The nice taste of tuna, which is one of the most favorite fish in the market, is truly packed with numerous minerals and vitamins. You don’t need to eat it daily due to its mercury effect, but eating tuna in moderation can provide your body with its required essential nutrients. This fish is also fun to play with because there are numerous recipes you can try to explore its taste and enjoy.
Tuna Nutritional Value
- Omega-3
Omega-3 fatty acids are a great type of fat that is excellent for your health. While you need to cut down the amount of fat in your daily meals, you don’t need to do that when it comes to consume this healthy, nutritious fat. Not only this is great for your health, this is also great for your skin. This is why many people love taking some omega-3 fatty acids supplements to provide the right amount of this beneficial fat to their bodies, but you can naturally take this from tuna.
- Protein
Protein plays an important part in your body in repairing and building tissues. This is also essential nutrient for the nails, hair and all the cells in the body. Consuming protein influences the health of your muscles, bones, blood and skin. Since your body doesn’t store protein like it does in storing carbohydrates, then resupply it is necessary.
- Niacin
Also called as vitamin B3, niacin is great in improving the level of good cholesterol in your body. This has been shown in some studies that niacin is effective in lowering triglycerides and LDL cholesterols, which is a great treatment for controlling cholesterol level. However, such treatment should be under prescription, but if you just want to do some prevention or keep your body healthy from cholesterol, it’s a good thing to consume tuna or other niacin-rich foods.
- Selenium
This is one of the minerals contained in tuna fish and it is available in a high amount. This mineral has antioxidant properties for body cells protection. There are some other minerals including potassium and phosphorus that can be also found in tuna.
- Vitamin B12
There are many benefits of vitamin B for your body to develop blood cells, nutrition the brain to prevent Alzheimer and increase concentration and lower homocysteine to keep you away from heart disease. This vitamin is also great in treating some mental disorders, sleep disorders and week bones. While there are many vitamin B12 supplements at the market, take this naturally from tuna would be a great idea.
Tuna Health Benefits
- Regulating Blood Pressure
Health benefits of tuna for lowering blood pressure is one of the best from fish in earth. Containing high amount of omega-3 fatty acids, tuna helps your blood pressure normal. A combination of this healthy acid and potassium, which can be also found in tuna results in lowered blood pressure in your body. Hypertension or high blood pressure results in the straining on the cardiovascular system and it leads to several chronic diseases like heart attack, so keeping the blood pressure regulated is very important.
However, you should eat the uncanned ones since the canned tuna has lower potassium considering it is higher in the sodium amount. Eating fresh tuna provides your body around 448 milligrams of potassium, which is quite a high amount. The sodium is only 46 milligrams. Lower sodium, higher in potassium tuna is a great blood pressure regulator.
- Boosting Blood Circulation
B vitamins and iron can be found in a quite good amount in tuna and they are important for your blood circulation. Iron deficiency leads to anemia, a condition where your body is lacking of red blood cells. By filling your body with iron, the red blood cell formation can be maintained and the blood can be circulated to the vital organs in your body. With proper blood circulation, the vital organs can function properly.
- Supporting Heart Health
The existence of cholesterol in the blood vessels and arteries can be harmful to your heart health, but omega-3 fatty acids can help reducing the bad fat. So you can cut your high-fat intake foods and eat tuna for preventing heart disease. Just consuming 3-ounce of fresh tuna you can provides your body with 89 milligrams of DHA and 13 milligrams of EPA. These omega-3 fatty acids are great in lowering the levels of triglyceride while eliminating the plaque buildup on the blood cells caused by fat. The heart rhythm can be also maintained to normal by consuming a good amount of omega 3. It is best to replace your high-fat meat with this healthy omega-3-rich fish.
- Boosting Immune System
The high amount of selenium in tuna is a great immune booster since it has antioxidant properties that can protect the body from free radicals. Along with manganese, vitamin C and zinc, selenium would be come much stronger in improving metabolism. Just eat a single serving of tuna already provided your body with almost 100 percent of the required selenium intake daily.
