Thanks. This might just be the nudge to finally try out what I long thought about without ever trying it in practice. Quick questions:
Do we know of any safe upper dose threshold exists (e.g. any excessive accumulated heavy metals from polluted sea or any other imbalances)?
Do we know whether that simple organism is comparably powerful in providing some micro-nutriments that we think we might lack in vegan diet?
To be clear what I mean: It is trivial to get nearly arbitrary “grams of protein” from vegan sources (and I guess most minerals and things too), but in the end, even that doesn’t seem to be equivalent at all to eating plant proteins. So: Rather obvious that mussles do cover just perfectly what we need, or actually not so clear?
Don’t know much about accumulated heavy metals, but they’re really low on the food chain, so they’re a priori going to have less of those than those higher up the food chain.
What’s likely to have PFAS/microplastics/BPA/other toxic compounds is the canned mussels tins. Do your own research, and consider paying for a Million Marker test to check for your levels of BPA/Phthalates after eating them for a while (with a baseline test if possible) to gauge how bad it is.
Personally, I only buy EU-made canned fish (especially Spain, Portugal, and rarely France). Many manufacturers I’ve talked to personally use BPA-NI cans and have more stringent health regulation than other manufacturers elsewhere. But even then, you’re just buying a better lottery ticket.
I expect raw oysters not to have this problem. It’s likely fresh mussels are the same. So just beware if you intend to consume lots of canned fish.
I did a spot check since bivalves are filter feeders and so can accumulate contaminants more than you might expect. Mussels and oysters are both pretty low in mercury, hopefully this extends to other contaminants.
I also predict they’ll be good at a wide variety of things we don’t know we need yet, since they’re as close to a “whole food” as you can get. You’re eating almost the whole animal, instead of just a part of it.
Thanks. This might just be the nudge to finally try out what I long thought about without ever trying it in practice. Quick questions:
Do we know of any safe upper dose threshold exists (e.g. any excessive accumulated heavy metals from polluted sea or any other imbalances)?
Do we know whether that simple organism is comparably powerful in providing some micro-nutriments that we think we might lack in vegan diet?
To be clear what I mean: It is trivial to get nearly arbitrary “grams of protein” from vegan sources (and I guess most minerals and things too), but in the end, even that doesn’t seem to be equivalent at all to eating plant proteins. So: Rather obvious that mussles do cover just perfectly what we need, or actually not so clear?
Don’t know much about accumulated heavy metals, but they’re really low on the food chain, so they’re a priori going to have less of those than those higher up the food chain.
What’s likely to have PFAS/microplastics/BPA/other toxic compounds is the canned mussels tins. Do your own research, and consider paying for a Million Marker test to check for your levels of BPA/Phthalates after eating them for a while (with a baseline test if possible) to gauge how bad it is.
Personally, I only buy EU-made canned fish (especially Spain, Portugal, and rarely France). Many manufacturers I’ve talked to personally use BPA-NI cans and have more stringent health regulation than other manufacturers elsewhere. But even then, you’re just buying a better lottery ticket.
I expect raw oysters not to have this problem. It’s likely fresh mussels are the same. So just beware if you intend to consume lots of canned fish.
I did a spot check since bivalves are filter feeders and so can accumulate contaminants more than you might expect. Mussels and oysters are both pretty low in mercury, hopefully this extends to other contaminants.
You can see their nutritional profile here. Sky high in B12, great at omega-3s and iron.
I also predict they’ll be good at a wide variety of things we don’t know we need yet, since they’re as close to a “whole food” as you can get. You’re eating almost the whole animal, instead of just a part of it.