Follow mums advice – eat Seafood

Posted by Jo Dunlop, Promotions and Marketing Manager on 15 February 2012

As a child, our family always went on Mediterranean holidays and seafood was always a big part of it. My earliest memory of this is as a seven year old girl, choosing the lobster out of a tank in Portugal saying 'Mummy I want that one!'. I didn't realise how lucky I was to have experienced this rich variety of seafood until later on in life. Due to my upbringing I've always eaten a lot of seafood, but when I met my husband, he had experienced a much different childhood, and had no recollection of eating seafood at all.. As a result, initially, our meal plans tended to be based around meat in the main. When we decided that we wanted to have kids, I read lots of articles, books, etc. and decided that I wanted to change our diet to include more seafood, not just to benefit from the Omega 3 content, but from all of the other minerals that you get naturally from seafood, such as selenium, zinc, iodine.

My love for seafood increased when I joined Seafish. Just being immersed in an environment where I had access to a wealth of information on seafood gave me more and more confidence and when I worked on the '2 a week' campaign back in 2008/9 I realised just how important this was. On his return from a conference in Rome, my colleague taught me a great deal about the health benefits of eating seafood and I got a real sense of how it isn't just about eating the seafood, but also about varying the species. This is good from both a sustainability point of view, but also as different species are rich in different nutrients. So when I changed my diet, I increased the amount of oil rich seafood so I was eating at least two portions of seafood a week. Quite often I eat mackerel, whitefish, prawns and salmon all in one week. My son is now nearly three and I do think the Omega 3 gained naturally from the seafood incorporated into our family's weekly meal plan has helped him tremendously in his development.

I am 32 weeks pregnant with my second child, and haven't really reduced my seafood intake; so this time, this baby has had the benefit right from the start. I actively encourage all of my peers to do the same. The interesting thing this time round is that when I visited my midwife, she advised that I should not eat fish. When I challenged this, explaining that I actually help people to include more seafood in their diet, she got the book out and checked the present guidelines, which clearly state that you should include seafood in your diet as well as shellfish as long as it's part of a hot meal. Where I live there is a lot of poverty and not everyone can afford some of the luxuries I can in choosing exactly what they eat, but I explained that even if the mother could manage some sardines or mackerel in tomato sauce on some brown toast once a week, this was better than nothing. My midwife tells me that she has given this advice to many women now, and feels quite proud to have started to eat more seafood herself as a result of our chats.

Over time, we have been on a journey and as our confidence with seafood has grown, we have expanded the species that we eat and we will continue to include new and varied recipes along with our staples.

Jo Dunlop, Promotions and Marketing Manager