Diversity The Key

Food glorious seafood. Seafood is getting a star rating from some imminent sources for its nutritional value.

Needless to say oily fish and those amazing omega 3 fatty acids receive some of the highest praise.The world is getting fatter and in response some people think it’s necessary to cut out animal fats. That definitely isn’t the answer says Professor Robert Pickard, who says for optimum health humans need diversity in their diets and that means a bit of everything, including seafood, meat, eggs and dairy.

Professor Pickard is director-general of the British Nutrition Foundation, a scientific and educational charity that promotes the nutritional well being of society. Its website (www.nutrition.org.uk) gets three million hits a month, mainly from consumers. He is also an Emeritus Professor of Neurobiology at the University of Cardiff and throughout his career has worked internationally in senior roles and on high powered taskforces and committees concerned with food, fitness and health.

Professor Pickard was in New Zealand recentlyto launch The Nutritional Importance of Foods of Animal Origin in a Healthy New Zealand Diet. His bottom line message is that wellbeing is enhanced when food diversity is maintained, but threatened when whole food groups are eliminated.

He gives seafood a star nutritional rating. “Brilliant things come out of the sea – take iodine for example. It’s one of the minerals in short supply on a global basis, along with iron and vitamin A – they are the three major items missing from diets worldwide. There are hundreds of thousands of blind people in India at the moment because they get no Vitamin A. They could get all they need from seafood and other foods of animal origin.

“In the past we never used to measure whether people had adequate sources of these minerals in their diets. If people under performed or were stupid we thought they were born stupid, but that’s not always the case. There are many examples of people in disadvantaged communities who are short of zinc and if they get a good diet their performance improves – again, seafood and animal meats provide adequate quantities of zinc. If you don’t get zinc you can’t build nervous systems.”

Shellfish and shrimps are a nutritional powerhouse that people often underestimate says the Professor. Shellfish like cockles shift huge volumes of water and absorb minerals such as iron from that very effectively which humans then absorb when we eat them. Seaweed too is extremely beneficial to health as the Japanese have discovered.

Some of his highest praise is reserved for long chain omega 3 fatty acids. These are originally produced by algae in the sea, then eaten by shrimp and then fish, becoming more concentrated as they move up the food chain.

The important thing, he stresses, is to distinguish between long chain and short chain omega 3. The latter is abundant in oil seeds such as sunflowers. However, long chain omega 3s are very difficult to build in the human body, but extremely important for good health, and the best sources are oily fish and cod liver oil.

Professor Pickard says long chain omega 3s help to maintain membrane fluidity, especially in the brain. He points to research in Japan where a group of elderly monkeys was divided into those that had long chain omega 3s in their diets, and those that didn’t. Those that did maintained brain activity for much longer than those that didn’t – which meant that they led more active and fulfilling lives.

“Long chain omega 3s are also essential for maintenance and repair of the body’s nervous systems and offer huge cardio benefits,” he explains. “If you have a heart attack and sufficient long chain omega 3s around the heart, the rhythm of the heart will be corrected much more quickly; their presence also means that you are less likely to have a heart attack.

“I always make sure my long chain omega 3 fatty levels are at optimum condition, which you can achieve from one or two portions of oily fish a week.”