Why Even Good Fish Oils Are Not Enough?

It was my brainchild, developed over several years out of the personal desperation that followed pesticide poisoning in 1980. To make it, I had to first invent methods for making oils with health rather than shelf life in mind. That same week, one of the fish oil suppliers began a turf-protecting controversy that has been circulating ever since. ‘The body cannot convert flax oil into fish oils,’ the story told by this fish oil supplier went.

It was not true then, and is not true now, because there is research that shows that, provided there is enough starting material (flax, flax oil, or the plant-based omega 3 essential fatty acid, ALA) in the diet, its conversion to EPA and DPA is quite good in both men and women, and in women, conversion from ALA to DHA is also quite good. ALA to DHA conversion in men is slower.

Body Conversion of ALA to DHA is Critical for Women but not for Men.

What is not pointed out in the advertising done by fish oil suppliers is that this research measured conversion in the body, not in the brain.
Brain conversion of ALA to DHA has not been measured, because few volunteers agree to have brain biopsies taken (drill a hole in your head; take out samples of brain tissue) to measure brain conversion of ALA to DHA.
When a woman gets pregnant, she has to provide DHA for the child’s rapidly developing brain during its most active brain growth phase. Ditto when she breastfeeds the baby. If she cannot make DHA in her body, DHA has to be carted from her brain to her uterus/breasts to build the brain of her fetus/infant. If this becomes necessary, her brain is depleted of DHA, and memory problems, low energy levels, and depression may follow.
For mother’s brain health, it is best to not have to remove DHA from that organ during pregnancy and breastfeeding. If mom gets enough ALA in her diet, she can convert this to DHA in her liver, and to supply this important building block for the child’s brain via uterus and breasts.

Men hardly ever get pregnant, so the body conversion of ALA to DHA is not necessary and not useful. That is why men don’t convert ALA to DHA in their body. There would be no point to it. Unfortunately, the marketing reality we have to face is that no matter how often this is explained, it will not change the story of those whose livelihood depends on convincing us that we’ve got to have fish oil in our diet.

Why Humans Need a Lot of Fat
There is a profoundly simple reason why even good fish oils are not enough.
Humans need a lot (more than 15%, and less than 60% of calories) of fat in their diet. Dogs, cats, and wild carnivores need much less. Cows, horses, and their wild cousins need even less.

What is the average daily total fat intake of a normal healthy adult?
The average adult’s daily intake of fat is about 100 grams. Canadians eat a little less than Americans. Ozzie and Kiwi fat intake is about the same.
Do you know how much of total daily fat intake comes from fish oil?
The usual recommended daily dose of fish oil is 3 to 5 grams.
Those 5 grams of fish oil equals 2.25% of calories in a 2,000-calorie diet. That is not enough fat for human requirement. Even 10% of calories is too little fat, and leads to dry skin, low energy, and deterioration of health. The bottom end of adequate fat intake is 15% of calories. If all of that came from fish oil, we would need to take 33 grams of fish oil, or slurp more than 2 tablespoons of fish oil off a 15ml spoon.
That much fish oil can cause bleeding problems.
That much fish oil can also increase inflammation. My opinion is that PCBs, dioxins, and other industrial toxins, as well as processing-damaged molecules, which often make up as much as 3-5% or even more of the total fish oil, cause this problem. The only fish oil that I know to be undamaged and free of toxic industrial molecules is CO2-extracted fish oil. Of course, the sustainability issue is not addressed even by CO2-extracted fish oil, but at least it does not harm us.
Oils that have been deodorized or molecularly distilled have been heated to high temperatures, and most of these fish oils have been treated with caustic soda and acid, as well as being bleached. They are more damaged by this processing than cooking oils that have been similarly treated. Fish oil omega 3s (EPA and DHA) are about 25 times more sensitive to damage done by light, oxygen, and heat than are the much more stable omega 6-containing nut and seed oils.
Three reasons why human beings need so much fat in their diet:

1. First, our brain, which is mostly made of fat (we are fat-heads after all, and it’s a compliment), is substantially larger than that of most other brained creatures.
2. Second, we lack fur, so fat under our skin is required for insulation as well as cushioning.
3. Third, being naked, we burn fat to keep our body warm. To that end, we burn much more fat in the cold of winter than in the heat of summer.

Foundation Fats and Supplement Fats
Fish oils make up only a very small part of the fat we need to consume on a daily basis. How small? Let’s do the math.
The Fact is 95 of the 100 grams of fats we consume each day are foundation fats.

1. What are foundation fats? Foundation fats are the fats we get in the foods we eat. Most of those fats come from seeds, nuts, meat, dairy products, eggs, and seed/nut oils. They include plant fats as well as animal fats.
2. Everyone must have enough foundation fats. They are major nutrients. We need them in large quantities, along with protein and carbohydrates. Together, these three proteins, fats, and carbohydrates (arguably, we could add water, greens, and oxygen to the list) are sometimes called the ‘pillars of nutrition’ in college nutrition textbooks. They are our bulk nutrients. We need larger amounts of these nutrients than we need of minerals, of vitamins, of antioxidants, or of Phytonutrient. We need more of them than we need of fiber, of enzymes, or of probiotics.
3. We can call the remaining 5 grams of fat we consume supplement fats. These usually come from fish oils, but there are other, better (because cleaner and less damaged) sources of supplement fats, including CO2-extracted fish oils (Minami Nutrition), krill oil (intensely smelly), and unrefined algae oil (the newest, cleanest, undamaged, plant-based, exclusive to FMD and Flora Manufacturing and Distributing (not the Flora margarine people!).

And here is what we need to get clear regarding fat consumption for optimum health:

1. All human being must have enough foundation fats.
2. Some will get better results if they add supplement fats to their foundation fats.
3. None can maintain good health on supplement fats alone.

To substitute supplement fats for foundation fats is like substituting mineral and vitamin pills for foods.
It’s a really bad idea. It doesn’t work for health.