- Preventing Cancer
Since tuna fish is packed with high amount of selenium and other minerals and vitamin supporting antioxidant properties, this fish is good in preventing cancer. The power of selenium in fighting free radicals is just excellent and some studies have shown that breast cancer, kidney cancer and colon cancer can be prevented. You can eat it regularly once or twice a week it doesn’t even have to be tuna. Any kind of fatty fish can work the same so you can mix it with other types to prevent you feeling bored.
- Helping Weight Loss
When you are on a diet, you need low calorie and low fat foods and tuna can be one of them. This is loaded with omega-3 fatty acids that can help stimulating leptin, a hormone in the body that controls the hunger. This hormone can balance your desire in eating, keeping you easier control your appetite. You can prevent overeating or craving something fatty and sweet that can gain you more weight. Make sure you cook it healthily to not add more calories by mixing it with other high-calorie ingredients like mayonnaise.
- Maintaining Balance of Selenium and Mercury
Mercury is the most popular risk of eating too much tuna, but recent studies have stated that the amount of selenium in tuna can balance the mercury to reduce the poisonous effect. This is a form of selenium called selenoneine that helps this balance. However, since the studies conducted in the tuna bodies, more studies should be made to show the benefits for human. As long as you keep your tuna consumption proper, without being too much, mercury won’t be harmful.
- Increasing Growth and Development
Simply consuming a can of tuna fish provides your body 80 percent of its required protein intake daily. Protein is an essential nutrient for supporting the health of your body especially the muscle. By consuming enough protein, your muscle can grow and develop better. This also influences faster wound recovery and boosted energy to keep your body feel work better.
- Reducing Inflammation
An excellent combination of healthy cholesterol and anti-inflammatory minerals in tuna fish is a great prevention from inflammation diseases. By reducing inflammation, the organs in your body can function properly.
- Fighting Kidney Disease
One of the functions of potassium in the body is to keep the balance of fluid. This condition supports to healthy kidney and prevents kidney diseases that make this organ can’t function properly. You should also drink minimum seven glasses of water to help the fluid balance maintenance.
- Providing Energy
Tuna benefits rich of vitamin and mineral, it is provide a lot of energy. B complex vitamins, protein and omega-3 fatty acids are helpful in boosting energy and metabolism. With the metabolism and energy boosted, the organ systems in your body can work more efficient at the same time. For athletes training, apart health benefits of lobster, tuna can even help recovery faster and increasing energy for doing some exercises.
- Treating Depression
Placebo is known for treating depression, but studies have found that fish oil is more effective in reducing depression. The effective medicine for depression like Prozac, which has numerous side effects, can be substituted with tuna fish since this is much more natural and safer. Simply consuming tuna fish in one portion for three or four times a week can provide the reduced depression result.
- Keeping Cell Membrane Healthy
Tuna is rich in protein and when it is cooked, the protein breaking down into peptides, fragments that can acts as a powerful antioxidant for your body. Peptides work by improving the cell membranes and protecting them from free radicals that mostly cause damage. You can boil your tuna and add some seasoning to make it tasted better instead of frying it that could add the bad cholesterol to your body.
- Lowering Triglycerides
The higher amount of triglycerides in your bloodstream, the higher the amount of bad cholesterol would be. If you want the LDL to be reduced, then triglycerides should be cut down as well. Eating tuna twice a week can lower your triglycerides, resulting in lower LDL at the same time and automatically the HDL or good cholesterol can be increased.
- Improving Your Mood
Omega-3 fatty acids combined with selenium can boost your mood and prevent the feeling of anxiety. This is because selenium is good in handling appetite, which significantly influences the mood. This happens especially when you are on a diet because you might feel frustrated of struggling to not eat while you are starving. Get out of the bad mood with tuna is a good idea.
- Supporting Healthy Eye
Still about the excellent benefit of omega-3, it also improves the eye health since it prevents dry eye syndrome from coming. A condition where the vision is lowered can be also prevented by eating omega-3-rich foods like tuna. You can bake your tuna in the oven to keep the numerous nutrients in place instead of grilling or frying it.
- Building Muscle
The high level of protein in tuna is perfect for building your muscle. Protein is an essential nutrient for the muscle, helping it to grow and recover faster. You can get round 30 grams of protein simply by consuming 100 grams of tuna, so this can be a brilliant solution for additional protein intake.
