Interview with Dr Steve Nugent

Can you tell us about modern toxins and how they affect newborn children? Do you have any advice for expectant mothers and for people planning pregnancies who want to give their children the best start in life?

Yes. Prenatal nutrition in extremely important – more now than ever before in history because of the chemicals in our environment. There have been studies done on various aspects of diet and chemical exposure that indicate problems with the offspring, ranging from developmental disorders to low appetite to death. Some of these chemicals are being seen in seafood now, and if you were to do a survey, you would find that the majority of women who are given the choice between red meat or fish while pregnant will choose fish. This turns out not to be as healthy as they thought. Fish have no option. They have to swim through whatever chemicals are in the water and inevitably these are passed through their tissues. As a result, they tend to be saturated with these chemical more than land-based animals. At one time I may have recommended fish as an excellent food, but no longer. A study done at the Great Lakes region linked a high intake of Great Lakes fish with developmental disorders in the offspring of the mothers who all thought that they were doing the right thing for their children.

Have they found that infants born in the Unites States already have dangerous levels of synthetic chemicals in them?

Unfortunately, this is the case. I think that the strongest supposition is that there is a link between the number and amount of chemicals in the environment and the tremendous number of children diagnosed with ADD and ADHD. No child has a Ritalin deficiency. There has to be a reason that we are having such a sudden increase in the phenomenon in the US and in the rest of the world. If you look at the chemicals which are suspected – but not confirmed – to cause this, the US also leads in exposure to these chemicals. It is not evidence, but is certainly food for thought.

We had a question about omega-3 fatty acids in wild fish as opposed to farmed fish. It was found that the farmed fish contained higher amounts. Is there anything in farmed fish which ought not to be there, and what is your view on farmed fish as opposed to wild fish?

As part of my research, I looked at the relative safety of ocean salmon as opposed to farm-raised salmon, and it appears that farmed salmon almost everywhere, including Australia, is more toxic than the ocean salmon. Logically you may think that it should be the opposite – that obviously the ocean is a more toxic environment to the farm-raised salmon would be cleaner. What everyone missed was what the salmon consumed. The farm-raised salmon are fed a protein concentrate which is made of ocean fish, so they re eating more toxins than the ocean fish are eating. This is an important issue because omega-3 fats are very important for your health. Regarding fish oils, there is a process which was developed at Harvard University to remove the toxins, such as PCBs and dioxin, while leaving the omega-3 fats active and intact.

So fish oil is not necessarily just fish oil, as you may be getting a concentrates dose of PCB’s and dioxin in the process?

Yes, in fact you could be getting as much as 12 times the level of PCBs in the fish oil. The companies which use the Harvard extraction process have a safe product, but it comes at a premium dollar price. The thing is to determine which products use the process. However, a higher dollar price does not mean that the product is cleaner. You need to look for the data, and the companies which use it will be happy to show it to you.

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