[DiabloD3]

One of the larger problems I've found with the vegan diet is, where do you source your Omega 3 from? ALA (found in flax and chia seeds) has low bioavailability as opposed to EPA and DHA found in fish and eggs.

Not only that, flax and chia seeds are very high in Omega 6, thus promote dangerous levels of inflammation.

So, can a vegan please explain to me how your community has managed to solve this?

[marricks]

Fish get their Omega 3 from algae, and so that's probably the best and most direct way to get it. That's what Soylent does for Omega 3's using bio reactors.

Also, vegans are healthier than the average population with lower rates of death in major categories like heart disease[1]. In other words, from the standard american diet to veganism, it's generally much healthier which I think is the better comparison to make.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veganism#Health_effects

[swiley]

I would argue that the reason vegans are much healthier isn't their specific diet but that they're paying so much attention to their diet.

[marricks]

That sounds less of an argument and more of an opinion. Throwing out anecdotal evidence, I'm a vegan and I know a couple dozen vegans, most of us don't pay any attention to what we eat except making sure it doesn't include an animal product.

[bane]

In most measures, vegetarians of most types are healthier than nearly all vegan populations and tend to not suffer from the typical dietary deficiencies that plague vegan populations.

I gotta run, but there's quite a few studies available online about this.

[toasterlovin]

> Also, vegans are healthier than the average population with lower rates of death in major categories like heart disease

That's not really a high bar...

[SwellJoe]

I feel like it's important to point out that the modern approach to diet of picking one nutrient as a magic one, is, well, kinda magical thinking. Omega-3 fatty acids, beyond the minimum amount your body needs, haven't been shown to be a cure for anything and supplementation hasn't been shown to improve outcomes or performance. You need it, yes; but you probably don't need to build your diet around it. e.g. from WikiPedia:

"Dietary supplementation with omega-3 fatty acids does not appear to affect the risk of death, cancer or heart disease. Furthermore, fish oil supplement studies have failed to support claims of preventing heart attacks or strokes."

OK, so even if we assume we need more Omega-3 than a normal vegan diet contains, most meat also does not contain a good balance of Omega-3 to Omega-6. Eggs are only a good source if they have been supplemented with flax or other good sources of Omega-3. Fish is often a mixed bag, when it comes to health; it may be better to get our nutrients from the same place they get it. Seaweed and other edible ocean plants are a pretty good source of Omega-3 and are healthy on other fronts, too.

Finally, there are many normal foods that have a good Omega-3 to Omega-6 balance. Walnuts and other nuts, most seeds, several kinds of fruit and vegetables (while it's a smallish amount, the balance is good and you really don't need mega-doses).

In short, if you're eating a diverse vegan or vegetarian diet, you almost certainly don't need to think about any specific nutrient (except B12 for vegans, which does need to be supplemented, or obtained via nutritional yeast that has B12). You're just as likely to have specific nutritional deficiencies on a meat-based diet; folic acid deficiency is a common problem of a meat-heavy diet that would not trouble a vegan or vegetarian, for example.

A balanced and diverse diet is the right answer to questions about food and nutrition. Laser-focus on any one particular nutrient is probably counter-productive, unless there's a specific reason to focus on it (some people have difficulty processing some nutrients, for example, but Omega-3 isn't one of them, to my knowledge).

In short: Omega-3 is the new fad nutrient. There will be another in a year or two, and the entire health nutrition industry will figure out ways to sell you books, and pills, and diet plans, and the food industry will figure out how to cram more of it into foods, and we'll find that, like most of the other supplements over the years, it doesn't really do anything. You need some to be healthy; you don't need gallons of it to be healthy.

[marricks]

I completely agree that laser focusin on one nutrient isn't good, buy even if you were fixated on omega 3s bioreactors making algae is healht and way more efficient than fish, and where they mostly get their omega 3's anywyas.

[mrob]

Although this is no good for religious vegans, if you are only following a vegan diet for health/ethical/environmentalist reasons, it's hard to argue against eating rope-farmed salt-water mussels. They are high in long chain omega-3 fats.

See:

https://sentientist.org/2013/05/20/the-ethical-case-for-eati...

The article approves of oysters too, but note that oysters may contain oyster crabs:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oyster_crab

[crustygirl]

They are rich in mercury in my waters, so I don't want to consume them :D

Although eating animals that do not have a central nervous system is equivalent to eating plants, so it should be vegan.

