Omega 3 eggs aren’t cheap, but are they good value?

Just about everything you eat now seems to be fortified with the Omega 3 essential fatty acids. And of course as we have pointed out many times on this website the Omega 3 essential fatty acids are very good for your health, so what’s wrong with that?

Well of course as with all these things it’s important to dig a little deeper before you accept something on face value. So let’s dig a little deeper into Omega 3 eggs.

We should begin by saying that eggs are not normally devoid of the Omega 3 essential fatty acids. In fact eggs should have plenty of Omega 3 fats in them. However the operative word there is “should”.

Unfortunately the average egg that you buy in the supermarket now has very little of the Omega 3 fats. There is a very specific reason for that, it’s modern farming practices.

You see the Omega 3 fats found in eggs used to come from grass. The chickens ate the grass and the Omega 3 went into their system and ended up in the eggs.

That’s exactly how you get the Omega 3 essential fatty acids in fish. Fish at the bottom of the food chain eat seagrass, which is also high in the Omega 3 fats. Therefore they take Omega 3 fatty acids into their system and their oil is correspondingly high in fatty acids.

And those Omega 3 fats work their way up the food chain as bigger fish eat smaller fish.

In the past we used to get our eggs from chickens which free ranged. They used to have a wide range of food sources, including all sorts of insects, and grass.

Yes believe it or not chickens eat grass. In fact the authors of this website have their own chickens, and are constantly amazed at how much grass they eat.

But modern chickens are not allowed to free range, or if they are it is usually rare that there is grass available to eat. More commonly they are fed chicken pellets or grains or soy products. These are not high in the Omega 3 fats.

And since the fatty acids come from their diet if there are none in their diet they don’t get any in their system, and if there is none in their system there will be none in their eggs.

That would seem to be an argument for eating Omega 3 fortified eggs. Lets see.

Of course the first thing to note is that Omega 3 eggs are more expensive than regular eggs.

But surely if you’re getting your Omega 3′s in the eggs the extra cost is worthwhile? Not necessarily.

You see not all of the Omega 3 essential fatty acids are created equal. DHA and EPA are the most important of the Omega 3 fats for your health. These are the ones which are found in fish oil and which used to be found in chicken and eggs, before modern farming practices changed.

However there is another type of Omega 3 fat called ALA. ALA is a precursor to DHA and EPA, meaning that it is converted in your body to DHA and EPA. And there’s a problem with that.

The problem is not that it is converted, the problem is how well it’s converted. It is generally recognized that it takes a large amount of ALA to convert into a very small amount of DHA and EPA. Estimates are that as little as under 1 percent of ALA is converted into more useful DHA and EPA.

ALA is cheaper than DHA and EPA, and therefore that is the fatty acid most commonly found in Omega 3 fortified eggs. So in effect you’re getting very little of the Omega 3 fats, certainly not enough to justify the cost, in fact you’d be much better if you spent your money on Omega 3 supplements which are filled with DHA and EPA, not ALA.

And the same applies to many other Omega 3 fortified foods, read the label and you’ll find that in almost all cases the Omega 3 fat in the food is ALA.

So why do they bother fortifying the eggs, or the other foods? It’s marketing silly, it’s all about selling more eggs.

It’s very difficult, though not impossible, to find eggs fortified with DHA and EPA, if you do then you’re getting much better value, though in our view it’s still much better value again to buy fish oil supplements and avoid paying a lot more for your eggs, or for any other Omega 3 fortified foods. Read the rest of this entry

The Omega 3 Summit has recognized the health benefits of Omega 3 oils

We have talked at length about the health benefits of Omega 3 oils on this website. Unfortunately there are still many people who rate Omega 3 oil supplements along with many of the more esoteric nutritional supplements.

Many of the more esoteric nutritional supplements have very little scientific backing. But the same is not true for the health benefits of Omega 3 oils.

