Omega 3 EPA DHA, Our Evolution in Food Consumption Statistics

Whenever I read new statistics, I always refer back to my favorite expert, Dr. Joseph Hibbeln, National Institutes of Health, one of the world's leading authorities on Omega 3. I read the other day we now have 60,000 pre-packaged food items available in super Wal-Marts, Targets, grocery stores, and back in the 50's we had a mere 2,000 items. And I was reminded of this excerpt from Dr. Hibbeln's radio broadcast :

"I have data from the USDA of how much of every food was consumed from 1909 to the year 2000. We know what was available for purchase in the US diet. Seed oils and these Omega 6's were a very small tenth of a percent or hundredth of a percent of the calories in the US diet in evolution and at the turn of the century. Now they are 20% percent of all calories in the US diet. Where do you find it? Every time you pick up a pre-manufactured food and it says vegetable oil. Soybean oil is called the lubricant of the food industry and it literally is."

It's just so easy to go to fast food restaurants, out to dinner to your favorite restaurant, pick up something pre-packaged for dinner on the way home from work. If you're working 40 hours plus like most of us, have children and maybe a husband or significant other to feed, by the time you get home everyone's hungry and you don't have time or the desire to cook.

Unknowingly, unsuspectingly, never believing all this seed oil could harm us in more ways than calories, we consumed more and more of it in our foods until we've reached a health epidemic in the US. With Harvard reporting 3 out of 4 Americans have either chronic pain, a disease or depression, and with the seed oil link to inflammation established, it seems pretty conclusive, we are drowning in an over-abundance of seed oil. By the way, the statistics just two years ago was 2 out of 3 Americans. Now that's pretty scary.

The best article I've read to help understand the rise in inflammation and the link in diet-related disease is TIME's cover store, Inflammation, The Secret Killer. 2/04. Research has come a long way since that article to state what we know conclusively today - we need Omega 3 EPA DHA on a daily basis, in sufficient quantities, from a molecularly distilled source, to change the balance of fatty acids in our bodies. All we have to do is balance out the over-abundance from seed oil to a balanced ratio from Omega 3 fatty fish. For me, it felt like turning a hose on the fire within smoldering for a while until finally it was extinguished.

A few years ago, when Dr. Perricone's book first came out, The Anti-Inflammatory Diet, advocating salmon at least once a day, twice if possible, I found some relief from painful inflammation. The thought of eating two servings a day was more than I could bear and turned to the shelves for a supplement. Little benefit came at the time but back then, the research wasn't nearly what it is today. Today, we know we can reverse the fatty acid cart in our favor.

by Lois Smithers