- Strengthening the Bones
Your bones need vitamin D to be healthy and strong and when combined with minerals, this vitamin can prevent some bones-related diseases especially as you are getting older. Tuna is rich in essential minerals that can support the healthy bones.
- Improving Brain Function
The brain needs blood and oxygen supply to work better. Tuna fish comes with high level of omega-3 that can help the blood circulate properly carrying oxygen to the brain. When it gets what it needs, it will be healthier.
- Improving Skin Health
One of the protein can be found in tuna is elastin and it works by providing your skin with the addition of tissue repairs, resulting in smoother and healthier skin. You can use this as an additional skin treatment by adding it with other ingredient like olive oil for more benefits.
- Keeping Insulin from Rising
People with diabetes can consume tuna fish as part of their treatment since it can keep the insulin from rising thanks to the healthy fat. Drink more water to support the effect since dehydrated might boost the insulin level.
- Preventing Stroke
The amount of folic acids and B vitamin complex plays an important role in preventing blood clots, leading to stroke prevention. The fat buildup on the artery walls can be eliminated and the cardiovascular system can be improved as well. Consume it once a week in five servings can reduce around 30 percent of stroke risk.
- Fighting Metabolic Syndrome
Metabolic syndrome leads to some chronic diseases such as cancer, heart disease and diabetes. By consuming omega 3, some symptoms of metabolic syndrome like obesity, high blood pressure, high insulin level and high cholesterol can be controlled to slow down the disorder progress.
- Restoring Skin
Health benefits of tuna for beauty purpose, actually skin have recommendation by expert. The high level of healthy fat in tuna can restore the lost fat in your skin preventing it from dryness. Fatty acids can act as natural moisturizers, so consuming tuna or other fatty fish would be helpful in helping your skin healthy from inside.
Tuna Side Effects
- Mercury Poison
While tuna is great for your kidney and brain, eating too much of it will increase the amount of mercury and this is harmful for the kidneys and brain. Canned tuna contains methyl mercury and it can lead to some symptoms like vision problems, skin numbness, memory problems and even brain damage when consumed too much. Your body can actually excrete the methyl mercury, but it is done slowly. When you eat too much canned tuna, the mercury would be accumulated and is hard to eliminate.
- High Sodium Problems
Canned tunas are usually added more sodium making it has a higher level than the fresh ones. Too much sodium leads to higher blood pressure and it is not good for your health. So if you prefer canned tunas, limit your intake or try the fresh uncanned ones.
- BPA Concerns
Not only canned tunas are containing high level of sodium, they are also contaminated with the chemical from the BPA in the cans. BPA can be harmful to your body when it is too much contaminated in the foods as it is affecting the brain and even fetus behavior
Tips Consuming Tuna
- Healthy Tuna Salad
Salad is usually packed with mayonnaise, but this is high in calories, which is not good for your health and weight. Now substitute mayo with olive oil and vinegar as the dressing would make your tuna salad so much healthier.
- Plain Tuna
If you want a simple and easier tuna, just put add some pepper and salt to your canned tuna, if you think you haven’t enough of it from the can, and drizzle your tuna with lemon juice and crackers to enhance the flavor and nutrition.
- Creamy Tuna Salads
Mayonnaise is a good option for a creamy tuna salad, but you can actually make your tuna taste better with creamy white beans combined with tuna and celery. Improve the flavor with olive oil and lemon juice to make it juicier and tastier.
- Bagel Filling
Skip the meat and cheese filling for your bagel and try a healthier one with tuna and some vegetables. This would be an interesting filling for a delicious bagel since you can pick your favorite fresh veggies to mix.
The best way to eat tuna is actually going with the fresh tuna, not the canned ones. However if you have to eat the canned tunas, you need to limit your intake in only 18 ounces in a month. The tuna should be the yellowfin and albacore in this case. You can eat more canned tunas for around 37 ounces in a month if the tuna is the skipjack or chunk light. So pay attention to the type of tuna as well. Even with fresh tuna you should limit the intake due to the mercury and choose the best way to cook it to preserve the nutrients.