This has been backed up in the last few days, on 4 March 2011, with recommendations just released from the Omega 3 Summit

The Omega 3 Summit took place on the 3rd and 4th of March 2011 in Bruges, Belgium. It was a global summit intended to examine the health benefits of the Omega 3 fats and to “start the turnaround” in long chain Omega 3 consumption worldwide.

The summit was addressed by some eminent experts on the subject. Not only were the health benefits of Omega 3 oils considered but also the best sources of these oils, and the sustainability of those sources.

And the official press release issued at the end of the summit emphasises the importance this worldwide summit placed on the health benefits of the long chain (LC) fatty acids EPA and DHA.

A document was signed by attendees of the summit observing that “brain and heart disorders resulting from LC-Omega 3 (EPA + DHA) deficiency are the biggest challenges to the future of humanity”.

That’s a serious statement. It indicates the level of concern that these experts have in the decline, particularly in the western world, of our intake of the essential fatty acids DHA and EPA.

The summit also observed that “associated costs are currently bankrupting health care systems and threatening wider economic instability worldwide”.

That is also a very serious observation, and underlines the fact that many modern lifestyle diseases may well be prevented by an adequate intake of the Omega3 oils, and that the growing number of people suffering from these diseases threatens to overwhelm our health care systems.

And it is a recognition, by people expert in the field, that increasing our intake of the Omega 3 essential fatty acids will help prevent many of these conditions.

The issue of Omega 3 oil dosage was also considered, with the recommendation being a dietary intake of greater than 1000 milligrams of long chain Omega 3 oils for anyone consuming a Western type diet.

Another matter which attracted their attention was the poor conversion of ALA, one of the Omega3 fats, into DHA. ALA is the fatty acid commonly found in plant sources, and DHA is the fatty acid commonly found in fish. ALA is effectively a precursor to DHA and must be converted to DHA in the body, however this conversion is very poor, and for this reason many of the commonly recommended plant sources of the Omega 3 fats are not an adequate source of essential fatty acids. Read the rest of this entry

Find out more about the benefits of fish oil for your heart. New research has uncovered some more reasons why your heart, and blood, loves it.

There’s no doubt that increasing the amount of Omega 3 essential fatty acids in your diet is good for your heart. It’s well known, and it’s confirmed by the American Heart Association, that maintaining a minimum intake of the Omega 3 essential fatty acids helps reduce your risk of heart disease and dying from a heart attack.

But new research is showing that there are other aspects of heart health that may also benefit from some more of those good essential fatty acids in your diet.

One of the reasons why the essential fatty acids are considered good for the heart is because it is now understood that these fats help thin your blood.

This is good because one of the causes of major cardiovascular incidents is blood clots. For example a stroke is caused by a blood clot.

And in fact most people who have suffered from a stroke are put on medication to help thin their blood to reduce the risk of another blood clot causing another stroke.

And it’s not only strokes, patients suffering from a range of other heart disease is can also be put on blood thinning medication.

A new study just released has shown that the effectiveness of blood thinning drugs can be improved by adding a dose of Omega-3 fatty acids to the diet in conjunction with taking the blood thinning drugs.

This study was undertaken at Jagiellonian University in Poland, and was specifically looking at the possibility of improving the outcome for patients who already had a stent in place for pre-existing coronary artery disease. Find out more about the details of the study here.

A stent is a very small tube made out of mesh that can be placed in arteries in the body to assist in their ability to successfully carry blood. It is used in instances where there is a possibility or a likelihood of a restriction in the flow of blood through a particular blood vessel, and a stent helps prop open that blood vessel to keep the blood flowing.

Commonly people with coronary artery disease are given stents to open clogged arteries where this may increase the likelihood of some form of cardiac events such as a heart attack.

In this study patients who had a stent, or who were being given a stent, and who were taking blood thinning drugs, were also given Omega 3 capsules as well as encouraged to eat oily fish, for it’s Omega 3 content. The amount of Omega 3 given was 1000 milligrams per day for the study group, and of course a placebo for the control group. Read the rest of this entry