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Risk of supplements
@jessica2 how much EPO are you ingesting? I am not talking about ingesting small amounts to achieve some medicinal effect. I am talking about vegetable oils that are ingested in crazy amounts in western world. There is no benefit of vegetable oils used everywhere..
@jessica2 I am also taking 20g sunflower lecithin to help my liver where is like I don't know 10g og PUFA fats, but people go eat some chinese food some fried chicken with some noodles for example and there can be I don't know 30-50g of the worst kind of fat possible and even oxidized from cooking. That is just one meal. There is no way to balance this amount of omega 6 with high omega 3 foods.. That's why the only solution is to keep overall intake of PUFA fats low.. Meats, grains, vegetables, fruits, here and there some not so bad oils like avocado, olive, macadamia oils and here and there some salmon, sardines, mackerel for some EPA/DHA.. That is the only way to keep somewhat healthy fatty acid profile in your diet.. Once you eat fast food, chips, fries whatever you can't fix it by taking fisk oil pills or something..
@jessica2 Beef is ok even from factory farming, but chicken, turkey, pig fat has really bad fatty acid profile if they eat soy, corn etc.. That's why I try to eat only very lean poultry or pork..
@jessica2 Yeah, Jenny is aware of Patricia Kane’s work, and often mentions her use of choline and eggs. 😊 🍳
@jiri - I’m gonna respond inline, because I used to feel the same way you did about this, and I want to explain why I no longer do.
...unless you are on some crazy diet with zero fat intake or something like that there is no such thing as "omega 6 deficiency" in fact it's exactly the opposite.
I was on an extreme low-fat diet as a child, and I also fixated on avoiding PUFAs when anorexic from teenage-hood until my mid-twenties (roughly a decade), when I chose recovery.
There is evidence an omega 6 fatty acid deficiency can suppress ovulation (scroll down to the quotes I posted in this thread):
https://ggenereux.blog/discussion/topic/antidote/
That happened to me, even though I was young.
During recovery, I stopped restricting sources of PUFAs (like nuts and seeds), but did not intentionally replenish my omega 6 stores.
Refined vegetable oils full of omega 6 are the cheapest source of calories for people right now and they are in everything.
I used to believe this, too. But is it true? I am finding it difficult to locate food sources high in omega 6 in my local grocery store.
Fried foods like potato chips and french fries are usually fried in high oleic oils (at least in Canada), and any small percentage of linoleic acid would be damaged due to the heat processing.
So I’m not convinced omega 6 deficiency isn’t a problem for some people consuming “junk food” diets.
Brian Peskin believes “adulterated omega 6” contributes to health problems, but that removing processed foods from the diet will not correct a deficiency of “unadulterated omega 6:”
If you eat out in restaurants or fast foods you have probably too much omega 6.
I do not.
Grass fed red meat has basically ideal fatty acid profile. Mostly saturated with monounsaturated fats with small amount of omega 3 and 6. That is all omega 6 your body needs.
This might be true for some people. Maybe it’s true for Grant.
I’m not sure it is true for those who have overdosed on omega 3 supplements (as I did in my WAPF phase), or for those with potential for having genetic metabolic issues (like being on the spectrum, which I am).
Tallow is only 3% linoleic acid, with 1% linolenic acid, which is a pretty good ratio, but that isn’t much at all if one is in a deficiency state.
Once you start eating a lot of grains, nuts, seeds etc.. you start to accumulate PUFA fats in tissues which overtime will cause issues.. You can learn more about this topic from Raymon Peat Articles. He did a lot of research on this topic..
During the worst, most harmful diet I ever tried—it triggered severe insomnia, paranoia, manic-depressive episodes, turned me yellow, made me even more emaciated and cold constantly, and my skin aged like two decades—I emailed Ray Peat for advice. The man told me the diet I was on was “exactly what he would recommend.” It contained absolutely zero sources of linoleic or linolenic acid, other than beef.
So Ray Peat isn’t someone whose perspective I am particularly inclined to regard highly at this point... 😅 (Yes, I know that’s not a sound logical argument against your suggestion; I’m sorry. 😂)
Doesn’t mean I think he’s entirely wrong about everything, of course. Kane and Peskin agree with him that coconut oil and tallow are best for cooking, as they are more heat stable. That makes sense to me.
I respect your perspective, and I appreciate your concern, too. I’ve just kinda “been there, tried that” with regards to PUFA avoidance. Maybe it would’ve gone better if I wasn’t dealing with hypervitaminosis A at the time...or, maybe, PUFA avoidance made me weaker, and less able to detoxify excess vitamin A.
ETA: I currently believe the latter to be more likely.
I feel it likely a deficiency of omega 6 contributed to the severe mental health problems (including Clinical Depression, Mania, and Anorexia) I used to suffer.
Currently, I don’t consume any “store bought” ready-to-eat foods. I cook from scratch with coconut oil and get PUFAs from EVOO and whole hemp, flax, and sunflower seeds, but am adding cold-pressed hemp oil for a bit to see what that does.
@puddleduck "I used to believe this, too. But is it true? I am finding it difficult to locate food sources high in omega 6 in my local grocery store."
The only somewhat safe sources of omega 6 are the foods that are in natural form and have also high vit E content like sunflower seeds. Unfortunately refined vegetable oils that are used for everything now has no vit E. Btw factory farm pork and poultry is high in omega 6 and basically all junk food and fast food is made from vegetable oils like canola, soy, sunflower, corn etc.. Yes some have coconut/palm oil. But all restaurants, fast foods are using vegetable oils high in omega 6 like sunflower oil, because they are cheaper than palm/coconut oil. Btw don't tell me that stores in Canada are not full of vegetable oils. That's crazy.. Just look at Paul Saladino videos on youtube. He does on this topic videos nonstop. Vegetable oils everywhere.
nice video about vegetable oils
Hmm, it looks there is more omega 6 in soy oil than omega 3, but it does have nearly 10% omega 3:
Here’s a paper on how fatty acid composition is affected by the cow’s diet:
Some quotes from the above:
“The total n-6 PUFA concentration in grain-fed beef was also found 155 mg/100 g meat higher than grass-fed beef.”
