Janis,

Hi. Thank you very much for your help.

> Udo Erasmus has several tables that give fatty acid contents: D2, p. 225 of
> wild and domestic cattle and pig fats; Dc, p. 228 of human breat milk; D4,
> p. 228 of cow's  milk, D 5, p. 229 of mare's milk, and D7, p. 237 of seed
> oils.  Some more specific information is scattered through the book,
> especially Section 5 on major food sources of different fatty acids.

I also found a book discussing fatty fish, and they are rich in omega3s.

> A great alternative to flax oil is hemp seed oil.  If kept frozen or
> refrigerated, in black containers, and consumed within 3-4 weeks, it will
> not go rancid.  It has the proper balance of omega-3 to omega-6 fatty acids
> according to Erasmus.  It's much more expensive than flax, but more
> balanced.  It would be great if we could get hemp seeds but they are illegal
> in the US.  The problem with it is that many seeds grown overseas are
> irradiated or treated in some way to make them infertile.

This is true.  As a TCM herbalist, I can get hemp seed as it is a
traditonal herb, but, indeed, they are treated to make them sterile.

> Another recent book, John Finnegan,  The Facts About Fats, Celestial ARts,
> Berkely, CA, 1993 is based upon Erasmus but also has some research that the
> author has done.  The section on massage oils and cosmetic oils is
> hair-raising -- most of them are made from rancid, worm-eaten almonds, etc.
> Yuck!  He does have some suppliers of dependable products at the end, but no
> table of foods.

Our office offers massage therapy and have had a problem with the
therapists sometimes developing these horrible rashes in reaction to
certain lotions etc.  We switched to plain, unscented cold pressed seed
oils but sometimes they still have flares.  I wonder if some of those
lotions have oils from rancid items.  I had no idea...

> I'm not even sure that anyone knows how much of each fatty acids the
> 'average person' needs.

I suspect that we'll find out that it's similar to a fat soluble vitamin
later, meaning that without enough you get all these symptoms of being
unwell, and then only way to change that is to consume enough to fill
the deficiency and then to change one's diet to include the foods that
contain required fats.

If this is true, which cannot be known until further research is done,
the implications of this are tremendous.  Not only would people need to
change diets to include these needed fats in a relatively high
percentage compared to the diets popular now, but also, people will have
to simply stop consuming refined fatty acids to be really well.  This
means NO restaurant food, since reastaurants only prepare foods with
heat-pressed oils.  This means generally no store bought mayonnaise,
cooking oils or other heat processed fats.  While I personally have
stuck to a cold-pressed-oil only policy for years and years, and
recommended it to all my clients, I never realized how important it
would turn out to be in the long run.  This is changing my thinking.

More on this topic Sunday at my chatroom - hope to see you then.

regards, roberta
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