>Ardeith writes:
>So maybe I'm confused.....I thought the recommended
>fish oils came from cold water fish from the northern
>atlantic ocean.......in these times. Just how did our
>paleo ancestors obtain this sort of fish oil? Or did
>they? If they did not, what was in their diets that
>had the same sort of beneficial effect? What makes
>such fish oils "Paleo"?
Here are some excepts from an article I'm working on which might answer
those questions.
Available evidence suggests that man evolved on a diet rich in omega-3 EFAs
(essential fatty acids). Diets of less industrialized, more primitive
hunter-gatherers studied within the past century contain much higher amounts
of omega 3-oils and significantly lower intakes of omega-6 oils compared to
modern diets (The Paleolithic Prescription by S. Boyd Eaton, M.D, 1988;
Traditional Foods Are Your Best Medicine by Ron Schmid, N.D, 1997).
Over the past 200 years, our intake of seafoods and wild game (rich in EPA
and DHA) has plummeted. ³Todayıs livestock is often fed high omega-6 grains
instead of omega-3 rich range grasses, and since animals also need omega-3s
to make DHA, this results in animal products containing little, if any, DHA
for consumers. Dairy and poultry products that formerly supplied DHA no
longer do,² says Marcia Zimmerman, C.N., author of The ADD Solution: A Drug
Free 30 Day Plan. (Holt/Owl Books, 1999.) Even salmon, normally a good
source of omega-3 fatty acids, contain very little of these EFAs if they are
farm raised (where they are fed grains rather than their natural food:
phytoplankton).
Dr. Ron Schmid, author of Traditional Foods Are Your Best Medicine (Healing
Arts Press, 1987,1994, 1997) explains: ³You would need to eat ten ounces of
fatty fish daily to supply five grams of EPA, and an optimal intake is
likely at least that.² Yet in one tablespoon of Carlsonıs Cod Liver oil (the
maximum usually used as a daily supplement) you can get 1400 milligrams of
EPA, 500 milligrams of DHA, as well as 6000 to 7,500 IU (international
units) of true vitamin A, and 1,200 to 1500 I.U. of vitamin D complex.
(Note: most supplements contain only D2 or D3 but primitive people got the
entire D-complex from whole foods sources. Check out Weston Price's book
and Ron Schmid's book for more on this.)
Although you can get an EPA/DHA supplement (such as Max DHA) which does not
contain vitamins A and D, research indicates that most Americans take in far
too little vitamin D. According to Reinhold Vieth, a researcher, Univ. of
Toronto, adults may need at minimum five times the RDA or 1,000 I.U. of
vitamin D per day to protect against cancers, bone fractures, and to derive
other broad range health benefits. ( May 1999, Am J Clin Nutr)
Rachel
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