the following quote makes me question the claim from a local organic farmer
that,  Purslane,  in his mixed greens sold in the market contains omega 3
EFA.
Does somebody can tell me if it is DHa or  ALA or something else that is
found in purslane (a cultivated weed).?
jean-claude
the primary
>structural material of the brain is the omega-3 EFA known as DHA
>(Docosahexaenoic acid).  There are no vegetables that provide DHA.  Greens
>provide alpha-linolenic acid, which some animals can convert to DHA, but
>modern humans have little or no ability to achieve this conversion.
Chimps
>also obviously have no marked ability to achieve this conversion--if they
>did, they'd probably have bigger brains.  In fact, there is no mammal that
>is capable of making enough DHA from scratch to produce a large brain.  So
>there is no reason to believe that early man had any ability to make large
>amounts of DHA out of the alpha-linolenic acid (ALA) found in green leaves.
>Furthermore, it has been estimated that even in the best of ALA converters,
>it takes 10 grams of ALA to produce just one gram of DHA.   The absolute
>amount of ALA in green leaves is very small, on average less than one half
>gram per 100 gram portion, so literally enormous amounts of green leaves
>would have to be eaten to get significant amounts of DHA.  Mankind simply
>does not have the kind of gut needed to process that amount of greens.
>Finally, ALA is heat-labile, so cooking greens would have destroyed much of
>the value of ALA.
>