Fresh sea food is the best ......................
The Freaky Fish-Borne Illness You've Never Heard Of
If you’re a seafood lover, you should be aware of ciguatera. (Photo: Corbis/Mascarucci)
You know you run the risk of contracting foodborne illness if you eat raw seafood, but there’s a little-known toxin that can show up in some cooked fish — and new research has found it’s more prevalent than scientists previously thought.
A new study published in the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene found that poisoning from ciguatera, a toxin that can make you sick when you eat certain types of fish, is 28 times more common than previous data suggests. The most recent estimate from the state of Florida found that one out of every 500,000 residents becomes sick from ciguatera poisoning each year, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that only 2 to 10 percent of ciguatera cases are actually reported in the U.S.
Ciguatera is found in algae that grows in warm water and it’s eaten by some plant-eating fish, as well as the carnivorous fish that eat them. Barracuda is the most likely to carry ciguatera, says Felicia Wu, PhD, a professor in the Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition at Michigan State University,but it also can show up in more common fish we eat like grouper, snapper, mackerel, and mahimahi.
For the study, scientists analyzed nearly 300 reports in Florida from 2000 to 2011 and conducted an email survey of 5,352 fishermen to estimate how often ciguatera poisoning occurs and where it’s located. While they discovered that ciguatera poisoning happens the most in people who fish near Miami, the Florida Keys, and the Bahamas, if you eat food from those regions, you run the risk of contracting it.
Ciguatera poisoning has even occurred in major metropolitan areas: The CDC issued a report in 2013 about a series of outbreaks that affected 28 people in New York City.
https://www.yahoo.com/health/the-freaky-fish-borne-illness-youve-never-heard-122858958637.html
