7 ms·

Did not read the paper but did not find any reference to omega 6 nor the ratio of omega 6 to 3. There are studies showing that the ratio is more important than

Did not read the paper but did not find any reference to omega 6 nor the ratio of omega 6 to 3. There are studies showing that the ratio is more important than the amount of omega 3 [1]. Because humans typically eat 16:1 (6 to 3) increasing 3 is actually just making the ratio more even which is what matters. A good food for this is flaxseed which is 1:3.5 which is less than fish which can be 1:30 or higher but does not come with the problems of consuming fish. In this reference frame, one can think of avoiding bad ratio foods instead of eating fish. Turns out that basically the most common oils and red meat have ratios of 20:1 (the wrong way) and so just avoiding oil and red meat ends up accomplishing the same goal. As always, nutrition causality is hard to establish, but trying to cut way back on oils and red meat is going to pay much larger dividends than eating more fish. [1] - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12442909/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12442909/

jonmc12 4y ago
Omega-3 index is better correlated with overall health than O3/O6 ratio. Also, flaxseed is a source of ALAs whereas early all O3 health benefits come from DHA/EPA. A great source of info is Dr Rhonda Patrick's interviews w/ Dr Bill Harris. Here is a short clip - https://share.descript.com/view/2w6WidsYZlT https://share.descript.com/view/2w6WidsYZlT
- strken 4y ago
  ALA is metabolised to EPA and DHA, albeit in a pretty lossy way. Is there some reason it wouldn't work as well?
  - astrange 4y ago
    The rate for that seems to depend on the person, and IIRC has been suggested to only happen for women.
    - hosh 4y ago
      It happens for men, just that it is a low conversion rate. The conversion rate is even higher for women who are pregnent or breastfeeding, which makes sense from an natural adaptation point of view. You can also elevate the level of DHA in chicken eggs (up to a point) by feeding the chickens flax seed in their diet. Seems like DHA is nutritious for any young, growing brains. The key thing about the ALA conversion in women is that you're not going to OD on it. Having too much DHA gives you insomnia (though, that is not such a bad thing if by circumstances, you are already sleep deprived). I havn't seen any papers on it, but my personal experience is that the ratio of DHA to EPA is also important for mental health. EPA seems to help with smoothing out burnout and protect against spiraling into depression.
- hervature 4y ago
  Yes, I know, we can keep going down this rabbit hole. Turns out that a completely vegan diet, which has no DHA, is completely sufficient to sustain the body [1]. The human body is incredibly adaptive and increases its efficiency of converting ALA to DHA/EPA. This conversation I think will shake down how the heme iron/non-heme iron efficacy research. A study long ago showed that non-heme uptake was much poorer than heme iron and so the conclusion was something like "you need to eat 10x the non-heme iron" which has since become "conventional" wisdom. When you remove heme iron (stop eating meat), your body is able to absorb non-heme iron at the same rate. We call this a "smart drug" which changes uptake based on concentration levels. Basically, the study participants at the time ate so much meat that their iron levels were so high that non-heme iron is not processed. Edit: The other thing I wanted to say is 1 tbsp of flaxseed has 2.4g of ALA and that the adequate intake of ALA is 1.6g and 0.3g of DHA/EPA. If we assume a 10% conversion rate for both (depends on many factors and a tad high), you get 0.24g of DHA/EPA. So, 2 tbsp of flaxseed and you're good. I put it in my smoothie in the morning. [1] - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16087975/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16087975/
  - hosh 4y ago
