Can you eat oily fish when you are breast feeding?

oily fish

Yes

It's safe to eat whilst you're breast feeding, though it can affect you it is unlikely to affect your baby.

Oily fish have oil in their tissues and in the belly cavity around the gut. Their fillets contain up to 30 percent oil, although this figure varies both within and between species. Examples include small forage fish, such as sardines, herring and anchovies, and other larger pelagic fish, such as salmon, trout, and mackerel.

Oily fish can be contrasted with whitefish, which contain oil only in the liver, and much less overall than oily fish. Examples of whitefish are cod, haddock and flatfish. Whitefish are usually demersal fish which live on or near the seafloor, whereas oily fish are pelagic, living in the water column away from the bottom.

Oily fish are a good source of vitamins A and D, and are rich in omega-3 fatty acids (whitefish contain the same nutrients but at a much lower level). For this reason the consumption of oily fish rather than whitefish can be more beneficial to humans, particularly concerning cardiovascular diseases; however, oily fish are known to carry higher levels of contaminants (such as mercury or dioxin) than whitefish. Among other benefits, studies suggest that the omega-3 fatty acids in oily fish may help improve inflammatory conditions such as arthritis.

A fish is any member of a paraphyletic group of organisms that consist of all gill-bearing aquatic craniate animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish, as well as various extinct related groups. Most fish are ectothermic ("cold-blooded"), allowing their body temperatures to vary as ambient temperatures change, though some of the large active swimmers like white shark and tuna can hold a higher core temperature. Fish are abundant in most bodies of water. They can be found in nearly all aquatic environments, from high mountain streams (e.g., char and gudgeon) to the abyssal and even hadal depths of the deepest oceans (e.g., gulpers and anglerfish). At 32,000 species, fish exhibit greater species diversity than any other group of vertebrates.

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