Just wanted to share a recent experience I had.
One of my son's schoolmate's father is a scientist at NIH and he studies the effects of omega-3's on children's brains. This gentleman is also my son's cubscout troop leader. Well, he gave a speech Tuesday evening at the PTA meeting on the effects of Omega-3 fatty acids on children's brains and it was really astounding. What was truly amazing is the disconnect between what NIH scientists know and what politicians are willing to let out.
One thing he said that really stood out in my mind is that even though we know that the brain needs omega-3 fats to function properly, the ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 makes a HUGE difference on children in their mood, cognitive and speech abilities. He showed many charts and graphs that showed that as the ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 got closer, children were smarter, kinder, more thoughtful, etc.
So the big thing is, the less omega-6 you eat, the less omega-3 you need. He talked about how we as humans survived for millions of years in heavily lake dominated African landscape. We likely ate lots of fish while our gene pool was developing and it likely was a main cause of our brain's development. Back to Omega-6... in 1900, the amount of omega-6 in the diet was almost nothing. It came from saturated fats like what is found in animal fats and animals were grass fed so they had a higher omega-3 content. As we started increasing soybean farming, we started adding soybean oil to nearly everything. Soybean oil has a really lopsided omega-6 to omega-3 profile. Healthy ratio should be 2-1. Regular non-oleic soybean oil is over 150:1 ratio!!
Omega-6's cancel out the effects of omega-3. What the recommendation from this scientist was then is STOP USING SOYBEAN OIL and feed your kids fish or fish oil twice a week!! If you have to fry, use butter, lard, or canola. He showed us a can of tuna that effectively had no omega-3 because it was packed in soybean oil! Look at your chips, cookies, breads... nearly everything is loaded with low quality soybean oil. Mercury content in most fish is so low that the risk is negligible and he tied the uproar about fish mercury content to special interests who are against electric power plants. The risk from mercury is infinitely small compared to the risk of not feeding your kids omega-3's.
I talked to him after the speech and told him about fast-5 and he thought it was a great idea. He also mentioned that he totally forgot to impress on the audience one thing that he wanted to mention... that eating less food is SO EXTREMELY important to our health that it cannot be stressed enough!
I've rambled on enough, but I thought you all might like to hear about it. I might post his lecture notes and charts to this list later when I get home.
-Rick Stewart
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