    You can get DHA from algea sources and still eat vegan. There is also a sex-linked difference between ALA conversion to DHA/EPA, with women, and women who are pregnant or brestfeeding converting significantly more ALA to DHA than men. Men were converting far less than 10% while women were converting more than 10%.
  - BlargMcLarg 4y ago
    >The human body is incredibly adaptive They say this and then don't address the elephant in the room: the huge fall-out rate concerning vegans going ex-vegan. Additionally, "completely sufficient to sustain the body" is about the lowest barrier to entry one can set. People aren't interested in sustenance alone, even if you take away cultural factors.
    - jossclimb 4y ago
      Source for the 'the huge fall-out rate concerning vegans going ex-vegan.' please?
vatican_banker 4y ago
> does not come with the problems of consuming fish What kind of problems do mean? Environmental? Or health-related problems?
- hervature 4y ago
  Both, heavy metals in the fish and unsustainable fishing practices.
  - webnrrd2k 4y ago
    Thats true for most fish, but not all -- sardines have much lower levels of heavy metals, and are gererally more sudtainable. Canned sardines have been a cheap, easy way to add health fish to my diet, with (relative to salmon, etc...) has minimal environment impact.
    - adrianN 4y ago
      It's of course true that eating apex predators like tuna is worse than eating sardines, but by fishing sardines you're greatly reducing the available food for species that eat sardines. The fundamental problem that we take out too much fish remains. That's also why krill oil is only a little better than fish oil: krill is an important part of the food chain and we're fishing too much of it.
  - eurasiantiger 4y ago
    Also microplastics, dioxins…
- herbst 4y ago
  There is no or very little locally sourced fish for a huge portion of the population too. Fish can't be the final solution
_c3ag 4y ago
meat can be a good source of omega-3, but the animal should be fed from pasture strictly, as their unequal ratio of o3/6 comes from their food, which is mainly corn and soybeans, which are very high in o6 and not o3… you can identify grass feed meat by looking at a yellow colour spectrum in their fat… but again, vegetables are way more healthier, cheaper and _rants-in-vegan_
- eurasiantiger 4y ago
  Vegetables and grain are not vegan unless they’re organic. Crops are sprayed with glyphosate and all the commercial formulations include animal tallow.
  - hervature 4y ago
    Not sure if you are a troll or a "hardcore" vegan. I am a vegan and I think people like you are the reason why people take issue with veganism and make fun of it. Animals shit on the ground to make manure. Guess we can't eat the plants that benefit from animal labor. Oh wait, that's organic fertilizer.
    - eurasiantiger 4y ago
      The difference between being a vegetarian and being a vegan is that the latter avoids using any animal products, no matter how trivial the amount. Glyphosate doesn’t make vegetables non-vegan, the animal fat used in its sprayable formulations does that. Vegetables and grains come with a slight coating of animal fat that is then mixed in with whatever food is made using those ingredients.
      - top_kekeroni_m8 4y ago
        No, the definition of veganism clearly states: "Veganism is a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude—as far as is possible and practicable" The important part being "as far as is practicable". Nobody is a perfect vegan, as that is close to impossible, but you can get very close and prevent a lot of unnecessary suffering and lower your carbon footprint.
LoveMortuus 4y ago
>A good food for this is flaxseed which is 1:3.5 which is less than fish which can be 1:30 or higher but does not come with the problems of consuming fish May I ask what problems there are with eating fish?
- leidenfrost 4y ago
  Mercury
- djmips 4y ago
  Allergies for many.
- bell-cot 4y ago
  Availability - whether for the poor in many areas, or at scale, due to overfishing and the collapse of many fisheries. (Then there's the knock-on environmental damage of commercial fishing & overfishing & ...)
  - melagonster 4y ago
