides from World Wildlife Fund)

One last thing... recently I've found it quite difficult to know what to say on my blog, as I've become increasingly aware of having opinions (that I would like to share) on things which are really important to me, (such as the topic above, subjects relating to rational thinking, and other such slightly more volatile topics than the usual "I made a pretty thing" posts) and I'm not sure if I should include them or not. Maybe it's just that I feel like finally, after 23 years I can come out of my shell a bit more and add to conversation instead of my usual sit back and listen, but this may not be the right forum for it. I guess I'm just trailing off now, but let me think about this and get back to you.

6 comments:

JONTY BELL said...

thanks sarah, good find. i will print that out and use it.

Krystal Lee said...

thanks! love your post :)

Krystal x

http://krystalleeart.blogspot.com/

Jen Collins said...

thanks for posting that list. i don't eat a lot of fish, but i've never done the research on where what i do eat come from & whether it's sustainable, despite being aware of how unsustainable fish stocks are. happy to see that the fish we eat most isn't on the uk list though. :)

azwethinkweiz said...

You are making an ill informed choice.... You don't need fish to be healthy, you can get your omega-3 from flaxseed and hemp. These can be taken in oil or dry form and are really nice added to smoothies and juices. There are a number of other sources that are not quite so high, like leafy green vegetables... but you should be eating HEAPS of those if you are eating a healthy diet.

I think you will also find (through a bit of research) that eating fish can be very much detrimental to your health, due to concentrated hazardous chemicals found in their bodies from the run off of factory farming, human waste, factory run off and waste. All of which our oceans AND fish are subjected to.

Sarah McNeil said...

The omega 3 in flax seed and hemp are a different/shorter length chain of fatty acids to fish oil. This means, that when your body breaks them down you hardly get any of the goodness. Also, the oils of flax & hemp are only viable when they are in unprocessed form (as in, in the seed) so if the seed is blended and the oil extracted it immediately begins the breaking down process, thus making bottled "flax seed oil" etc useful purely as a laxative or extra source of calories.

It was quite a difficult choice for me to make to go back to eating fish, and only for health reasons. It is not appropriate to eat farmed or large fish which are the main predators, and I agree to accumulate a lot of bad stuff from eating other smaller predators etc (plus they take ages to be sexually mature and are rare) but that is where this useful list I have supplied comes in.

Lots of people don't even think about where their food is coming from, and aren't about to go and make a drastic change all by themselves. Providing a simple alternative to what they already do (a print out of fish options they can keep in their wallet) is a much more effective way of making change for good.

I appreciate the dialogue. Also, did you know that brazil nuts naturally contain 1000 times more radium than any other food? Crazy.

Anonymous said...

Hi Sarah. Just trying to help you out with your dilemma about posting about things that really matter to you. Perhaps you should start a new blog which links in to your "Everything" blog. That way you can still promote your art, but have a way to voice things that are personal to you without it necessarily affecting potential clients of your artwork. On the other hand, blogs are there for personal opinion. So it really depends how you market your current blog and who your main audience would be for it.

I love your work and I have one of your Wild Girls drawings framed on my wall, it's pretty!

Jelena x

everydayonwednesday.blogspot.com