Don’t We Need Fish For Omega 3 Fatty Acids? How Do Vegans Make Sure To Get Enough?

so and then I want to touch on the omega-3 fatty acids don’t we need fish for omega-3s and we hear this all the time we needed to reduce our risk of heart disease we need I’ll make long-chain omega-3s for our brains and our eyes and so on answer is actually no we can actually get these nutrients from plants we can get alpha linolenic acid from land plants like Chia flax and hemp seeds and walnuts we can get a little bit from greens and we can get the long-chain omega-3s EPA & DHA from sea plants called microalgae we actually get a little bit from macro algae and you know the difference between micro and macro the micro are the tiny tiny little plant the macro are the big seaweeds now in the big sea we we get a EPA we don’t get DHA so just to to know that and then now Rita you were just telling me about another source a key flower that has DHA from a flower that’s grown up in Canada so we’re gonna have to investigate that one a little more that sounds really interesting a key flower yeah aah I very interesting so and and fish do not this is critical fish do not make epa and DHA just like you know animals don’t make these essential fatty acids fish don’t make epa and DHA they’re made by microalgae so epa and DHA are made by microalgae the zooplankton eat the microalgae they’re vivir as fish eat the zooplankton the small carnivorous fish eat them and then the large carnivorous fish and that’s how they get their epa and DHA so we can go directly to the source cut out the fish and just grow the algae and so it’s widely available now as a supplement for people who don’t want to eat fish

so do plant eaters actually get enough so compared to non vegetarians epa and DHA in the blood tissue and breast milk are about thirty percent lower in lacto-ovo vegetarians in about 40 to 70 percent lower in vegans so there’s definitely lower levels and vegans so why the low omega-3s well because diets are often insufficient contain insufficient alpha linolenic acid which can be converted to epa and DHA and diets may not be well designed to maximize that conversion so we’re going to talk a little bit about that

how do how can people who don’t eat fish optimize their omega-3 fatty acids to this number one you need to be aware of the factors that can depress conversion and those are non Diet factors like genetics and gender men are less efficient than women people who smoked age as you get older you you young babies and older people don’t convert as well chronic diseases like diabetes metabolic syndrome hypertension can reduce the conversion of the plant omega-3s to the long-chain more biologically active Omega threes like what you would get from fish so what about the diet factors well high intakes of omega-6 fatty acids can impair conversion by about 40 to 50 percent and omega-6 fatty acids will mention those in a minute inadequate nutrition you need to get enough of the cofactors for the desaturate enzymes to be able to convert so you need a nutritious diet some of the things are you need enough protein you need enough zinc magnesium niacin pure daxing and vitamin c you need in you you want to minimize trans fatty acids and alcohol because they can impair conversion and very high fat diets there was a study comparing diets that were 40 percent fat versus those that were 20 percent fat and the very high fat diets actually limited conversion of al-adha

the next thing we need to do is make sure we’re getting enough of the plant omega-3 so what do we need well for people that don’t eat fish and don’t eat EPA and DHA directly they need about 2 to 4 grams of ala a day and if you look at how much is in foods you get about 2.6 grams ounce of walnuts you get about the same in a heaping tablespoon of ground flax seeds you get about a 1.7 in a tablespoon of chia seeds you get about 0.9 and a tablespoon of hemp seeds and you get less than 0.1 in a cup of leafy greens so in in essence you need to eat like a horse or a cow to get enough from leafy greens you’d be eating about 20 to 40 cups a day right and so that’s a lot of greens but greens can still contribute if you eat 6 cups of greens a day it’s giving you a portion of people making omega-3 that you would need

so and then we want to reduce omega-6 if we’re using excessive amounts and so we want to avoid omega-6 rich oils in cooking and in processed foods like safflower sunflower grape seed corn oils soy cottonseed sesame oils doesn’t mean you can ever use any like I might use a couple of drops of sesame seed oil in a peanut sauce to give a flavor it’s a flavoring but you don’t want these things in any great quantity and you owe the omega-6 Whole Foods don’t worry about so sunflower seeds if pumpkin seeds and all of that you can generally enjoy those in at least in moderation

and then do consider a direct source of long-chain omega-3 fatty acids who really needs it well those with increased needs like pregnant and breastfeeding women tend to have lower levels of DHA then than omnivorous women so it might not be a bad idea to boost your level a little bit during pregnancy so that your babies you know going to get enough for brain growth and and you know this is a little controversial because women of childbearing age are the most efficient converters so they convert about one one study showed us a conversion of about third 6% to long-chain omega-3s from Ala which is just phenomenal so they converted to epa DHA epa and DHA about 36% so really quite quite a lot and then people who don’t convert efficiently and so that’s people with diabetes metabolic syndrome or hypertension and populations with traditionally high fish intakes so someone from japan or someone from an island where they eat a lot of fish their enzymes responsible for conversion may not be produced like the average person would produce those enzymes so then in those people they may need a direct source and may be wise to take a micro supplement like dr. Fuhrman’s supplement for example so some people do better with direct sources what do you need will you you know we usually say two or three hundred milligrams a day some of the supplements now contain up to a thousand milligrams which may be suitable for some people I’ve met a few people who have had their levels tested and they said they couldn’t get them up with under six to eight hundred milligrams a day so for some people they may need that

there are advantages to the plant-based option because they’re clean so they’re not contaminated with Mercury they’re they’re sustainable because we’re not raping the ocean to get them we’re growing them and they’re cruelty free we’re not killing anything so some pretty significant advantages there are problems with fish so fish tend to be among the the greatest sources of heavy metal mercury lead cadmium they’re among the greatest sources of environmental contaminants especially dioxins fish would be the number one source but even PCBs DDT melikhaya green which is an antimicrobial antibiotics at Dick’s so and there are ecological concerns we’re rapidly depleting our fish stocks there was one report that said by 2048 our fish stocks would be gone shocking and there are ethical concerns and one of the things that I’ll never forget is this this film that showed the wonders of the ocean and it was just incredibly beautiful and at the end of the show they showed this shrimp trawler come along with a net that was about a mile long and what it does is it because they’re bottom-feeders shrimps are bottom feeders is it it drags the net on the bottom of the ocean for quite a long time lifts up everything to the boat and in that net you can imagine what they catch dolphins turtles you name it what they do is they basically pick out the the shrimp which is about 20% of the weight that is there of animals that are there the other 80% are drop dead to the bottom of the ocean it’s disgusting for the little bit of shrimp and and we need to think about that as human beings it doesn’t make sense to me for us to be doing that