The short answer
In current U.S. FDA/EPA guidance, canned light tuna, which is often skipjack, is a Best Choice. Albacore or white tuna and yellowfin tuna are Good Choices. Bigeye tuna is a Choice to Avoid during pregnancy. Ahi can mean yellowfin or bigeye, so the exact species matters.
U.K. NHS guidance uses a different format: it says not to eat more than 4 cans of tuna or 2 tuna steaks a week during pregnancy. Use the guidance for the country you live in, and ask your clinician or maternity service if you need advice for your medical situation.
Have the label or menu in front of you?
Nouri works better when you keep the exact tuna wording, amount, preparation, country, timing, and symptom context together. Use it to organize the question, not to replace your clinician or local public-health guidance.
The one-minute tuna check
If you are standing in a grocery aisle or staring at a sushi menu, do this before you search again:
- Copy the exact tuna wording. Look for canned light, skipjack, albacore, white, yellowfin, bigeye, or ahi.
- Separate mercury from preparation. Mercury depends on the fish type. Raw, seared, poke, sushi, sashimi, tartare, or ceviche is a foodborne-illness question too.
- Count the serving in the right country. U.S. FDA/EPA advice uses Best, Good, and Avoid categories. U.K. NHS advice uses a weekly tuna limit, so do not mix the two systems into one rule.
- Save the details if you already ate it. Note the tuna type, amount, preparation, country, timing, symptoms, and any recall or exposure clue before asking Nouri or your care team.
This is the practical piece most generic tuna answers miss: the same word can mean a lower-mercury canned option, a one-serving Good Choice, or a fish to avoid.
Start with the tuna type
The word tuna is too broad for a good pregnancy answer. Use the package, menu, or fish counter name first, then compare it with the public-health category that applies.
| Tuna wording | U.S. FDA/EPA category | What to do with that detail |
|---|---|---|
| Canned light tuna or skipjack | Best Choices | FDA/EPA recommends 2 to 3 adult servings a week from Best Choices. One adult serving is 4 ounces. |
| Albacore tuna or white tuna | Good Choices | FDA/EPA recommends 1 serving that week and no other fish that week from the Good Choices category. FDA/EPA says albacore typically has about three times more mercury than canned light tuna. |
| Yellowfin tuna | Good Choices | Treat it as a one-serving Good Choice unless your local authority or clinician gives different advice. |
| Bigeye tuna | Choices to Avoid | Current FDA/EPA and ACOG guidance say to avoid bigeye tuna during pregnancy because of mercury. |
| Ahi tuna | Depends on the species | Ahi may mean yellowfin or bigeye. Do not guess from the word ahi alone. Ask for the species or choose a clearer option. |
Interactive guide
Look up tuna and other fish
Search the FDA/EPA mercury chart by fish name. The checker keeps tuna types visible so a broad search for tuna does not hide the high-mercury and lower-mercury differences.
62 matching fish
Best Choices
Eat 2 to 3 servings a week
- Anchovy
- Atlantic croaker
- Atlantic mackerel
- Black sea bass
- Butterfish
- Catfish
- Clam
- Cod
- Crab
- Crawfish
- Flounder
- Haddock
- Hake
- Herring
- Lobster, American and spiny
- Mullet
- Oyster
- Pacific chub mackerel
- Perch, freshwater and ocean
- Pickerel
- Plaice
- Pollock
- Salmon
- Sardine
- Scallop
- Shad
- Shrimp
- Skate
- Smelt
- Sole
- Squid
- Tilapia
- Trout, freshwater
- Tuna, canned light (includes skipjack)
- Whitefish
- Whiting
Good Choices
Eat 1 serving a week, with no other fish that week
- Bluefish
- Buffalofish
- Carp
- Chilean sea bass / Patagonian toothfish
- Grouper
- Halibut
- Mahi mahi / dolphinfish
- Monkfish
- Rockfish
- Sablefish
- Sheepshead
- Snapper
- Spanish mackerel
- Striped bass (ocean)
- Tilefish (Atlantic Ocean)
- Tuna, albacore / white, canned and fresh or frozen
- Tuna, yellowfin
- Weakfish / seatrout
- White croaker / Pacific croaker
Choices to Avoid
Do not eat during pregnancy
- King mackerel
- Marlin
- Orange roughy
- Shark
- Swordfish
- Tilefish (Gulf of Mexico)
- Tuna, bigeye
This is the U.S. FDA/EPA mercury chart for adults who are pregnant or breastfeeding. One adult serving is 4 oz. It does not answer whether seafood is raw, undercooked, recalled, or handled safely, and cooking does not remove mercury. Check cooking guidance.
For fish caught by family or friends, follow local advisories. If no advisory exists, FDA/EPA advice is to eat only one serving and no other fish that week. Guidance and serving sizes differ by country. Your search stays in this browser.
The same lookup has its own page as the pregnancy fish mercury checker, which sets out the serving rule for each category and why ahi on a menu cannot be answered without asking which tuna it is.
Mercury advice is not the same as raw-fish advice
Mercury is already in the fish tissue, and FDA/EPA guidance says cooking does not reduce it. Raw or undercooked tuna raises a different question: foodborne illness. CDC, FDA, and ACOG advise avoiding raw or undercooked fish during pregnancy.
If the tuna is sushi, sashimi, poke, tartare, ceviche, or seared on the outside, check the preparation and the species. A cooked roll with lower-mercury fish is a different question from raw bigeye tuna.
