Good Health And The Omega3 Omega 6 Ratio.

You may know all about the health benefits of Omega 3 essential fatty acids, it’s been in the news lately and many people are now beginning to understand about the importance of supplementing their diet with the essential fatty acids. We’re all deficient in these. But what are Omega 6 fats and what is the Omega3 Omega 6 ratio?

Essential fatty acids are important for good health. We cannot manufacture these in our body and so we rely on a daily intake of these in our diet. Omega 3 fats are primarily found in fish and research has shown that most of us are deficient in Omega 3 in our diets.

Omega 6 fatty acids, on the other hand, are found in only plant based sources. They are found in vegetable oils like peanut oil, sunflower oil, safflower oil and corn oil are high in Omega 6 and soy oil is almost totally comprised of Omega 6 fat.

Generally these vegetable oils are extremely cheap. Because they are cheap they are used in almost all processed foods requiring oil, including margarine. Most of us eat a diet high in processed foods and cook with vegetable oils and as a result our diets are too high in Omega 6.

In the past, according to research, we ate roughly as much Omega 3 as Omega 6 fats. This produced an Omega 3 Omega 6 ratio around 1 to 1. But because of our dietary reliance on food sources such as vegetable oils and processed foods there are estimates suggesting that our Omega 6 Omega 3 ratio has changed to around 10 to 1, and some estimates are that it is now as high as 30 to 1. Most of us are eating way too much Omega 6 fatty acids.

Whilst 6 is important to our health increasing the ratio between the 2 as we have done over the last hundred or so years is not. There are a range of health implications from eating too much Omega 6 fatty acids and too little Omega 3. In particular it is thought that we are exposing ourselves to an increased range of lifestyle diseases including cancer, coronary artery disease and various inflammatory related diseases such as arthritis.

On top of this is an issue with our meat. In the past our meat came from animals raised on grass. Grass fed meat is reasonably high in Omega 3. However most of our meat now comes from grain fed animals, and grain fed animals have virtually no Omega 3 and are high in Omega 6 fats. So as you can see we are all eating plenty of Omega 6 and there is absolutely no need to supplement our diets with more.

Whilst it is extremely important to get an adequate intake of Omega 3 fatty acids in our diet, and most of us are deficient in these, it is equally important to ensure that we reduce our intake of Omega 6 fats to maintain a healthy Omega 3 Omega 6 ratio. We can do this by reducing the amount of processed foods and vegetable oils in our diet and changing to healthier oils for cooking such as olive oil. And equally important is to increase our intake of Omega3 fats by dietary supplementation with fish oil supplements.

Note that although fish oil supplements are extremely cost-effective not all are as good as others, you need to know how to compare the different fish oil supplements available to make an effective choice.

Find out how to make this comparison between the different fish oil supplement brands on my website.

Want to know more about the best Fish Oil Supplements? Or more about the Omega 3 Omega 6 ratio? Visit Peter’s Website Healthy Omega 3 Fish Oil.