Balancing Omega 6 & Omega 3 for under a $1.00 a day!

(Windmill Tilter) #1

Balancing omega 3 with omega 6 down to a ratio of 1:1 is a good idea. Most Americans on the SAD diet have a O6:O3 ratio of 16:1 which is pretty unhealthy. Most ketonians are probably close to this ratio as well.

There are lots of ways to balance out your Omega 3 ratio. The one that I hear most often is to buy “Grass fed and finished” beef. That’s silly. It’s super expensive and still has an O6:O3 ratio of 3:1!

I just buy regular ground beef for about $2.50lb and a bit of fish. In order to balance out my omega 6 and omega 3 every day, I only need to eat a few ounces of pink salmon. It costs me less than $1.00 a day! The great thing about pink salmon is that they are a very small fish that is low on the food chain so don’t have any heavy metal risk. They are also wild caught in the cleanest fishery on earth (Alaska).
So if you’d like to balance out your Omega 3’s but thought it would be too expensive, here is the math:

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Here is a link to the nutrition data:

https://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/finfish-and-shellfish-products/4110/2

https://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/beef-products/6203/2

(Windmill Tilter) #2

Another thing nobody tells you is that eggs will bust your O3:O6 ratio in a real hurry. 4 eggs has the same amount of Omega 6 that 1lb of beef does. Here is how much fish it would take if we add 4 eggs to the menu like I often do.

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Source:
https://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/dairy-and-egg-products/111/2

(Joey) #3

Interesting perspective. Thanks for sharing this.

But perhaps did you inadvertently flip from pink salmon to mackeral in this second chart?

Also, FWIW, I’m not sure how many folks eat a full pound of ground beef daily - or 4 eggs for that matter. Might not be a common case?

(Windmill Tilter) #4

Oops. You’re right. Mackerel a lot cheaper so I get that sometimes instead.

I bet there are a lot of folks on here that eat 1lb of meat a day. Pretty much every carnivore does! The interesting thing is that if you care about omega 6, beef is your best bet. Pork is way worse from an Omega 6 per ounce perspective.

(Robert C) #5

I am not so sure about this.

According to the web site linked below…

and…

This means you can sit around eating grass fed beef as much as you want and you are getting a good ratio without having to figure out how to compensate. (As well, you are also probably avoiding growth hormone and antibiotics found in regular ground beef).

The ratio issue reminds me of a joke I heard back when the Jack-in-the-box “Ultimate Cheeseburger” was getting disparrpaged due to being high fat and very high calorie (I think over 1000 calories back then).

“How do make an Ultimate Cheeseburger low fat?”

“Eat a pound of rice.” (i.e. that is a “low fat” meal by % calories from fat)

Same with this ratio - eating lots of Omega 6 in factory farmed meat means you have to overload on Omega 3’s from somewhere else. Now, your total intake is starting to get large and you might be chugging down that salmon past your point of satiety. It might come down to half a regular Ribeye and half a can of salmon vs. a whole Ribeye - not necessarily silly to want the whole Ribeye.

(Joey) #6

A thoughtful point well made. Thanks for the perspective and interesting link.

(Robert C) #7

Another observation I’d like to make is how funny it is the way people think.

It seems to me that someone on the standard-American-diet does a lot of eating out.

The bill that comes to the table is big compared to the food quality, made higher due to any non-water drinks and it needs both tax and tip (an extra 20% to 30%). But people seem to have no trouble opening up their wallet and throwing it on a credit card without thinking.

Yet, after they “get religion” and want to eat healthy, they become very cost conscious. They short circuit their desire for health by noting that some healthier options cost much more - but they don’t compare against their old spending habits where the healthiest supermarket options are still a fraction of what they were spending.

So yes - grass fed is “super expensive” compared to factory farmed meat sitting next to it in the supermarket but still much less than what a lot of people spend on SAD.

(Christian) #8

Unfortunately not everywhere in the world you can buy alaska salmon. Here in Germany what you can usually find is salmon from fish farming in Norway which does not contain much O-3 to my best knowledge.
And not all of us want to eat fish every day.
But thanks for insight :slight_smile:

#9

I sometimes have up to 6 eggs a day, 4 eggs/day is standard for me.

(Windmill Tilter) #10

I’m talking about canned pink salmon. Its distributed pretty broadly, check near the tuna in your market. Herring and mackerel are great options also. Any fatty fish will do.

