59 percent of the tuna Americans consume is not tuna !

Just when you thought eating fish was iffy enough due to Fukushima radiation, the gulf oil spill, mercury and other toxins found in fish, one of the largest seafood fraud investigations in the world to date has found that 59 percent of the tuna Americans consume is not really tuna. Worse still, most of the fake tuna was found to actually be a fish known for causing gastrointestinal problems.

The non-profit ocean protection group Oceana collected more than 1,200 samples from 674 retail outlets in 21 states from 2010 to 2012 to determine if they were honestly labeled. DNA testing found that one-third of the 1,215 seafood samples were mislabeled, according to U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) guidelines.

The fish Oceana found to be most often mislabeled was red snapper, where 87 percent of the samples collected were actually one of several other varieties of fish - such as perch and tilapia. Perhaps the most disturbing finding was that 84 percent of the fake fish substituted for second place tuna was escolar - a fish which can cause explosive, oily, and orange diarrhea.

Escolar, often mistakenly labeled in raw form as a variety of tuna called "butterfish," is a type of snake mackerel that is unable to metabolize the wax esters called gemplyotoxin which are naturally found in its diet. The esters are called gempylotoxin, and are very similar to castor oil or mineral oil and the esters are what gives escolar an oily texture similar to tuna. As a result of the esters, eating full portions of escolar can cause severe gastrointestinal problems.

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