Is Shrimp Healthy For You?

Shrimp pond after harvest

Shrimp is the second most commonly consumed seafood in the United States behind only tuna. Many people believe shrimp is healthy for you. Researchers often point to the “low fat” value of shrimp. The low fat diet myth created in the 1980′s has been debunked by many scientific studies such as the Harvard Nurse’s Health Study. Shrimp may be low in fat, but T. Colin Campbell‘s research teaches us that it’s not the animal fat that we need to watch out for, but the animal-based protein. However, food producers are still keen to convince people of the health value of these little guys.

replacing beef with shrimp isn’t healthy eating

The United States has the worst rates of heart attacks in the world, and we are eating 1.3 billion pounds of shrimp per year. It’s hard to imagine how much more we could possibly eat. Studies that look to answer the question: is shrimp good for you, subtract beef or eggs from a test subject’s diet and replace it with shrimp. When you remove two of the most hurtful foods from a person’s diet, you will see measurable increases in health markers. It’s almost impossible to eat something worse than ground beef with ammonia. These studies seem very persuasive, However, if they added shrimp to a whole foods plant-based diet, they would create a much different picture.

chemicals used to produce shrimp

Is shrimp healthy for you? Locavore gives us many solid reasons why you really don’t want to eat shrimp:

…a dry [shrimp] pond should be prepared by spreading urea and superphosphate to encourage plankton growth. Once the pond has been filled with brackish water, generally pumped from a nearby creek, it is typically covered with diesel oil to kill off any insect larvae. The water is then treated with piscicide – a substance that poisons any competing aquatic life- such as chlorine or rotenone; the latter has been strongly linked to Parkinson’s disease in humans…

The adulteration of shrimp does not end at the pond… shrimp are routinely soaked in a solution of sodium tripolyphosphate, or STPP, a suspected neurotoxicant, still legal in the United States, that prevents seafood from drying out in transit and boosts product weight. Borax, best known as a hand cleaner and insecticide, is used to preseve the color of shrimp in some countries. The most unscrupulous countries use caustic soda to chemically burn tiger shrimp a customer-pleasing pink.

The list of toxic chemicals used in shrimp production:

Urea
Superphosphate
Diesel oil
Piscicides (Chlorine, Rotenone)
Pesticides
Antibiotics (including Chloramphenicol and Nitrofurans)
Antibiotic resistant bacteria
Sodium tripolyphosphate (STPP)
Borax
Caustic soda

Excerpts from the book Bottom Feeder by Taras Grescoe. Lets not forget that most of the shrimp in the World is produced in China where some of the World’s worst pollution happens.

Response from the comments: Seafood and shrimp are bad because of us, not because they’re meat. We’ve poisoned the oceans and lakes, and now shrimp are burdened with things like mercury. Farmed fish and shrimp are just as bad, especially since they tend to feed them more dead fish, and they’re often housed in poor conditions or partitions sections of natural bodies of water. Fundamentally, however, shrimp and other seafood are the best meats that omnivorous people should be considering…. scroll down to read the rest.

Comments About Is Shrimp Healthy For You?

// 10 comments so far.

Chandelle // November 16th 2009

Wow, that picture is worth a thousand yucks. I posted this one to Facebook. I haven’t eaten shrimp in years but it’s good to be reminded of all the really gross reasons to keep on keepin’ on.
Greg // November 25th 2009

When I first stopped eating meat, I tended to waver when it came to fish. A lot of reporters like to write about how healthy fish oil is. My father was a commercial fisherman until fishing died; there’s simply not enough fish left in the ocean for people to eat.

Anyone who spends time reading about farmed fish and shrimp will very quickly realize how gross the entire process is.

I was wondering where that Facebook traffic came from, thanks for posting it.
Sage // June 27th 2010

Urea is not a “toxic chemical.” In fact your body makes it on a regular basis. It’s a key ingredient in Urine and it’s relatively harmless.

This post is just as one-sided and full of false propaganda as posts from people on the opposite end of the spectrum who endorse meat. This is a gross exaggeration.

How do you explain people who eat diets high in beef, eggs and/or shrimp and live to be in their 70′s and 80′s? I guess they’re just super-human aliens who can somehow withstand the flood of live-destroying chemicals that get pumped into meat by the gallon every day.

Misinformation is misinformation; it doesn’t matter if you’re on the “good” side or the “bad” side. Ever seen those Truth commercials regarding cigarettes? They were just as dishonest and one-sided, which is deplorable regardless of the positive message they intended to convey.
Greg // June 27th 2010

Thanks for taking the time to comment Sage. Taking a critical look at the way we eat is one of the hardest things any of us ever has to do. My greatest concern with the heavy use of Urea, a fertilizer, is the extensive damage it causes to the environment in runoff. Toxic algae blooms have been devastating the gulf of Mexico for decades before the most recent oil spill.

I spent some time working in a hospice where every client was dying a painful death from the many forms of cancer. The scientific evidence has been mounting for a number of years that our reliance on a meat-based diet laden with chemicals and pesticides has been contributing to the raising number of cancers in the western world. The evidence suggesting a link between heavy meat consumption and heart attacks is even more compelling. If you’d rather eat shrimp from the oil soaked gulf or from shrimp farms with, at best, questionable practices, that’s your choice. We choose the safer path for our family, but it’s a choice each of us has to make for themselves.

