Young women and girls should stay away from herring, the Swedish National Food agency has warned. Not only might the smelly varieties assault one’s nose - but even fresh herring can damage fetuses and infants.
Ah, herring. Particularly fermented herring. It’s a Swedish speciality, loved and loathed, putrid yet popular.
And like moist snus, it’s one of the crazy concoctions Swedes love so much that they fight in the EU in able to keep them.
Oh, and it can also be poisonous. The fish contains high levels of PCB and dioxin, environmental pollutants with the potential to be highly toxic - and seriously harm fetuses and infants.
The Swedish National Food Agency (Livsmedelsverket) has therefore declared that young women should eat herring, stinky or otherwise, no more than two or three times a year, and try to eat the fish only at the late-August herring celebration - when it’s practically mandatory.
Other than that, let the smell serve as a warning - “Don’t eat me”.
Like your herring in pill form? That’s no better - rotten fish pills are just as risky as “fresh” varieties.
Herring, Baltic Herring, wild-caught salmon, trout, and whitefish from the Vänern and Vättern lakes of Sweden also should be eaten with caution, the agency said.
Children should also stay away from the fish.
But grown men and women passed child-bearing age can do as they like - as long as they don’t eat herring more than once a week, out of consideration for their neighbours as much as their health.
Source: The Local - sr - TT
http://www.thelocal.se/20140818/dont-eat-herring-national-food-agency-sweden