In a rare bit of positive news about the U.S. diet, Americans upped their seafood intake by a pound last year to 15.5 pounds, according to the annual Fisheries of the United States Report released by NOAA last week. Even though that only amounts to about four extra seafood meals per person per year, it constitutes the “biggest biggest leap in seafood consumption in 20 years,” says NPR.
Health experts would still like to see Americans consume closer to eight ounces of fish a week. Right now, the country hovers at 4.77 ounces a week. Pregnant women are encouraged to eat up to 12 ounces (from low-mercury sources), since the fatty acids found in fish are considered good for pre-natal brain development.
Even though we’re eating more fish, we haven’t branched out to new species. For at least a decade, salmon, tuna and shrimp have dominated American seafood intake, according to the National Fisheries Institute’s most-consumed seafood list. In fact, the jump in seafood consumption may stem from the USDA distributing more than $40 million in canned surplus Alaska-salmon in 2014 and 2015 through The Emergency Food Assistance Program.
At 15.5 pounds per capita, the U.S. is “the second-largest consumer of seafood after China (and ahead of Japan),” says NPR, but as a country we still far prefer chicken and beef. “Americans ate approximately 59.2 pounds of chicken and 51.7 pounds of beef in 2014 — each more than double our seafood intake,” said NPR, based on estimates from Janet M. Riley, senior vice president at the North American Meat Institute.