@jiri I don’t think we disagree that much. 😂 The Brian Peskin page says: “don’t eat vegetable oils,” right at the start.
In my small town grocery store there were only high oleic vegetable oils and olive oil. Soy and corn oil were not available (I think they are less popular here than in the USA), but of course you can buy them in Canada, and many products are made with soy oil. Costco has corn oil, even, I think. I was unclear and inaccurate by saying “I am finding it difficult to locate food sources high in omega 6 in my local grocery store.” I was looking specifically for “unadulterated” omega 6 sources I would be willing to eat, but of course I could’ve found soy oil in margarine and in baked goods. I wasn’t meaning to imply otherwise, but thank you for pointing out my mistake. I carelessly overstated my observation.
These are the points I was trying to make:
1) Not all “junk foods” contain high levels of omega 6. Even people eating processed foods can limit omega 6, if they are avoiding GMO soy and corn, for example, in favour of high oleic sunflower oil or olive oil.
2) “Junk foods” containing omega 6 typically have a highly “adulterated” form of it, heated to high temperatures.
3) There are few “unadulterated” sources of omega six in the supermarkets, at least where I live.
4) Omega 6 deficiency symptoms may still affect individuals who are consuming “adulterated omega 6.”
Most margarine here is made with either canola or soy oil, and modified palm. Canola oil can be pretty low in omega 6:
In Canada, we grow A LOT of canola oil. It is our number one cooking oil in the country, even fast food restaurants often use it for frying. Soy oil is the other top option for commercial food producers. We grow plenty of that, too, but not as much (in the USA, soy is the larger crop):
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/210315/dq210315e-eng.htm
Most prepared foods here marketed as “healthy” contain canola oil or high oleic sunflower oil. This includes “high end” corn and potato chips. Both sources aren’t that high in omega six, compared to soy or high linoleic sunflower oil.
“Unhealthy” baked goods found in the grocery stores are almost always made with some combination of soy, canola, or palm oil, and cheap snack foods imported from the USA can be made with dubious “vegetable oil.” But Tim Horton’s—our primary doughnut chain—fries their doughnuts in palm oil, apparently.
Canadians are wealthy enough to demand higher-quality products, and we have recently banned partially-hydrogenated oils:
Pork and chicken contains PUFAs, regardless of the way it has been raised.
So do humans. Human skin contains a lot of omega 6:
https://lpi.oregonstate.edu/mic/health-disease/skin-health/essential-fatty-acids
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29610056/
Quote from Jessica2 on April 4, 2023, 8:42 amI know the arguments for grassfed beef and understand its probably healthier, But I really can't stand the taste of it.
Haha, my husband agrees with you. I like both, but personally I don’t think grain finished beef is unhealthy (apart from the genetically engineered feed laced with glyphosate; but stressing about that isn’t in my budget 😂). Tallow goes solid in the fridge either way. Doesn’t seem like the changes to the PUFA ratio would be noticeable in an omnivorous diet, since the quantity is so small anyway.
Haha I love how I was away a little and the thread came to life! Im also very happy to see arguments like "I don't like it". So I'm gonna chip in with some unreferenced thoughts as well. I don't belive it's possible to have a omega 6 deficiency but then again that doesnt mean it doesnt have a function, at least in some conents. I also mailed Peat several times and while I really like a good bit of his views his practical advice never did me any good. I actually emailed him about low-fat experiment too and he showed me how they'd put people on a controlled zero fat diet for like 2 years and nothing wrong happened except health issues dissapearing and some weightloss that then stabilized. That said I dont belive it to be optimal. But the thing is that omega 6 has inflammatory properties. That is not all bad I guess as we need some inflamation signaling problably just like we at least need som ROS, - turns out antioxidants are not so smart since the body uses those ROS's. So to finish the analogy to ROS. Im not saying its ideal or practical but that its not essential and thus a proper deficiancy cannot occur. Then theres also the thing about balancing O3 and O6. I guess if you eat a lot of omega 6 then balancing could have a function, but if you dont then I dont see a point. The main mechanics of O3's anti-innflamatory function is that it shuts down the immunesystem and both omega3 and 6 are anti-thyroid. So I'm trying to say that I dont belive supplementing any of them is such a good idea as long as there is the option to not go too high O6, and also I dont think shutting down the immunesystem is a good long-term solution to inflamation. I assume that means tolerance to Omega6 should increase as vitamin A stores decreases and the immunesystem should be less reactive?? I dont say be hysterical about it at all. Im personally on the Grant diet more or less so for me it doesnt really apply and I havent had any pufa in 12 years now. But I think another argument for real food is that most of the problems of pufas can supposedly be offset by simultaneous intake of saturated fat, and in meat and animal products its mostly packaged togehter as long as none of you feast on seal-blubber f.ex 🙂 If I dont eat butter that day Im at about 0.5 grams of pufa a day but at the other end I think I do ten fifteen grams but then its in animal fats. I seem to sound kind of fanatic but Im sort of just musing about the different mechanisms. Im not at all advocating anything but avoiding like salmon and seal and arctic stuff and not doing vegetables oils. Now thats a mouthfull for you of dense nerd verbiage.