What Is The Omega3 Omega 6 Ratio And Why Should You Care?
You may know all about the health benefits of Omega 3 essential fatty acids, it’s been in the news lately and many people are now beginning to understand about the importance of supplementing their diet with the essential fatty acids. We’re all deficient in these. But what are Omega 6 fats and what is the Omega3 Omega 6 ratio?
Essential fatty acids are important for good health. We cannot manufacture these in our body and so we rely on a daily intake of these in our diet. Omega 3 fats are primarily found in fish and research has shown that most of us are deficient in Omega 3 in our diets.
Omega 6 essential fatty acids, on the other hand, are found in other food sources, and we are not generally deficient in these. For example you find Omega6 fats in many of the oils that we eat from day to day such as corn oil, safflower oil, sunflower oil, sesame oil and peanut oil, and soy oil is almost completely comprised of omega6 fats.
Because many of these vegetable oils are very cheap they are used extensively in processed foods, particularly in margarine, for this reason our intake of Omega 6 fats, though important for our diet in limited amounts, is excessive.
Scientific research has shown that in the past we had an Omega 3 Omega 6 ratio of roughly 1 to 1, or in other words we ate roughly the same amount of each of these fats in our diet. However estimates now are that the Omega3 Omega 6 ratio in the average US citizen is somewhere from 10 to 1, or even, according to some estimates up to 30 to 1. Because of our reliance on vegetable oils and processed foods we are now eating far more Omega 6 fats than we ever did in the past.
Omega 6 essential fatty acids are equally important to our health however just as important is the Omega3 Omega 6 ratio, and over the past hundred years or so this is changed dramatically. By eating too much Omega 6 and too little Omega 3 we are all exposing ourselves to a wide range of health implications including the possibility of various cancers, coronary artery disease and a range of other inflammatory diseases such as arthritis.
And there is also an issue with our meat. Traditionally our farm animals have been raised on grass and this produces meat higher in Omega3. However farming practices have changed over the last hundred years and most of our meat now comes from grain fed animals which produces meat lower in Omega 3 and higher in Omega 6.
Whilst both Omega 3 and Omega 6 fats are important to our health most of us are deficient in our intake of Omega 3 and have an Omega 3 Omega 6 ratio that is way too high, and we need to reduce our intake of Omega 6 fats. This can be done by reducing the amounts of processed foods in our diets and by changing our cooking oils from vegetable oils to good oils such as olive oil. And we all need to be increasing our intake of Omega 3 fatty acids with daily fish oil supplements.
Note that although fish oil supplements are extremely cost-effective not all are as good as others, you need to know how to compare the different fish oil supplements available to make an effective choice.
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