the Effect of Cooking on Methylmercury, Arsenic, and

Overview

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Fish provides a means of food security and offers an elevated nutritional value (1). The
Methylmercury is the main Hg species found in fish muscle, representing over 80%
4.0/). organic species (iAs ranges from <2 to 30% of total As) (13–16). In its organic form, As can be
(BW) and fed ad libitum a conventional basal diet for growing pigs (Table 1) until surgery.
Table 1. Conventional basal diet for growing pigs and treatments. Metal(loid)s values (wet weight) are presented as
Basal Diet, Nutrients 1. Amount (%)
Soybean meal 48% 15.1
Treatment 3 (n = 6) Pig Number MeHg (µg) %MeHg 4 TSe (µg) TAs (µg) %AsB 5
1 Basal diet contained 17.8% protein, 0.73% Ca, 0.52% P, 140 ppm Zn, 18 ppm Cu, 479 ppm Fe, 143 ppm Mn (analyzed values), and 3082 kcal
to 375 ± 0.4 g. ND: not detected. * Pig 1 received both cooked and raw treatment a week apart. 4 %MeHg is the proportion of THg that is
methylated. 5 %AsB si the proportion of As that is AsB.
received a single dietary treatment (Table 1) on the experimental day. Exceptionally, Pig 1
(due to moisture lost in the oven). Final metal(loid)s levels are presented at Table 1. On
average, cooked tuna meals contained 14% more MeHg than the raw treatment, resulting
citrate (>99%), 0.50 g of malic acid (>99%), 420 µL of lactic acid (>85%), and 500 µL of
acetic acid (99.7%), mixed in ultrapure Milli-Q water to a final volume of 1 L. For the
Serum. Prior to THg analysis in serum, 200 µL was digested in 1500 µL of 70% HNO3
adjusted to 2 mL with Milli-Q water (>18.2 MΩ/cm), diluted 1:4 with 2% HNO3 . Aliquots
of HCl (OmniTrace Ultra, EMD, St. Louis, MO, USA) and 250 µL of ultrapure 5% HNO3
1C (n = 48). Whole blood and serum were treated in the same manner. As detailed by
(2:1) (>99.8 and 99.9%, respectively, Fisher Scientific, Waltham, MA, USA) was used for the
materials (SERO, Billingstad, Norway) and obtained a mean recovery of 98 ± 0.8% (n = 28)
for WB THg, 100 ± 3.4% (n = 7) for serum THg, 91 ± 3.5% (n = 13) for WB and serum
MeHg combined, and 90 ± 17.4% (n = 34) for WB and serum for other metal(loid)s.
were 102 ± 2.8% (n = 23) for THg, 97 ± 6.5% for MeHg, and 92 ± 0.01% (n = 2) for Se
and As. Finally, 101 ± 3.4% (n = 4) was measured for MeHg in the PBET soluble fraction.
Detection limits of metal(loid) analyses are presented in Table S1.
used as basal levels (t0). The fraction (%) of intake metal(loid) in the blood compartment at
estimated at 7% of BW (L/kg) (52,53), and metal(loid) intake corresponds to the quantity
of the metal(loid) in tuna meal (µg) (Table 1). Mean pig BW was 56 ± 5.4 kg (CV = 9.6%)
(Figure 1). We measured a mean gastric and GI bioaccessibility of 41 ± 6% and 64 ± 3%, (Figure 1).
that 64 ± 3%, was
for the raw treatment (n = 5). It suggests that gastric digestion was mainly
the solubilization of MeHg because the intestinal digestion alone accounted for only 23% of
decrease was observed using cooked tuna, with bioaccessibility values of 8 ± 1% and
values of 8 ± 1% and 31 ± 2% (n = 5) for the gastric and GI compartments, respectively.
31 ± 2% (n = 5) for the gastric and GI compartments, respectively. Again, 23% of the MeHg
Again, 23% of the MeHg solubilization occurred in intestinal digestion. These results sug-
gest that cooking decreased consumer exposure to MeHg by 33%.
consumer exposure to MeHg by 33%.
as illustrated by the mean concentrations as a function of time for both treatments (Figure 2,
trated by the mean concentrations as a function of time for both treatments (Figure 2,8 ofAll

Methods (brief)

on MeHg in vivo availability. We fed pigs raw and cooked tuna meals and collected blood samples
In vitro digestion has emerged as a rapid, cheap, and highly replicable tool for as-
digestion as a surrogate of in vivo studies for iAs bioavailability from soils (22,23). Because
in vitro digestion of MeHg from fish muscle to evaluate its in vivo bioavailability. MeHg
and we collected portal blood samples periodically for 540 min post-meal. Emphasis was
parallel, we conducted in vitro digestion using the same tuna meals (raw and cooked) to
replication with 5 pigs included in this paper, for each of which we collected detailed data
for the in vitro digestion procedure and was kept at −20 ◦ C until the experimental day.
For the cooked treatment, tuna samples (427 ± 4.0 g) were placed in a previous acid-
tuna samples were kept at −20 ◦ C until the experimental day. Each tuna sample was
subsampled (±20 g) and preserved in the freezer until metal(loid) analysis (−20 ◦ C). The
On the experimental day, pigs were moved to the metabolic cages, and blood samples
(4 mL) were collected simultaneously from the two catheters at five minutes before the
the following seven hours for a total of nine postprandial hours (total blood samples: 12
by microcentrifugation. Aliquots of collected arterial and PDV blood were frozen for
collected after centrifuging the blood samples at 1800× g for 10 min at 4 ◦ C. The serums
2.3. In Vitro Digestion Experiment
using HCl (OmniTrace Ultra, St. Louis, MO, USA, EMD) before the digestion procedure.

Implications

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Update history

The five most recent substantive edits to this page, classified major (evidence or structure moved), correction (a published value or statement was wrong and has been fixed), or minor (narrative rewritten without changing the underlying evidence). Each description is derived from what the edit did to this page; the linked commit is the authoritative record, routine regeneration passes are excluded, and the full version history lives in git. When DOI minting comes online (see schema docs), each entry below will also link to a version-pinned DataCite DOI.

Commit	Date	Change	Description
b01ec52c	2026-08-04	major	2 sections added
d49e450f	2026-08-03	major	5 sections added; narrative text revised