[MarkMarine]

What’s missing from this is how much omega 3 containing food, how often you need to get this protective result.

Do I need to eat fish twice a week? 5 times? Do I need to supplement because there is no way to eat enough fish?

Would love some practical guidance tacked on to this

[svara]

It's really unclear unfortunately.

The correlative effect is quite clear, i.e people who have high omega 3 levels (eat a lot of fish) have health benefits.

But in random controlled trials Omega 3 supplements have not had convincing effects.

It might be because the supplements aren't very good, or because there's actually something completely different going on, like fish displaces less healthy foods from the diet.

[terribleperson]

'the supplements aren't very good' would be believable - a quick glance at the market shows a whole lot of fish oil supplements that provide low amounts of Omega 3s in large amounts of fish oil. Look closer, and you realize a bunch of them are rancid too.

[MarkMarine]

what is "a lot of fish" in this context? Sushi for lunch every day? Thanks for engaging with this in a helpful way.

[ifwinterco]

Fatty fish (salmon, mackerel, herring) has quite large amounts.

Some people aim for huge amounts of EPA/DHA but I don't think there's really much evidence that you need 3g/day or whatever the latest broscience is.

Mackerel is particularly high although it doesn't taste great to me compared to salmon, 100g of mackerel has ~4g of EPA/DHA so eating that a couple of times a week is probably more than enough.

Also there is some (although much less) in white fish, there can be significant amounts in shellfish, and tinned tuna has a surprisingly high amount. So all of that adds up if you eat those as well

[apothegm]

Sardines, too, which are also fishier than salmon but tend not to be salted the way mackerel is.

Unless you’re also consuming all the oil from the can, prefer fish canned in water to canned in oil — because apparently the omega-3s can leach out into oil, but they’re not water-soluble.

Btw, trout is also up there (though not as high as salmon) and is a lovely mild-flavored fish.

[birdsongs]

Not sure what you can find in your country but we have tinned mackerel (with tomato typically) in Norway. I can highly recommend.

It's not thaaat fishy, I didn't grow up eating it. After having it a few times it really grew on me.

Super cheap and an easy way to get it into my diet. I have 2-3 tins per week. I eat it for breakfast mashed on bread (our bread is like a hard cracker), sometimes with a bit of mustard, or butter spread first.

[ifwinterco]

Yep this is common in the UK as well and with the tomato I do prefer it to fresh mackerel, but it's still too "fishy" for me, if I tried to eat 3 tins a week I'd get sick of it pretty quickly.

Maybe genetics, I'm guessing all my ancestors grew up eating dairy and some meat and not so much fish.

It used to be traditional in England to eat kippers for breakfast once a week but that's more or less gone extinct

[darkerside]

I wonder about cultural and ethnic confounding factors

[boston_clone]

I like to get my omegas from the following sources, no fish needed!

- hemp hearts (complete protein, goes best with oatmeal for breakfast, on salads, or in soups for an extra bit of nutty / fatty flavor)

- pumpkin seeds (also good source of iron, iirc)

- algae-based supplement (currently taking an omega3 + vit D + vit K combo capsule from nordic naturals)

[CWIZO]

It's really surprising how many people don't realise where omegas come from and just default to "more fish". Fish get omegas from alge. Simply skip the middle man and all the nasty side effects that has in the form of animal exploitation and harmful substances for humans they contain.

[cogman10]

Fish metabolize and concentrate the oil.

Cows eat grass for protein, we can't really skip the middle man and eat grass to get protein.

I don't know if it's true, but it wouldn't be unusual for there to be benefit from getting omega 3 from fish rather than algea because of something like this. AFAIK, we mostly only know about the benefits of eating fish.

[boston_clone]

like most nutrients, you can weigh them.

for example, you can tell exactly how much protein is in 100g of a complete protein like tofu when compared to 100g of something gross like beef.

similarly, my algae-based capsules contain 1210 mg of omega3s per serving, with 660mg of EPA and 440 of DHA.

> we mostly only know about the benefits of eating fish

nope, this study describes consumption of omega3s, not fish per se.

[goodpoint]

Fish contains a lot of microplastics. Algae-based omega oils do not.

[Finnucane]

Note that one of the authors received funding from Big Walnut.

[cromka]

What's also interesting that some recent studies show eating eggs every day actually is harmful, most likely due to the Omega3 to Omega6 ratio.

So here we go again. First it was cholesterol, which was then rebutted, so people (myself included) started eating eggs every day. And now this. You can't win!

[KempyKolibri]

As I understand it there's no good evidence that n3:n6 ratio matters, _as long as both are at adequate levels_. Studies showing the ratio to be of concern achieve a "low n3:n6 ratio" by low n3, rather than high n6.

Eggs are believed to lead to adverse outcomes because of: 1. Their high cholesterol content. 2. Their SFA content.

I'm not sure what you mean by cholesterol being rebutted. The only thing like that I'm really aware of is the dietary guidelines de-prioritising dietary cholesterol, but that decision was made because when making DGs, people want to focus on the biggest levers we can pull. Dietary cholesterol _does_ have a negative impact on health, but it also has a threshold effect at around 400mg/d after which it has considerably less impact (unless you're part of the ~20% of the population who are "cholesterol hyper responders").

Because most people eating a SAD are already at that threshold, the decision was made to take dietary cholesterol off the headline recommendations, but if you read the details in the DGs and the meta-analyses that drive them, they still point to lowering dietary cholesterol as a smart health move.

I frequently see this change portrayed as "no longer recommending the lowering of dietary cholesterol" or "admitting they were wrong about dietary cholesterol", but that's not really what happened.

[cromka]

Thanks for the input, I appreciate it.

This is what I was referring to regarding the eggs themselves: https://youtu.be/w_cKTN1l7r4?t=1516

[KempyKolibri]

Welcome, always nice to talk about this stuff - nutrition science is a very interesting field because it's such a slippery subject to get right. Every day's a school day and I'm never as right as I think I am!

That take on eggs sounds about right regarding numbers per day and risk. If you look at the ACM risk associated with various food groups in figure 2 from this paper (https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S00029165220492...) then you can see the ACM risk hitting significance at around 55g/day, which is about 1 large egg.

Dave Asprey is such a wild dude. Who is eating rice for protein? Bizarre straw man!

[mixmastamyk]

Well, don’t eat the same things every day.

[cromka]

Like bread? Or olive oil? Or Avocado? Or nuts?