[madaxe_again]

Forgive my ignorance, but is the presence of a nervous system really the defining factor? What about mycelium in mushrooms, which operates as a signalling network?

I know a guy who will only eat windfall foods - plants that have died a natural death or fruit that have fallen from the tree (super hardcore fruitarian), and won't eat germplasm (I.e. Seeds - wheat, nuts, etc.) which seems to me, if the reason is ethical, to probably be the right place to draw the line.

Personally I'm an omnivore, but try to keep my meat consumption generally very low.

[crustygirl]

Central is the key word. Mushrooms have no chance of being sentient in any sense we consider significant.

Baby cows can be traumatized by separation from their mother and scarred for life. Cows are also mourning the loss of their best friends for a long time. Many other animals that human use for agriculture clearly fit the description of sentient beings that have a "wish" to live.

[joveian]

As others have mentioned, there are a variety of algae based vegan EPA and DHA supplements on the market now, but most people probably don't need to worry about it. Some people do not feel good when switching to a vegan diet, and EPA/DHA supplementation might be something to try. There is a lot of vegan food in the world and two vegans can easily have completely distinct diets.

One particular supplement I like is Green Foods True Vitality, which I think is the least expensive for vegan DHA supplementation: http://www.greenfoods.com/store/p/44-True-Vitality-Vanilla.a...

It isn't bad on its own, but I mix it with my usual soy drink which is NOW Foods soy milk powder (which is just powdered soybeans; sadly the only equivalent with rice is rediculously expensive), (vegan) cane sugar (because it is much less expensive than maple syrup :( ), a dash of ground whole stevia herb (to reduce the amount of sugar needed), and a little vanilla powder. Quite delicious :).

Edit: After reading SwellJoe's excellent reply again I would also like to emphasise that many fruits and vegetables have really excellent nutritional profiles and just eating more of them can solve most nutritional issues. Even with vegan diets it is quite easy to not do that, but it is almost certianly the healthiest option.

[PerfectElement]

It's likely that vegans don't suffer from EPA and DHA deficiency because the body gets better at converting them from ALA. As this study have found: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20861171

From the study: "Despite having significantly lower intakes of EPA and DHA (from fish or fish oil), blood levels of EPA and DHA in vegans and vegetarians were approximately the same as regular fish eaters.

The results indicate that the bodies of vegetarians and other non-fish-eaters can respond to a lack of dietary omega-3 EPA and DHA by increasing their ability to make them from omega-3 ALA.

And as they said, "The implications of this study are that, if conversion of plant-based sources of n-3 PUFAs were ... sufficient to maintain health, it could have significant consequences for public health ..."

To be safe, I occasionally take an omega-3 supplement from algae.

[mrob]

Humans vary in their ability to elongate fatty acids. It's possible that poor elongaters fail to thrive on a vegan diet and revert to a omnivorous diet, biasing the sample. We'd need a randomized controlled study to see if this is important.

[WalterSear]

Several studies have found omega-3s in the bloodstream of vegans (I'll try and post links later), which suggest it endogenous production of it's metabolites actually occurs at a low level.

While this doesn't get you into the recommend blood levels of omega-3 oils (it's mostly suprising because it's been found at all, and consistently), I have not seen a non-drastic method for meeting the amounts of omega three that the science reccomends, vegan or not.

Omega fat science is quite out of whack with the dietary recomendations commonly made. If you do the math, in order to acheive the ratios that are described in most papers I've read, one would need to forgo all omega 6 sources (olive oil, tofu, many other things), or consume unrealistic amounts of omega-3 oil each day to offset them. (I once calculated it to be in the region of a pint of omega-3 rich oil a day)

I'm equally mystified, but about the whole thing.

[cryodesign]

I try to add more foods that contain omega 3 to my diet, such as walnuts, cooking with rapeseed oil, spirulina powder in my smoothies, avocados.

Or simply get some supplements like this one here: http://www.nothingfishy.co/

Also don't forget your B12 and D3 vitamins.

[erdogin]

Not a vegan but algal oils look promising.

http://www.foodprocessing.com/articles/2012/algae-dha-health...

[crustygirl]

According to [1] the conversion rate puts the required daily intake of 2 teaspoons of flaxseed oil per day to meet the EPA and DHA RDA.

GMO could easily solve the problem of omega-3 and B12. [2]

[1]: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9637947

[2]: http://www.gmo-compass.org/eng/database/plants/63.rapeseed.h...

[__s]

Soy & walnut have plenty of Omega 3