    yes, most of sea were emptied by rich countries in past. it is a small list, there are not enough fish for everyone.
- myshpa 4y ago
  Other comments to your question + also bycatch & plastic Some links: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_fishin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_fishin... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seaspiracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seaspiracy
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
andy_ppp 4y ago
I think there is almost no debate that eating sea food twice per week is good for you especially from high quality sources. Now you can get decent Omega 3 supplements from plankton but largely the only way these days is from fish; eggs and meat also used to be higher in Omega 3s but we feed them the wrong diets - grass fed beef is good for this too. I think this comment conflates health arguments with vegetarian morality arguments which is unfortunate. The article is specifically talking omega 3s something the vast majority of vegetarian and vegan diets are low in (no Flax seeds don’t count). Morally speaking maybe Vegans should consider farmed oysters twice per week, they are high in Omega 3 and have no central nervous system or brain to stress out about their delicious end.
- Shaanie 4y ago
  You'll have to be more precise about what kind of seafood. Afaik eating larger fish is thought to overall be a negative for you due to heavy metal accumulation.
- adrian_b 4y ago
  There are 3 kinds of commercial nutritional supplements with DHA and EPA: fish oil, krill oil and oil of Schizochytrium. Fish oil, either from oily fishes or from cod liver is by far the cheapest. In Europe, a typical price is around $0.20 per gram of DHA+EPA. Krill oil is much more expensive than either fish oil or oil of Schizochytrium, so it is a choice that does not make sense. The oil of Schizochytrium qualifies as a vegan oil. When it has appeared on the market some years ago, it contained only DHA and a negligible quantity of EPA. Some vendors still sell this old kind of Schizochytrium oil. Then it seems that either other strains of Schizochytrium have been discovered, or they have been genetically modified, and an improved oil of Schizochytrium began to be produced, with a proportion 2:1 between DHA and EPA. Now the only remaining disadvantage of the oil of Schizochytrium is the price. However, in the last 2 years the price of the fish oil has remained constant, while the price of Schizochytrium oil was reduced by more than 2 times, so it can be hoped that in a few years improvements in the cultivation methods might cause the price of the Schizochytrium oil to match the price of the fish oil. In Europe, the price of the Schizochytrium oil is now around $0.80 per gram of DHA+EPA, sometimes a little less than that. Whoever buys omega-3 nutritional supplements, regardless of what kind, should better take care to always compute the price per gram of DHA+EPA. There is a huge number of shameless supplement vendors whose products have similar prices with the good products, but which contain very low concentrations of the active substances, so that the effective price per gram of DHA+EPA may be even 10 to 15 times higher than at the decent vendors.
bleuchase 4y ago
> Turns out that basically the most common oils and red meat have ratios of 20:1 (the wrong way) and so just avoiding oil and red meat ends up accomplishing the same goal. It’s inaccurate and misleading to group red meat and oils together. Beef, and grass fed beef in particular, is generally 5:1 ratio. Or less. Chicken has more omega 6 than beef. And seed oils (not all oils) have many times that. Some >50:1. Thanks for the vegan propaganda though.
- lm28469 4y ago
  The irony of talking about vegan "propaganda" and "grass fed beef" in the same sentence...
  - bleuchase 4y ago
    > The irony of talking about vegan "propaganda" and "grass fed beef" in the same sentence... Those statements are in two separate sentences. Now please, finish your attempt at a thought. Is it a conspiracy theory that cows eat grass?
  - Smithalicious 4y ago
    Care to elaborate?

