If you eat canned tuna for lunch, you're among millions of Americans who polish off almost a billion pounds of tuna a year, more than 95 percent of it canned. Partly because the size of cans has been reduced, we're eating less canned tuna, though sales of fresh tuna are up. We juggle price, flavor, value, and health benefits while worrying about the dangers of mercury, unwanted additives, environmental degradation, carbon footprint, and the loss of America's tuna fishery and cannery jobs.
Tuna, packed in questions Draining some useful knowledge out of those cans.
FOR THE RECORD - CLEARING THE RECORD, PUBLISHED JULY 9, 2009, FOLLOWS: In a June 25 story on the Food page, the Food and Drug Administration recommendation for canned tuna fish was misstated. The FDA recommends limited consumption of canned light and albacore tuna because of its mercury content for women who are or may become pregnant, nursing mothers and young children.
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Yikes, that's a lot to think about when buying a can of tuna!
To make sense of it all, I compared 19 cans of tuna, all labeled dolphin-safe, ranging in price from 13 cents per pound for Duet chunk light, double-cooked, unidentified species from Thailand to 88 cents per pound for American hand-filleted, hand-packed, sashimi-grade single-cooked albacore loins from American Tuna.
What to Look For
1. No additives. But price per ounce doesn't tell the whole story. Most inexpensive canned tuna contains two ingredients that turn the fish into sponges so it absorbs more water that drains right out: soy (often listed as vegetable broth containing soy) and sodium pyrophosphate. You may be paying less money, but what you're getting is less tuna and more additives. Three companies, StarKist, Bumble Bee, and Chicken of the Sea, represent more than 80 percent of America's canned tuna, but most of their products contain additives, something easily checked in the can's list of ingredients.
2. Cooked only once. To get that tuna in the can, large operations freeze the fish on board, fillet it on shore, cook the fillets, freeze again, defrost, and finally cook it once again in the can. It's no wonder much of the flavor and heart-healthy omega-3 oils are lost. America's artisanal canneries cook their tuna once in the can, maintaining flavor, meaty texture, juiciness, and omega-3 oils.
3. Low mercury. With tuna at the top of the food chain, mercury is a concern. The Food and Drug Administration recommends that we eat up to 12 ounces (2 average meals) weekly of fish and shellfish low in mercury, including canned light tuna, but only 6 ounces of the higher-in-mercury albacore. However, a study by Oregon State University's Seafood Laboratory showed that "troll-, bait-, and line-caught albacore off the West Coast of the U.S. had lower levels (of mercury) as their size is smaller than albacore caught in tropical waters by long-lines."
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