Ironically, my favorite fish is actually Polar brand kippered herring from Germany, which is so good I call it “sea bacon”. It costs $2.00 at my grocery store for 200g (7oz). I eat one every day. When I open one my kids flock around me like seagulls; they can’t get enough of it! :yum:

(Windmill Tilter) #11

I shouldn’t have used the word “silly”, because grass fed beef has a lot going for it. If I had the money, I would definitely go that route. But I don’t! I know there are people that can afford grass fed beef as a major portion of their diet, but I suspect they’re in the minority. It’s really expensive stuff. My point is really just that Omega 6 to Omega 3 ratio is important, and there are inexpensive of ways of balancing it.

I can’t afford to eat as much grass-fed meat as I want. It’s a lot leaner than regular beef. Let’s imagine that grassfed ribeye is $15.00 lb and has about 48 calories per ounce and we’re targeting a O6:O3 ratio of 2:1. Alternatively, you’ve got a fellow like me who’ll be eating conventional beef hamburger, herring, and heavy whipped cream. (The latter is what I will be eating all week, except I’ll be having 7oz of herring a day). Our grass fed carnivore needs $36.56 worth of ribeye per day to get enough calories, but our frugal guy only needs to spend $4.32. The first guy will spend about $130/month on groceries, the other guy will spend $1,100. That’s not a small difference, that’s literally the mortgage on my house!

Yes it’s a straw man and there are ways to get less expensive keto calories (grass fed cream, butter, hamburger etc), however it’s still pretty expensive for most folks. I definitely couldn’t afford it!

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(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #12

Meh. Just stop eating seed sourced polyunsaturated fats.

(Bob M) #13

No, it’s not. Where I am, I basically never get grass fed and finished beef, because it’s too expensive. Even ground beef is double the cost if you buy grass fed.

(Bob M) #14

And don’t even consider eating nuts, like almonds. Or even avocados for that matter.

(Robert C) #15

I understand that you are suggesting there are ways to balance the Omega 6/3 ratio.

But, it is worth rethinking how to do Carnivore due to your statement:

From a common sense perspective, we (sort of) know that eating only naturally fed animals nose-to-tail (likely) does not have negative long term health outcomes. Our ancestors, at different times, probably had times of nose-to-tail-meat-only eating and we evolved to adapt to it. That $36.56 plan for grass fed Ribeye could be much less if you use much less Ribeye per day and add in livers, kidneys, brains, other meats etc. Cost also comes down if you move away from Ribeye - US Welllness Meats sells grass fed 75% lean ground beef for only $8.74 per pound.

No one knows the long term outcome of eating cows fed with corn (which they would never naturally eat) and expired candy as well as being injected with antibiotics regularly and shot up with growth hormone.

Finally, I wonder what is a good budget for a healthy food diet is? $20 or $17 or $25 or… whatever it is, I am not sure that a race to minimize (down at $4.32) would be the answer. Again funny how we humans are, some people will minimize down to that level but still buy a Latte a day.

https://grasslandbeef.com/ground-beef-burgers

(Robert C) #16

The context was that grass fed beef costs less than eating out at restaurants - obviously grass fed is more expensive than factory produced beef.

#17

Right, those are very expensive. The “cheapest” butter as well, at least here but I still buy some and use it sparingly, it’s nice.

I am very poor but if I buy meat, that must be good quality one from a farm as I have principles and standards and choosy tastebuds (I find “normal” meat tasteless, good quality meat from a farm extremely tasty). There’s a reason I eat up to 12 eggs a day and I did mostly vegetarian keto until recently, eggs are cheap enough (even though I buy good quality ones from houses, it’s cheaper in the shops but that’s not what I am willing to buy) and I personally find them really great.
I will continue eating them, I don’t have much options anyway but now I even add some meat and cut out some less than ideal items, I am pretty pleased with myself and just can’t worry about my O6:O3 ratio too, I can’t do much about it anyway.
But I like information and I like to do little if I can so I am here, I read and who knows what the future will bring…?

I never saw not very expensive canned salmon and I wouldn’t eat such things every day anyway. It always sounded quite odd to me that I would be doomed without sea fish here, far from seas (and I as a modern human need to worry about zillion micronutrients and other things anyway)… If my anchestors could have long, healthy lives with lots of eggs, little meat and no fish (they ate HCHF too but that’s not really good for me, I know that much already. I just survive on it if i must), maybe I won’t have huge problems either but uselessly worrying about it would surely ruin my life. I know it’s not scientific but I like to look at experiences instead of knowledge I can’t even check and understand and anyway, I don’t care about the average but my own individual case and even the real ratios of my food is a mystery to some extent… It’s too difficult but listening to my body isn’t a bad thing, thankfully. We will see if that and getting some information and making certain decisions will be enough.