jonmc12 4y ago

Omega-3 index is better correlated with overall health than O3/O6 ratio. Also, flaxseed is a source of ALAs whereas early all O3 health benefits come from DHA/EPA. A great source of info is Dr Rhonda Patrick's interviews w/ Dr Bill Harris. Here is a short clip - https://share.descript.com/view/2w6WidsYZlT https://share.descript.com/view/2w6WidsYZlT

strken 4y ago
ALA is metabolised to EPA and DHA, albeit in a pretty lossy way. Is there some reason it wouldn't work as well?
- astrange 4y ago
  The rate for that seems to depend on the person, and IIRC has been suggested to only happen for women.
  - hosh 4y ago
    It happens for men, just that it is a low conversion rate. The conversion rate is even higher for women who are pregnent or breastfeeding, which makes sense from an natural adaptation point of view. You can also elevate the level of DHA in chicken eggs (up to a point) by feeding the chickens flax seed in their diet. Seems like DHA is nutritious for any young, growing brains. The key thing about the ALA conversion in women is that you're not going to OD on it. Having too much DHA gives you insomnia (though, that is not such a bad thing if by circumstances, you are already sleep deprived). I havn't seen any papers on it, but my personal experience is that the ratio of DHA to EPA is also important for mental health. EPA seems to help with smoothing out burnout and protect against spiraling into depression.
hervature 4y ago
Yes, I know, we can keep going down this rabbit hole. Turns out that a completely vegan diet, which has no DHA, is completely sufficient to sustain the body [1]. The human body is incredibly adaptive and increases its efficiency of converting ALA to DHA/EPA. This conversation I think will shake down how the heme iron/non-heme iron efficacy research. A study long ago showed that non-heme uptake was much poorer than heme iron and so the conclusion was something like "you need to eat 10x the non-heme iron" which has since become "conventional" wisdom. When you remove heme iron (stop eating meat), your body is able to absorb non-heme iron at the same rate. We call this a "smart drug" which changes uptake based on concentration levels. Basically, the study participants at the time ate so much meat that their iron levels were so high that non-heme iron is not processed. Edit: The other thing I wanted to say is 1 tbsp of flaxseed has 2.4g of ALA and that the adequate intake of ALA is 1.6g and 0.3g of DHA/EPA. If we assume a 10% conversion rate for both (depends on many factors and a tad high), you get 0.24g of DHA/EPA. So, 2 tbsp of flaxseed and you're good. I put it in my smoothie in the morning. [1] - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16087975/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16087975/
- hosh 4y ago
  You can get DHA from algea sources and still eat vegan. There is also a sex-linked difference between ALA conversion to DHA/EPA, with women, and women who are pregnant or brestfeeding converting significantly more ALA to DHA than men. Men were converting far less than 10% while women were converting more than 10%.
- BlargMcLarg 4y ago
  >The human body is incredibly adaptive They say this and then don't address the elephant in the room: the huge fall-out rate concerning vegans going ex-vegan. Additionally, "completely sufficient to sustain the body" is about the lowest barrier to entry one can set. People aren't interested in sustenance alone, even if you take away cultural factors.
  - jossclimb 4y ago
    Source for the 'the huge fall-out rate concerning vegans going ex-vegan.' please?

vatican_banker 4y ago

> does not come with the problems of consuming fish What kind of problems do mean? Environmental? Or health-related problems?

hervature 4y ago
Both, heavy metals in the fish and unsustainable fishing practices.
- webnrrd2k 4y ago
  Thats true for most fish, but not all -- sardines have much lower levels of heavy metals, and are gererally more sudtainable. Canned sardines have been a cheap, easy way to add health fish to my diet, with (relative to salmon, etc...) has minimal environment impact.
  - adrianN 4y ago
    It's of course true that eating apex predators like tuna is worse than eating sardines, but by fishing sardines you're greatly reducing the available food for species that eat sardines. The fundamental problem that we take out too much fish remains. That's also why krill oil is only a little better than fish oil: krill is an important part of the food chain and we're fishing too much of it.
- eurasiantiger 4y ago
  Also microplastics, dioxins…
herbst 4y ago
There is no or very little locally sourced fish for a huge portion of the population too. Fish can't be the final solution

_c3ag 4y ago

meat can be a good source of omega-3, but the animal should be fed from pasture strictly, as their unequal ratio of o3/6 comes from their food, which is mainly corn and soybeans, which are very high in o6 and not o3… you can identify grass feed meat by looking at a yellow colour spectrum in their fat… but again, vegetables are way more healthier, cheaper and _rants-in-vegan_

eurasiantiger 4y ago
Vegetables and grain are not vegan unless they’re organic. Crops are sprayed with glyphosate and all the commercial formulations include animal tallow.
- hervature 4y ago
  Not sure if you are a troll or a "hardcore" vegan. I am a vegan and I think people like you are the reason why people take issue with veganism and make fun of it. Animals shit on the ground to make manure. Guess we can't eat the plants that benefit from animal labor. Oh wait, that's organic fertilizer.
  - eurasiantiger 4y ago
    The difference between being a vegetarian and being a vegan is that the latter avoids using any animal products, no matter how trivial the amount. Glyphosate doesn’t make vegetables non-vegan, the animal fat used in its sprayable formulations does that. Vegetables and grains come with a slight coating of animal fat that is then mixed in with whatever food is made using those ingredients.
    - top_kekeroni_m8 4y ago
      No, the definition of veganism clearly states: "Veganism is a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude—as far as is possible and practicable" The important part being "as far as is practicable". Nobody is a perfect vegan, as that is close to impossible, but you can get very close and prevent a lot of unnecessary suffering and lower your carbon footprint.

