> Brenda Young wrote:
>
> Oh DEAR.  And this is not meant personally to ANYONE.  But I swear, do 
> most of you count the ratios and all of that????

Lol! Don't worry--you don't have to. You don't have to know the exact
figures of the optimal ratio or the exact levels in each food. If you have a
basic understanding of which foods Paleolithic people ate (wild animal and
plant foods) and which they did not normally eat (grains, dairy, legumes,
grain-fed meats, artificial stuff, etc.) and which foods have a good or poor
balance of omega fatty acids, you'll do fine. The more of the omega 3
Paleo-type foods you eat (wild and pasture fed meats, wild fish, flaxseed
meal), the better your omega 6/3 ratio will be. Paleolithic people ate far
more omega 3 fa's than Americans who eat the SAD do. Supplementing with fish
oil can also offset a suboptimal balance of fats.

> I
> HATED math in school, and yes, I still got A's, but DANG IT.  
> I swear I can NOT EAT according to math, I just cannot.  

I don't calculate the math before eating! Lol! I gave the 6/3 ratio info
because Ds asked about "the proper nutrients in terms of omega 3 and 6." The
main things to keep in mind is which foods boost the omega 3 (such as the
ones I mentioned) and which foods/ingredients tip things in the other
direction (such as grain-fed beef and grapeseed, cottonseed and sesame
oils). Ds asked about flaxseed and it is one of the foods which helps boost
omega 3. 

Since I eat some commercial grain-fed meats I supplement with fish oil to
improve the balance. One study found that grass-fed beef had an omega 6/3
ratio of about 2:1, whereas grain-fed beef had a ratio of over 6:1
(http://www.csuchico.edu/agr/grassfedbeef/health-benefits/index.html) and
other studies have found similar results. You don't have to know the ratio,
but you should know that grain-fed beef is higher than pasture-fed in omega
6 and therefore should be offset to result in a better diet, if one is going
to eat grain-fed meats. The more strictly Paleo one is, the less one needs
to think about this ratio, or to supplement, because (obviously) the
Paleolithic people achieved the optimal balance by just eating the foods
that were available to them, which were all wild. Since most of us don't
have the option to eat only wild foods, we approximate a Paleo diet as best
we can.

> I
> take the same outlook as how I feed my dogs raw...excellence
> over time. I just cannot imagine counting out everything I 
> eat from day to day, or even week to week.  For real. 

That's basically my approach as well. I can't imagine how people manage the
calorie-counting and carb allowance measuring stuff on a long-term basis.

> Which
> brings up the question...if dogs were just as opportunistic 
> as we were supposed to be...what is wrong with the 
> "excellence over time" theory.  

I don't see anything wrong with "excellence over time." As long as you try
to eat more of the omega 3-rich foods and less of the omega 6-rich foods you
should do fine, and the simplest way to do that is to try to eat as close to
Paleo as you can.

> Ginny, I think it was you who said that flaxseed oil is too
> manufactured,
> but when I looked into it, the sources I found indicated that fish  
> oil is
> more manufactured than flaxseed oil. Could you explain please how  
> flaxseed
> oil is more manufactured, if it is?

> Ginny wrote:
> You're correct about the fish oil; I went and checked my sources as  
well, and molecular distillation seems to be the norm. So that leaves  
me no leg to stand on as far as production. <

OK, thanks for that confirmation, Ginny.

> I still have a gut  
reaction that eating a fish is more natural than eating a bunch of  
seeds of a particular kind, 

Indeed, most late-Paleolithic humans likely would have preferred to eat fish
rather than seeds if fish was available, though seed-eating actually
predates fish eating. I can't find the source now, but I have read that
flaxseeds were found in Paleolithic coprolites and that the plant was spread
in this way by Stone Agers as they moved from place to place.

> and that the Omega 3 in the fish is more  
accessible and requires less conversion. <

Yes, as I have stated, the ALA in flaxseed oil must be converted into DHA
and EPA, whereas fish oil already contains these forms.

> Since I fancy us as  
preferential carnivores with omnivorous dentition and enzymes, I'd  
rather reach for the fish, too. <

I think we may largely agree. If preferential carnivores with omnivorous
dentition means biological omnivores who would prefer to eat mostly the meat
and organs of large game where available, the evidence does back that up for
humans. Before the mammoth went extinct there were mammoth hunters who ate
mostly mammoth meat and organs for food. The standard definitions of the
terms carnivore and omnivore are rather fuzzy, so there does tend to be
overlap and confusion. One good thing about being omnivores for humans is,
at the times when there are scarcities of meat the ability to digest plant
foods improves survival chances. Plus, as I mentioned before, the omega 3's
in fish oil are more bioavailable than those in flaxseed oil. Flaxseed oil
is still healthy for humans, just not as healthy as fish oil that has been
processed to filter out any potential mercury or dioxins.

> Brenda wrote:
> Ginny, my love, I don't think it's such poor science.  I am so sick of
science telling us stuff....does anyone watch TV????  Every couple of months
we are subjected to a wonderful new drug...a few months later, the lawyers
are paying for ads so that we can sue this drug or that.  

I find those aggressive drug commercials to be annoying too. Science isn't
telling us to buy those drugs, Brenda, the ads are. Science is simply a
tool, not a company or an organization. Like any other tool, science can be
misused. Drug companies can pay for research to create new drugs that have
certain effects they are looking for, and then pay for studies to show their
effectiveness in providing those effects, but they tend not to look as hard
at possible long-term side effects or at diets that could prevent disease
because there is less profit incentive in that. As a teacher of mine used to
say, "It all boils down to economics."

> I will take my flaxseed and all others in the hopes that I can outlive the
scientists, sigh.
 
  Love,
  Bren, agreeing with Ginny and Tomo

Actually, Ginny's point appears to be (Ginny please correct me if I have it
wrong) that flaxseed is not that good because it requires more conversion
than fish oil and that humans are preferential carnivores, so that people
probably shouldn't take flaxseed meal/oil and should instead take fish oil.
I think that both fish oil and flaxseed meal/oil are good choices (and I use
both), with fish oil being the better of the two. Even though fish oil is
much more processed than flaxseed meal or oil, I agree with Ginny that fish
oil is more bioavailable. Seems that once in a while a more processed food
can actually be a better choice than a less processed one. If you are taking
both flaxseed oil and other oils, Brenda, then it looks like you agree more
with what I was saying than with Ginny and Tomo (though I think Ginny and I
are actually more in agreement on this subject than it might have appeared
initially). Also, there is scientific research that supports your taking
flaxseed for health, so I think you are actually in agreement with many
scientists on this topic. So it looks like all of us, Ginny, Tomo, Brenda,
many scientists, and I are in agreement on most points re: flax oil.