New study finds that you don't have to overeat to become obese.

Pollution contaminates our water, air, and land. It has been proven to cause asthma, allergies, cancer, emphysema, and whole host of other diseases. It causes global warming, kills our wildlife and now scientist from the Environmental Epidemiology at the Institut Municipal Investigacio Medica in Barcelona discovered it causes OBESITY.  

So in addition to fast foods and processed foods, pollution causes obesity? The Spanish study revealed that children who were exposed to a range of common chemicals and pesticides in the womb increased the childs chances of becoming obese. 

As reported in the journal Acta Paediatrica, scientists looked at the concentration of hexachloreobenzene (HCB) in the umbilical cord blood of 405 children born in Menorca from mid-1997 to mid-1998. Among those data point collected post birth, scientists looked at infant height and weight.  Feeding practices were reported by mothers in interviews at six months and one year after birth.  Additionally, the children’s height and weight were measured when they were 6.5 years old. The study revealed that children with the highest exposure to HCB were 2.5 times more likely to be overweight. The researchers also reported that these children were three times more likely to be obese than those with lower exposure levels. 

So, what is HCB? Hexachlorobenzene is a fungicide formerly used to treat seeds to control fungal disease. It was banned globally in the '90s under the Stockholm Convention which banned chemical substances that accumulate through the food chain, and pose a risk of causing adverse effects to human health and the environment. HCB has been banned in the US since 1965 but can still be found in our environment in 84 Superfund sites in the US and all across the world. It is a known animal cancinogen and a probable human carcinogen. Studies have found that HCB accumulates as your move up the food chain. Just like mercury, as it goes up the seafood food chain, HCB concentrations increase. Therefore, if you eat a large fish like tuna or swordfish that has been contaminated up the food chain, the concentrations of HCB would be extremely high.

So what else have children been exposed to prior to being born, and what impact might it have on my kids?

Previous studies have linked bisphenol A exposure to obesity in animals, and other studies have linked phthalates to obesity in adult men. As reported in the Telegraph in the United Kingdom, "The report's authors are now calling for exposure to similar pesticides to be minimised, including bisphenol A (BPA), used in baby bottles and cans of food, and phthalates, found in cosmetics and shampoos." Tests have shown BPA is found in 95% of Americans, while 90% have been found to be exposed to phthalates in the womb.

Between BPA, HCB, and phthalates, I'm frustrated and concerned. I would prefer to screw my kids up on my own and not worry about what their sippy cups or shampoos are made of, or what banned fungicides are in their foods.

What's keeping you up at night?

There is something fishy with salmon.

I don't know about you but I am always very confused when it comes eating salmon.   Should I eat farmed or fresh? Most articles about eating fish publish charts on safe fish and fish to avoid and I find that salmon makes it into both columns.

Last week my friend and I were discussing the issue, because she, like I, is obsessed with food these days. Our list of foods we eat is ever dwindling.  We were wondering what salmon is best for the environment and our health.  Subsequent to our conversation, she called me up to say that she had just read an article in Eating Well Magazine on the fresh vs. farm salmon debate that helped bring some clarity.  

So I quickly grabbed the March/April issue and began to read the article entitled "The Wild Salmon Debate."  The piece was written by David Dobbs, a salmon angler and author of The Great Gulf, about the decimation of the ocean fisheries.  Dobbs is "a sort of salmon-expert-for-the-day." In his article, Dobbs discussed the differences between types of salmon, location caught and farmed vs. fresh. 

Wild salmon today is all from the Pacific. Why? Because the Atlantic salmon are now on the Endangered Species List.  Salmon from the Pacific can be found in Alaska, British Columbia, Northern California and the Pacific Northwest.  

All Atlantic salmon species are farmed and live in net pens of tens of thousands of fish. These fish are vaccinated against diseases because they live in crowded confinement and fed fish pellets of food and additives to make their flesh pink like their wild fishy friends in the Pacific. 

As Dobbs reports, "Farmed salmon holds about 2 to 10 times the levels of PCBs, DDT, dioxins, pesticides, mercury and some other suspected carcinogens that most wild salmon do, apparently because the rich meal they eat contains bits of oily fish in which these contaminants tend to concentrate." These levels are still low (relatively) and that the benefits of eating salmon out way the cost of these contaminants unless you are pregnant, nursing or young. 

 

However, as he points out, there is a bigger picture to the farmed salmon. Farming salmon is wreaking havoc on the environment.  With the expansion of farmed salmon, there appears to be more and more problems emerging.  Many of the fish escape and disrupt the spawning of the wild salmon.  Sea lice that have infested farms are now spreading to wild populations killing many wild salmon.

Dobbs concludes that wild salmon is the way to go. It may be seasonal, inconsistent in taste and more expensive, but these trade offs are small in the whole scheme of things.

So I thought I was set.  Wild salmon was all my family would eat.  But then last week the Pacific Fishery Management Council stated that the wild salmon in the Pacific West fisheries, were at an all time low.  The managers are discussing cancelling the early seasons of ocean fishing for chinook salmon off the coast of Oregon and Northern California because of a collapse in stock. 

As reported in the San Francisco Chronicle on March 12th, "only 63,900 fall run salmon were documented spawning in the Sacramento River in 2007, far below the 122,000 to 189,000 objective the council had set."  And to make matters worse, the number of jacks (two year old fish that return to the river to spawn) are at an all time low. Frighteningly, officials expected 157,000 jacks but only counted 6,000.

So now I was really in a tizzy. First I moved my family to eating more fish. Then, only wild salmon. Now, heck, what am I supposed to do? The salmon stocks in the Northwest are collapsing, I can't figure out which way is up.  So stealing a line from Dr. Suess, one fish, two fish, red fish, who knew fish?  

So I decided to contact Dobbs and get his take on the issue. Dobbs, who in addition to writing for Eating Well and other outlets, writes his own blog called Smooth Pebbles where he covers various health issues. 

He explained to me that this truly is a confusing issue. "To make it easy, just think Wild Alaskan Salmon -- these are Pacific salmon but unlike Pacific Northwest salmon, the Alaskan salmon have habitat undamaged by dams (which are doing in many salmon) and are extremely well-managed so that they are not overfished."

Dobbs told me he considers farmed salmon disastrous and the only salmon he eats is wild Alaskan.  And now so do I.

So next time I go shopping, I'm looking for the mukluks on my fish.