LoveMortuus 4y ago

>A good food for this is flaxseed which is 1:3.5 which is less than fish which can be 1:30 or higher but does not come with the problems of consuming fish May I ask what problems there are with eating fish?

leidenfrost 4y ago
Mercury
djmips 4y ago
Allergies for many.
bell-cot 4y ago
Availability - whether for the poor in many areas, or at scale, due to overfishing and the collapse of many fisheries. (Then there's the knock-on environmental damage of commercial fishing & overfishing & ...)
- melagonster 4y ago
  yes, most of sea were emptied by rich countries in past. it is a small list, there are not enough fish for everyone.
myshpa 4y ago
Other comments to your question + also bycatch & plastic Some links: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_fishin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_fishin... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seaspiracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seaspiracy
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

andy_ppp 4y ago

I think there is almost no debate that eating sea food twice per week is good for you especially from high quality sources. Now you can get decent Omega 3 supplements from plankton but largely the only way these days is from fish; eggs and meat also used to be higher in Omega 3s but we feed them the wrong diets - grass fed beef is good for this too. I think this comment conflates health arguments with vegetarian morality arguments which is unfortunate. The article is specifically talking omega 3s something the vast majority of vegetarian and vegan diets are low in (no Flax seeds don’t count). Morally speaking maybe Vegans should consider farmed oysters twice per week, they are high in Omega 3 and have no central nervous system or brain to stress out about their delicious end.

Shaanie 4y ago
You'll have to be more precise about what kind of seafood. Afaik eating larger fish is thought to overall be a negative for you due to heavy metal accumulation.
adrian_b 4y ago
There are 3 kinds of commercial nutritional supplements with DHA and EPA: fish oil, krill oil and oil of Schizochytrium. Fish oil, either from oily fishes or from cod liver is by far the cheapest. In Europe, a typical price is around $0.20 per gram of DHA+EPA. Krill oil is much more expensive than either fish oil or oil of Schizochytrium, so it is a choice that does not make sense. The oil of Schizochytrium qualifies as a vegan oil. When it has appeared on the market some years ago, it contained only DHA and a negligible quantity of EPA. Some vendors still sell this old kind of Schizochytrium oil. Then it seems that either other strains of Schizochytrium have been discovered, or they have been genetically modified, and an improved oil of Schizochytrium began to be produced, with a proportion 2:1 between DHA and EPA. Now the only remaining disadvantage of the oil of Schizochytrium is the price. However, in the last 2 years the price of the fish oil has remained constant, while the price of Schizochytrium oil was reduced by more than 2 times, so it can be hoped that in a few years improvements in the cultivation methods might cause the price of the Schizochytrium oil to match the price of the fish oil. In Europe, the price of the Schizochytrium oil is now around $0.80 per gram of DHA+EPA, sometimes a little less than that. Whoever buys omega-3 nutritional supplements, regardless of what kind, should better take care to always compute the price per gram of DHA+EPA. There is a huge number of shameless supplement vendors whose products have similar prices with the good products, but which contain very low concentrations of the active substances, so that the effective price per gram of DHA+EPA may be even 10 to 15 times higher than at the decent vendors.

bleuchase 4y ago

> Turns out that basically the most common oils and red meat have ratios of 20:1 (the wrong way) and so just avoiding oil and red meat ends up accomplishing the same goal. It’s inaccurate and misleading to group red meat and oils together. Beef, and grass fed beef in particular, is generally 5:1 ratio. Or less. Chicken has more omega 6 than beef. And seed oils (not all oils) have many times that. Some >50:1. Thanks for the vegan propaganda though.

lm28469 4y ago
The irony of talking about vegan "propaganda" and "grass fed beef" in the same sentence...
- bleuchase 4y ago
  > The irony of talking about vegan "propaganda" and "grass fed beef" in the same sentence... Those statements are in two separate sentences. Now please, finish your attempt at a thought. Is it a conspiracy theory that cows eat grass?
- Smithalicious 4y ago
  Care to elaborate?