Women have long been warned to avoid eating too much fish during pregnancy due to concerns about mercury exposure, but a groundbreaking new study involving a team from the University of Ulster has turned the traditional advice on its head.
According to a study of 1,500 women in the Seychelles, a cluster of islands in the Indian Ocean where the local diet contains up to 12 servings of fish a week, the polyunsaturated fatty acids it contains may in fact counteract the damaging effect of mercury on the brain and nervous system of the foetus.
The HSE recommends eating no more than two portions of oily fish a week (for example, mackerel, trout or fresh tuna), or no more than four cans of tuna (around 140g per can) during pregnancy. However, the findings of the 30-year study, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, recorded "no overall association between prenatal exposure to mercury through fish consumption and neurodevelopmental outcomes,”
The researchers also discovered that the children of mothers who had high levels of polyunsaturated fatty acids were more likely to perform better in certain tests.
