Omega-3 (herring/sardines v grass fed beef)

#1

Ok, I was a silent 3rd party listening to an argument from two ketoheads. One was arguing the benefits of grass fed beef one of which was more Omega-3 than grain fed/finished beef. While the other guy didnt disagree that it was more, his take was that if you want more Omega 3s, a tiny amount of sardines (relatively) would deliver gobs more Omega 3s. Not sure if this is a major point since I can’t eat large amounts of sardines or herrings --you know maybe 2 ounces is my typical serving…and I can pretty much eat 1 lb steaks.

Appreciate some science here. Found this but couldn’t follow it.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2846864/https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2846864/

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #2

Don’t worry about it. It’s more productive to work at reducing ω-6 intake, because it’s so common in the standard American diet, and an excess can cause systemic inflammation. The concern with ω-3 is simply to get it in roughly equal proportions with ω-6, since they compete for the same cell receptors. Both are essential fatty acids, but the quantities required of either are very small.

#3

Over in the ZC carnivore discussion it is interesting to make the observation that people like to eat a combination of terrestrial ruminant (cows, sheep, deer etc) animal-based food sources and marine food sources. This is observational data on a small subset of low carb eaters. It forms a hypothesis that maybe a combination of both animal-based terrestrial ruminants and sea creatures provide a required range of nutritional inputs including the essential dietary fatty acids?

This is an interesting discussion topic. Slightly reductionist. A key point is made about food tolerances and preferences in the opening remarks. I think they will/would play a deciding role in what people choose to eat and how they adapt to optimise their nutrition.

(Bob M) #4

When I was using Twitter, I followed a woman who was able to get a very good O3/O6 ratio by eating grass-fed (only) animals. No fish.

Personally, I go through phases with fish. I have found fish to be not that filling, for instance, for Lent. I had to switch to eggs. (I like to fast until dinner for Lent, but the past two times, my workout schedule was such that I was working out Friday morning, and I can’t make it until dinner; had to eat “lunch”.)

I also find high O3 content can make me feel – weird. It’s like Vitamin C – I feel strange when I take it.

I think that instead of viewing this through the lens of omega 3 content, you could view this SOLELY through the lens of nutrition. If you rotate foods, you have a much higher chance of getting better nutrition. Take a look at zinc, for instance:

Sure, beef has zinc in it, but it’s blown away by oysters. Shrimp, mussels, different varieties of fish, all likely have different nutrition profiles from ruminants.

So, it could be nutrition and not omega 3s.

You’d need to do a well-run study where you measure the O3s in ruminant meat, have a group eat that and achieve a certain O3/O6 level, while at the same time have others eat ruminants + seafood to get the same level. Though, I’m not sure what metric you’d use to see which was “better”.

Personally, I also wonder how relevant the O3/O6 ratio is for carnivores, keto, or low carb folk. All the evidence is based on high carb. I’m about to get my second O3/O6 test done. The last one, I had high O6 (odd, considering that I try to eat near zero O6, so perhaps I was burning O6?), and a poor O3. It’ll be interesting to see what happens this time.

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Now, this was when I was eating a very high saturated fat diet, 97th percentile of saturated fat in my blood:

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I also was not eating much fish. And still don’t. But perhaps a high saturated fat diet was causing PUFAs in my fat to be replaced by saturated fat? Since I’m eating a “normal” diet (not concentrating on high saturated fat), perhaps my O6 will lower, meaning that my O3/O6 ratio will get better? I don’t know. I’ll find out.

#5

@ctviggen How does one get such a test, what is it called and what is its purported utility? I have not run across this

(Bob M) #6

It’s OmegaQuant,

https://omegaquant.com/shop/

To get this level of detail, you need to spend $100.

It’s one way to test your O3/O6 ratio (in blood). You take it at home.

The utility depends on whether you think this ratio is important enough to test it.

Brad from Fire in a Bottle also thinks other ratios are important. These, you can only get using the expensive version of the test. That’s why I’m paying for the costlier one, to see what happened to these values.

(Joey) #7

For the evolutionarianists (such a word?) in the crowd, humans likely got well-adapted to the furs & fins diet combo as we clustered with our herds around both river banks (fresh) and coastal shores (salt water).