Summary
The joint US FDA and US EPA guidance on fish consumption is the operational consumer-facing recommendation for pregnant and breastfeeding women, women who might become pregnant, and children ages 1 to 11. The guidance is structured around methylmercury exposure (the dominant toxic metal in seafood), classifying fish into three categories: “Best Choices” (lower mercury, recommended 2 to 3 servings per week), “Good Choices” (recommended 1 serving per week), and “Choices to Avoid” (high mercury, do not eat). Inorganic arsenic is also addressed for some seafood categories. The chart and FAQ format make this the operational US consumer-facing guidance most often cited in pediatric and prenatal nutrition counseling.
Key categories
| Category | Recommendation | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Best Choices | 2 to 3 servings per week | Salmon, sardines, anchovies, tilapia, shrimp, catfish, pollock, trout, herring, oysters, crab |
| Good Choices | 1 serving per week | Halibut, mahi mahi, snapper, light canned tuna, bluefish |
| Choices to Avoid | Do not eat | King mackerel, marlin, orange roughy, shark, swordfish, tilefish (Gulf of Mexico), bigeye tuna |
The choices-to-avoid list is driven by methylmercury concentration; the avoid threshold is approximately 0.46 ppm methylmercury and above.
Wiki pages updated on ingest
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| a8052bb | 2026-08-09 | major | 4 sections added; narrative text revised |