Benjamin Miller Jones

The Omega Lie

The Omega Lie

[This post was sent to over 400,000 health, nutrition, and pharma professionals via email and received 1000 views on the blog almost immediately. The SEO keywords for this post include, “Omega-3,”good source,” and “egg,” amongst others.]

Is someone lying to us?

Politicians? Yes. Parents? Maybe. Teachers? Probably. Weather men? Who knows. However, this agent is none of these questionable sources and is far more subtle. As one rolls a shopping cart through a grocery store, he or she sees countless advertisements on the packages stating, “a good source of Omega-3,” or “a rich source of Vitamin D.” The shopper kicks the one broken wheel of the cart, pushes the basket toward the so-proclaimed food, and pays three dollars more for the nutritionally advanced product rather than buying one for less. But are these labels always true? According to the President of Academic Society for Functional Foods and Bioactive Compounds and the Founder of Functional Food Center Inc., Danik M. Martirosyan , PhD [1], a food may claim to be a good source of Omega-3, but it may contain very little of the essential fatty acid. For example, in an egg, a company might add only 50 milligrams of Omega-3, while the daily value of omega-3 is roughly 1000 milligrams. If this is the case, one would need to eat 20 eggs in order to consume his or her daily need of Omega-3. Now I do not wish to offend any egg lovers, but eating 20 eggs is outlandish! This means that the extra dollars spent on the Omega-3 eggs is wasted on a farce.

Why is omega-3 important? According to J.-M. Bourre [2], who published in The Journal of Nutrition, Health & Aging©, “Omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids have two major field[s] of interest. The first lies in their quantitative abundance and their role in the development and maintenance of the brain. The second is their role in the prevention of different pathologies, mainly the cardiovascular diseases, and more lately some psychiatric disorders, from stress to depression and dementia.” Omega-3 is critical in neurological and coronary heath and development. Its nutritional value bypasses simple eating etiquette: it can hold immense implications to you and your children’s growth. The greatest source of Omega-3 is fish. “The American Heart Association recommends eating fish (particularly fatty fish) at least two times (two servings) a week,” writes The American Heart Association [3]. But the Omega-3 originates in the algae the fish eat: “These nutrients actually come from algae,” [4]. This begs the question: if 85% of fish consumed by Americans is farmed, do all farmed fish eat these important algae? [5]. If not, then we arrive at a huge problem. If all fish companies claim their product is high in Omega-3 simply because they are selling fish, but certain manufactures do not feed their animals the necessary algae, then any amount of companies are possibly lying.

But are all the compounds of Omega-3 beneficial?

Center for Science in Public Interest [6] delves into this question in its article, “Omega-3 Madness: Fish Oil or Snake Oil,” explaining, “DHA and EPA, the omega-3s found in salmon, trout, other fish, and algae, are linked to a lower risk of heart disease. Another Omega-3, ALA, found in flaxseed and to a lesser extent, canola and soy, may not have the same benefits.” Later it writes, “Silk Soymilk Plus Omega-3 DHA’s label boasts that each cup of milk has ’400 mg of beneficial Omega-3,’ but only the most diligent label readers will notice that the soy milk only contains 32 mg of DHA per serving—again, the amount in just a bite of salmon. The remaining omega-3s are ALA.”After conducting an experiment in France, where volunteers ate high Omega-3 meals for 35 days and then subsided from those meals for 35 other days, Bourre notes that the volunteers’ absorption of ALA shot from 0.75 to 1.65 grams per day while their absorption of EPA + DPA merely rose from 0.11 to 0.25 grams per day [2]. This is problematic because “ALA can be converted to EPA by our tissues,” writes the Grand Forks Herald, N.D. [7], “but that conversion provides only small amounts of EPA. One study indicated that one would need to consume 7 grams of ALA to get the same effect as 1 gram of EPA/DHA.”

What is being done about this?

The Functional Food Center, (FFC), headquartered in Dallas, TX, is working hard to re-institute the rules ordained nationally while also instigating laws that will stand worldwide. The goal of these statutes is to better educate the public and progress toward the general health of society as a whole. One of the largest issues, for reasons like the duplicity of manufacturers, is ignorance. This is  one of the major topics to be addressed for FFC’s 16th International Conference. It will be located in Chengdu, Sichuan, China during July 26-27 and titled, “Functional Foods, Bioactive Compounds and Biomarkers: Research and Practical Application.”

We are encouraging more representatives from FDA, NIH, USDA, and food lawyers participate in our events to educate society and resolve this issue…to ask the FDA simply have a rule for food product manufacturers to mention the amount of Omega-3’s from daily value in product, in one serving size whenever manufacturers advertising about the source of Omega’s. [1]

The overarching theme of the conference is to “bring together experts in medicine, biology, and the food industry to discuss the contribution of functional/medical foods and bioactive compounds in the prevention and management of chronic diseases,” [8]. Food is becoming a powerful influence; it is unifying nations and connecting top scientists, doctors, and food industry workers in order to promote a healthier human population. This cannot happen if countries apprehend functional food or lazily overlook erected laws. At FFC’s international conference at the University of Regensburg, Germany, an idea was conceived for the American government to fund scientists to further investigate the source and mechanics of Omega-3, research its medical prowess, and determine the correct pricing of the product [1]. Please visit the Functional Food Center’s webpage  to learn more about the upcoming conference at: http://functionalfoodscenter.net/16th-international-conference.html. Plus, keep following these blog posts to stay tuned to more in-depth descriptions of the conference’s main themes. “By law, a food item must supply more than 20% of the daily value of a nutritional value to be labeled as a high (rich in, excellent source) value source. A food which provides 10% or more of the Daily Value for a nutrient per serving is a good source, while one providing 20% is considered ‘high in’ the nutrient,” [1]. Collaborating with the Federal Department of Agriculture, FFC can help reveal these lies; therefore, we, the consumers, can confidently purchase higher-quality food.

References    

  1. Martirosyan, Danik M. Personal Interview. 22 May 2014.
  2. Bourre, J.-M. “OMEGA-3, ANIMAL FEEDING, NUTRITIONAL VALUE, AND DERIVED PRODUCTS.” The Journal of Nutrition, Health & Aging©2005, 9(4): 232-242.
  3. “Fish and Omega-3 Fatty Acids.” American Heart Association. 14 May 2014. Web. 23 May 2014. [http://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/GettingHealthy/NutritionCenter/HealthyDietGoals/Fish-and-Omega-3-Fatty-Acids_UCM_303248_Article.jsp]
  4. Spillman, Amy. “From Oil Refinement to Baby Formula.” Quality and Utilization of Agricultural Products, an ARS National Program. Agricultural Research2002, A Link in the Chain: 10-11.
  5. “Getting Hooked on Farmed Salmon: A Good Source of Omega-3s.” United States Department of Agriculture. 22 May 2013. Web. 23 May 2014.
  6. “Omega-3 Madness: Fish Oil or Snake Oil.” Center for Science in the Public Interest. 1 October 2007. Web. 22 May 2014. [http://cspinet.org/new/200710011.html]
  7. Grand Forks Herald, N.D. “Nutrition from the lab: Evidence continues to mount for omega-3s.” Life Extension®.19 June 2008. Web. 22 May 2014.
  8. Functional Food Center. 2014. Web. 22 May 2014. [http://functionalfoodscenter.net/]