Benefits of fish oil

Here’s why our grandparents didn’t need fish oil supplements.

In an article about essential fatty acids in the Washington Post, William Lands, a retired biochemist with the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) speculates on how the foods we eat have been altered over the course of a century.

Today, most of the animals used for commercial meat are force fed grains, reducing the omega-3 content in the meat. But in the early 1900s, most of the chicken, pork, and beef that people consumed came from free-range animals. Consequently, the meat from those animals was rich in omega-3 fatty acids.

In that simpler time, the average American consumed only a very small amount of soybean oil. But by the end of the century, soybean oil (which has a high omega-6 content) had become an inescapable ingredient in a wide variety of processed foods. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, about 20 percent of the average American’s total calories comes from soybean oil.

Yearly per capita consumption of soybean oil is now around 25 pounds per person. One hundred years ago it was only a small fraction of a single pound per year. Lands says that this increase represents a 1,000-fold jump in omega-6 fatty acid consumption. Which is the primary reason why the ideal omega-6/omega-3 ratio of 1:1 is so hard to achieve.

This dietary revolution may have actually changed the composition of our bodies and brains, according to Joseph R. Hibbeln, chief of the outpatient clinic at the Laboratory of Membrane Biochemistry and Biophysics at the NIAAA. And he wonders to what extent this change may be responsible for the overall behavior of our society.

In 1998 Hibbeln published a paper in The Lancet in which he examined worldwide fish consumption measured against reports of depression worldwide. He found that populations that consumed the most fish had the lowest depression rates, while populations that ate the least amount of fish had the highest rates of depression. And when he examined homicide and suicide rates against fish consumption, the same pattern emerged.

Of course, it would be overly simplistic to blame depression and the wrongs of our society on low fish intake. But Hibbeln’s study certainly makes a good case for including fish oil along with your daily supplements.

To Your Good Health,

Jenny Thompson
Health Sciences Institute