Fish Mercury Table
| Tier | Weekly servings | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Best Choices | 2–3 (adults) / 2 (children) | salmon, cod, canned light tuna, tilapia, shrimp, pollock — 40+ species |
| Good Choices | 1 serving | albacore/white canned tuna, yellowfin, halibut, grouper, Chilean sea bass |
| Choices to Avoid | skip entirely | king mackerel, marlin, orange roughy, shark, swordfish, Gulf tilefish, bigeye tuna |
Advisory: FDA & EPA, Advice About Eating Fish. A serving is the palm of your hand: 4 oz adults and pregnancy, 3 oz ages 8–10, 2 oz ages 4–7, 1 oz ages 1–3. Fish caught by family or friends: check the local advisory first, else cap that water at one serving this week. Related: meat temperature table, food storage times table, protein intake calculator.
Fish is the protein the dietary guidelines want you to eat MORE of — twice a week or more — and the one with a built-in ceiling: mercury accumulates, and it accumulates faster in big long-lived predators. The FDA and EPA advisory sorts every common species into three tiers — Best Choices at 2 to 3 servings a week, Good Choices at 1, and a short Avoid list — and the tuna counter shows why reading the species matters: canned light tuna sits in the Best tier while albacore and yellowfin drop to Good.
The serving is smaller than dinner intuition too: a serving is the palm of your hand, 4 ounces for adults and pregnancy, stepping down to 1 ounce for toddlers. Enter what was already eaten this week and this tool reads the remaining allowance straight off the advisory tiers — including the zero rows, because the Avoid list has no weekly math, only a line.
How to use
- Pick the species — the tier (Best, Good or Avoid) comes straight from the FDA and EPA joint table.
- Pick the eater's age group, since a serving is 4 ounces for adults but 1 to 3 ounces for young children.
- Enter servings already eaten this week and read what is left of the weekly allowance.
Frequently asked questions
How much canned tuna is safe to eat per week?
Canned light tuna (skipjack counts) is a Best Choice: 2 to 3 servings a week for adults, 2 servings for children. Albacore and yellowfin are Good Choices at 1 serving a week — the species on the label is doing the work, because bigger tuna carry more mercury.
Which fish should be avoided entirely?
Seven make the FDA and EPA Choices to Avoid list for the highest mercury: king mackerel, marlin, orange roughy, shark, swordfish, tilefish from the Gulf of Mexico, and bigeye tuna. There is no weekly allowance math for these rows — the advisory simply says skip them, especially during pregnancy.
How big is one serving of fish?
The advisory's own guide is your palm: 4 ounces for adults and during pregnancy or breastfeeding. For children it steps with age — about 1 ounce at ages 1 to 3, 2 ounces at 4 to 7, 3 ounces at 8 to 10, and 4 ounces from age 11.
How much fish should children eat?
Two servings a week from the Best Choices list, in the age-sized portions above. The childhood rows matter most because mercury's effects scale with body weight — the same filet is a bigger dose for a 30-pounder than a 180-pounder.
What about fish caught by family or friends?
Check the local advisory first — lakes and rivers can carry their own mercury warnings that override the national tiers. Without an advisory, the advisory's fallback is conservative: limit locally caught fish to one serving that week and eat nothing else from that water.