Check raw, cooked, vegetarian, or smoked sushiThere is a third question that gets mixed in with these two, and it catches people who are trying to do the right thing. Fish oil and fish liver oil are not the same supplement. NHS advises against taking fish liver oil supplements such as cod liver oil during pregnancy, because they are high in vitamin A rather than because of mercury. Vitamin A and liver during pregnancy covers where that limit comes from and which supplements carry it.
If you already ate tuna
This question works differently from most pregnancy food worries, and the difference is the useful part.
There is no watch window here
With deli meat or soft cheese you are waiting to see whether symptoms appear, because those are infection questions. Mercury is not. There are no symptoms to watch for over the next fortnight after a tuna sandwich, and no test to ask for. So if you came here looking for a list of things to monitor, the honest answer is that there is not one, and that is not a brush-off.
The exception is raw or undercooked tuna, which is a separate foodborne question rather than a mercury one. That is covered in the sushi and raw fish guide.
Mercury is counted by the week, not the meal
The FDA and EPA advice is built around servings per week. As someone who is or might become pregnant, the guidance is 2 to 3 servings a week from the Best Choices list, based on a four-ounce serving, or 1 serving a week from Good Choices and no other fish that week.
The categories themselves were set that way. FDA calculated how many servings the average pregnant person could eat in a week for each fish type, then sorted them: three or more times a week became Best Choices, once or twice became Good Choices, and less than once a week became Choices to Avoid. So a single serving is the unit the whole system is built from, which is why one meal is not the thing the advice is describing.
What FDA actually says to do about it
This is the line worth knowing, because it is FDA answering exactly this situation: if you do eat fish in the Choices to Avoid category, choose fish with lower mercury levels going forward.
That is the whole instruction. It is forward-looking rather than backward-looking, and it does not involve seeking care or monitoring. If you had a tuna steak or a few extra tins this week, the response the guidance supports is adjusting what you eat over the coming weeks, not treating the meal you already had as a fixed outcome.
Where it is worth raising with your care team is a pattern rather than a meal: regularly eating high-mercury fish over months, or having done so before you knew you were pregnant. That is a real conversation, and it is a different one from a single lunch.
What to write down
Note the tuna type if you know it, whether it was canned, cooked, raw, or seared, the amount, and when you ate it. Then compare those details with your local guidance.
Contact your doctor, midwife, maternity service, or local health service if you feel unwell, know about a recall or exposure, have a medical condition, take medicines that affect risk, or need advice for your own pregnancy.
Check current official food recallsA tuna note worth saving
If the search started because you already ate something, save the facts while they are still fresh. A good note helps Nouri or your care team separate mercury, raw-fish preparation, recall details, and symptoms without guessing.
Copy this structure
I am [weeks] pregnant in [country]. I ate [canned light, albacore, yellowfin, ahi, bigeye, or unknown tuna] on [date/time]. It was [canned, fully cooked, raw, seared, sushi, poke, or another preparation]. Amount: [ounces, cans, steaks, or servings]. The label or menu says [exact wording]. I have [symptoms or no symptoms]. Help me organize whether this is a mercury, raw-fish, recall, or care-team question.
Nouri can help you keep the details together. It cannot decide that you or your pregnancy are safe, so use your clinician, midwife, maternity service, or local health service for symptoms, exposures, medical conditions, medicines, or urgent worries.
How to ask Nouri a better tuna question
Include the exact wording from the label or menu, the country you are in, whether the tuna was canned, cooked, raw, or seared, and how much you ate. A question like "albacore canned tuna, one 4-ounce serving, in the U.S." is much easier to check than "is tuna safe?"
If the package has more detail, include it: packed in water or oil, pouch or can, drained weight, best-by date, lot code, and any allergen or storage wording. Those details do not replace medical advice, but they keep the next step from turning into a guess.
Common tuna questions
Is canned light tuna okay during pregnancy?
In U.S. FDA/EPA guidance, canned light tuna is a Best Choice. The advice is 2 to 3 adult servings a week from Best Choices, with variety across lower-mercury seafood.
Is albacore tuna the same as canned light tuna?
No. FDA/EPA says albacore, also called white tuna, typically has about three times more mercury than canned light tuna. It is in the Good Choices category, not Best Choices.
Should I avoid ahi tuna while pregnant?
The word ahi can point to different species. Yellowfin is a Good Choice in the FDA/EPA chart, while bigeye is a Choice to Avoid. If the menu or label only says ahi, ask which species it is.
What if the menu only says tuna?
Ask for the species and whether it is raw, seared, or fully cooked. If the answer stays vague, choose a clearer lower-mercury cooked option or ask your clinician or maternity service if you need advice for your situation.
Does cooking tuna remove mercury?
No. Cooking can change the foodborne-illness question when seafood reaches the right temperature, but FDA/EPA says cooking does not remove mercury from fish.
Sources reviewed
- FDA: Advice about Eating Fish
- FDA and EPA: Questions and Answers about Eating Fish
- ACOG: Healthy Eating During Pregnancy
- CDC: Safer Food Choices for Pregnant Women
- FDA: Meat, Poultry and Seafood, Food Safety for Moms-to-Be
- NHS: Foods to Avoid in Pregnancy
Sources checked on 1 September 2026. Open each source for its latest version.