Anecdotal data - as a Sardinia native, we do eat seafood, but to be honest around me at least that's at most a once a week practice. My grandpas, which lived to 96, 98 and 101, didn't eat much fish either. Lots of veggies though. One of my grandfathers died young due to a heart condition.
All of them were regularly checking their health and doing regular blood tests. I can confirm we don't see getting tested as being "obsessed with our health" but as a good (and for many, not very pleasurable) practice, part of the "preventing an illness is better than curing it" philosophy. Having cheap/free healthcare also helps.
Goes to show how important culture and religion can be in diet. Eating seafood instead of meat once a week, usually on Friday, is a widespread Christian practice called the Friday Fast. [1]
In Europe, I know a lot of people that still stick to this practice even without practicing Christianity.
Oh, there was some people following the Friday thing, but I've only heard about it during lent and not everyone is following it - it's quite going out of fashion esp with younger generations.
Younger people make up a smaller and smaller percentage of the total population every year though.
Ironically though, the young that do practice Friday fasting are much more likely, demographically, to have children. So I imagine the practice will continue for many centuries.
According to science it should be better than red meat. Additionally, a lot of seafood comes in smaller portions, is full of bones, shells and whatnot, whereas it’s relatively easy and cheap to get large quantities of fully edible red meat. It’s not that you couldn’t have a pound of peeled shrimps, but my own experience with seafood says it’s not very common.
So overall you’re most likely ending up eating less meat, and not just different meat.
Better how? What science? Do you have a citation? Most comparative diet studies are only observational with multiple confounding factors and no proper controls.
Fish can also have lots of mercury that meat lacks. It's probably best to eat a variety of different foods in order to avoid excess toxins and nutrient deficiencies.
There’s some interesting research suggesting that mercury poisoning is in fact just pulling out the availability of selenium for bio chemistry by forming metal ion complexes
I wouldn't say predominant, but certainly present! But we each represent a different set of connections, as I said, this kind of data is anecdotal ^^
I'd say i eat way more fish here in Japan than back in Sardinia.
When I was in Athens, a kilogram of fresh caught sardines ran about 2 euro for a kilo. Thats cheaper than canned!
On Crete, it was a bit more expensive at 4 euro per kilo but I never paid more than 4 euro for a pound of fish. thats cheap enough to make fresh caught fish a daily meal
