The World Peace Diet: Eating For Spiritual Health And Social Harmony

Hunting and Herding Sea Life / 97
of algae and a consequent depletion of oxygen, bringing suffocation to
fish and sea life. One such dead zone of over 7,000 square miles is off
the coast of Louisiana, where every day the Mississippi River dumps billions
of gallons of water poisoned by agricultural runoff and industrial
discharge into the Gulf of Mexico, wreaking havoc on its delicate and
mysteriously interconnected marine ecosystems. 4 To eat animals who
live in our earth’s waters is to eat our own noxious pollution, concentrated
many times.
We know that environmental toxins concentrate in the fatty tissue
of all animals. This basic fact should give us pause. Both freshwater and
saltwater fish amass and store toxic substances and carcinogenic chemicals
in their flesh in concentrations that are actually hundreds of thousands
of times greater than in the water itself. There are two basic reasons
for this. First, fish breathe water, passing it over their gills to
extract vital oxygen. Thus, through breathing, all fish consume an enormous
amount of water, and the toxins tend to collect in their gills and
end up in the fatty tissues of their flesh. Secondly, large fish are carnivores
who live on smaller fish, who in turn live on even smaller fish,
who eat still smaller fish. Unlike land animals and birds, who are mostly
herbivorous, with a few “top carnivores” who may eat the much
more plentiful mice, rabbits, deer, and so forth, fish live in a more carnivorous
world. At each level the concentration of toxins multiplies
exponentially. We like to eat mainly larger fish, like tuna, swordfish,
shark, and salmon. Researchers know that the flesh of large fish contains
extremely high concentrations of toxins, and that according to the
Environmental Protection Agency, for example, carcinogenic PCB concentrations
in fish are roughly nine million times the concentration in
the water. 5 Shellfish also become highly toxic because they typically live
closer to shore and are thus bathed in waters that have higher concentrations
of noxious effluents. The more toxic agricultural and industrial
runoff we produce, the more toxic the flesh of water-dwelling creatures
becomes.
Because humans have become the planet’s “top carnivore,” our
flesh has become perhaps the most toxic, reflected in our high cancer
rates. It is an unfortunate beginning for a baby to drink the milk of an