Since none of the chemicals are required to be on the label of the food product we buy, we really have no way to know what was put into our food.
Med // March 01st 2011

With all the respect to all of the comments stated above, I do not think any food in the world right now is safe. With the over-grown world population, there is more demand on food. The food industry is growing and they have to match demand, and the only way to do it fast is to use different chemicals, genetically engineered product, and with the use of different method of harvesting and growing vegetables, fruits animals fast enough to match demand.
Don’t think that you’re safe if you stop eating shrimp, or tuna, or all meet together; vegetables, and fruits do more harms to your body than you may think, since they are produced using dangerous pesticides, and do not think the FDA will protect you. FDA says as long as the product does not kill people in 10 years range it is safe to use it. You don’t want to live your life in fear all the time, you cannot circumvent from everything, like eating in the restaurant not knowing that the guy who prepared your food did not clean his hand when he went to the bathroom. We are living in an era where there is no escape from eating the food sold in our markets or the chemical we use in our household or the air we breathe in our cities. We just have to live our life without worry; the fear itself will shorten our lives. Our parent did live longer without having to worry about anything. Thanks
fidel // October 14th 2011

Med: You must not be familiar with the work of Bruce Ames at UC Berkeley and numerous others with respect to your comment, “vegetables, and fruits do more harms [sic] to your body than you think, since they are produced using dangerous pesticides.” Ames’ work, replicated by many others and now the gold standard in human toxicology, clearly shows that even consuming conventionally-produced fruits and vegetables in the U.S. extend longevity in humans, improve health outcomes and reduce health care costs. Many grocery stores sell produce with no detectible pesticide residue, and many producers of produce, especially where most of the U.S.’s produce is grown, California, use the lowest amount of pesticide in the world. I choose organic produce whenever I can, but it is not because I worry that eating fruit and vegetables “harms” my body. Gosh, even our mothers taught us when young, “eat your vegetables.”
gabe // January 11th 2012

I’m looking at switching to a whole foods diet…or at the very least…drastically decreasing my meat/animal protien intake. While I do believe that science supports the benefits of a whole foods diet…why do you fail to recognize that there may be some nuritional advantages to shrimp. Seems to me that in moderation…especially if they aren’t farmed they would be ok in a diet. Thoughts?

(Maybe a vegan site isn’t the best place to ask this )

http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=107
Greg // January 11th 2012

That’s a fair question. And my answer is that the shrimp your grandfather ate simply doesn’t exist anymore. Farmed shrimp is a terrible product due to unethical producers, lack of regulation, and the overall capitalist system that values income over health.

You think wild shrimp is the perfect alternative? Well, there are several reasons that I don’t eat wild shrimp. The main ones are:

1. Wild shrimp populations have been harvested to the brink. Commercial fishing has been all but non existent for more than 20 years.
2. There’s this little company you may have heard of called BP. They insist gulf sea food is safe, but after the millions of tons of chemical dispersants and unimaginable quantities of oil that were dumped into the gulf, I’m not going to get my food out of it. I’m sure most of the pollution has settled to the bottom, and I’m not expert on the life patterns of aquatic life, but I’m going to play this one safe and avoid shrimp.

Having said both of those, you can eat almost anything in small quantities and still be a happy, healthy person. What’s more, as long as you’re not getting more than 10% of your protein from animals, you’ll probably still get all the benefits of a vegetarian diet.
BobBiologistPhD // January 26th 2012

Seafood and shrimp are bad because of us, not because they’re meat. We’ve poisoned the oceans and lakes, and now shrimp are burdened with things like mercury. Farmed fish and shrimp are just as bad, especially since they tend to feed them more dead fish, and they’re often housed in poor conditions or partitions sections of natural bodies of water. Fundamentally, however, shrimp and other seafood are the best meats that omnivorous people should be considering. They’re a virtually unparalleled source of lean protein and DHA/omega-3/omega-6. People wonder why those in Norway saw such a huge drop in coronary heart disease and similar ailments during WWII. Some people, like the fraud Campbell, would have you believe it was because of circumstances forcing them on a plant-based diet. But it was actually because of the huge increase in fish consumption.

Eating shrimp and fish can be super healthy. Much more so than beef. Your headings are very misleading and scientifically skewed based on a technicality. Of course a vegan website is going to say shrimp is unhealthy. The reason they’re unhealthy now is because of the crap we’ve essentially put into them. In short: meat by itself = not bad, not poison, not guaranteed cancer and clogged arteries. Meat after we’ve altered it = very bad. We just need to stop poisoning meat. Technicalities are fun, eh?
Greg // January 26th 2012

Thank you for the thoughtful response Bob. I wrote about shrimp because no article for Is shrimp good for you? mentioned pollution or the Harvard Nurses Health study. In fact, none of them other than the CNN piece made reference to any studies at all. Many of us who like to read food studies believe the low fat craze of the 80′s and 90′s was probably more marketing hype than healthful eating.

There are some convincing arguments that wild shrimp is good for you. However, 90% of the wild caught shrimp in the U.S. comes from the Gulf. The media may have forgotten, and the industry is quick to tell everyone that disuprsants and oil pose no risk to our food supply, but I’ll play it safe. The fact is, the sea food the Norwegians ate in the 40′s just doesn’t exist anymore.