Eat Better Podcast Episode 7 – Benefits of Eating Fish

Eat Better Podcast Episode 7 – Benefits of Eating Fish

0 Comments

To listen to episode 7 of the Eat Better podcast you can download it from iTunes – click here or read transcript below. 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKxHvi4YaWg

 

Hi guys, welcome back to the Eat Better podcast with myself Tommy Wood from drragnar.com and Chloe Archard on the line from paleo-britain.co.uk.

 

Just to quickly start out, anybody who is still with us after the disaster that was the audio quality on our last podcast, we just have to apologize very much. Somebody’s microphone had a bit of a problem. So thank you if you listened to that or we understand if you didn’t listen to all that but thank you for listening again.

 

So today we are going to talk about fish – we were originally going to talk about meat and fish but then Chloe as usual came up with so many questions that we decided just to focus on fish this time and we’ll talk about meat at a later date.

 

So, hi Chloe.

 

Hi. How are you?

 

Ok thanks, how are you?

 

Ok, thank you.

 

So – we are going to talk about fish for forty five minutes to an hour which is hopefully something other people are interested in. I have got my geek jumper on because I think it is kind of a geeky topic to talk about for quite a long time. But there are a lot of things to discuss that are quite interesting. So, I will just go straight into questions.

 

One of the first questions I had was about our evolutionary history with eating fish. What evidence is there that we evolved eating fish or seafood and did it have anything to do with the development of our brains?

 

So, that’s definitely one of the theories and I think that the fish consumption and meat consumption are actually quite tightly linked because maybe 2 million years ago our brains started to expand and with that we had an increase in social behaviour and an increase in intelligence and that’s partly what we think enabled us to migrate out of the plains of Africa which is where we think we as a species began.

 

From about that time, about two million years ago, we have evidence of hunting large animals or medium sized animals – sort of bovine type of animals – I guess something similar to a buffalo. And we particularly eat the insides of the bones for fat and then the brains. We think eating the brains of other animals and increasing our DHA and DHA is a very important Omega-3 fat that we talked about in conjunction with seafood. Increase in our consumption of DHA together with other nutrients we think is part of the reason our brains expanded and we ended up being the species that we are. And some people think we really didn’t need meat or we are not necessarily adapted to meat. But if you look at something like our guts for example – our guts look much more like or much closer to a carnivore’s gut because they are designed to absorb nutrients directly from the food – fat and solid directly from the food – unlike something like the chimpanzee’s gut or a gorilla’s gut or even a cow’s gut which is designed to allow bacteria to ferment all that indigestible plant fibre and then turn it into fat. And so our gut looks like a gut that is designed to absorb fat directly from the diet and we only get that – mainly – from eating animals.

 

Back in the Palaeolithic era – some computer models suggest that we probably ate around 100 milligrams per day of EPA and DHA, those are the two Omega-3s that we get from animal sources or from seafood. And so that’s basically an essential element of our evolution. But some people argue that this would have been much easier if we came from a shore based population – people who had access to some fish, bivalves like mussels or oysters or clams and sea vegetables. Nowadays we talk of things like Nori or Kelp or Kami or Kombu. And if we had those in our diets it would dramatically increase our access to DHA but would also increase our access to iodine. Iodine is an essential nutrient especially for something like thyroid function and it is almost impossible to get a consistent source of iodine from anything other than a sea-based life form be that animal or vegetable. So there is definitely evidence that we developed some of our requirements from things that we can get from seafood.

 

And then if we go to something like – this is just anecdotal evidence from someone like Weston A Price – I know when he went looking for traditional cultures and he looked at where they might get something like their DHA from, those cultures that didn’t live close to the shore were actually more likely to go and eat the people that did have access to the shore. So they were actually cannibals and that was because those people had iodine and DHA readily available particularly in their brains. So I think nobody has definitively said that we needed seafood for our evolution but I think there are some good clues that it was potentially part of it.

 

I actually read something interesting about the work of Weston Price – that most of the traditional societies he visited did really value seafood and would travel great distances to get seafood if they could. And they particularly valued dried fish eggs which they would trade with people so even if they didn’t live near the shore, they would then travel and trade in these fish eggs. And another paper that I looked up where they did an analysis of the DHA and EPA in things like fish eggs and oily fish, fish eggs are way higher in omega-3 than even fish. So that’s interesting. And the other thing as well is he found that even when people didn’t have access to the seafood, they often ate a lot of insects and insects are also high in EPA and DHA. So, if they weren’t eating seafood, they were eating insects and still getting those fats.

 

Absolutely. And people may not realize that once you take away the water in the brain, what’s left is mostly fat and you know up to 20% of that is DHA. So that is an incredibly important nutrient and it tends to sit around the synapses – so the points where nerves communicate with each other. So part of our complex thoughts and memory we think are because we get so much DHA into our brain and it can help generate synapses and that is why it is very important for brain development as well as brain evolution.

 

Ok. Apart from the evolutionary side of it, is there evidence from modern studies that people who eat more fish or seafood live longer or have lower levels of disease than those who eat less?

 

So, I think-overall- absolutely. You know the problem with most of the data that we have and the same comes to things like meat consumption – is most of this is observational data which like we’ve seen before, you can’t prove anything with. So if I look at a million people and those that eat the most fish live the longest, that is not proof that fish is necessarily beneficial or healthy. But if you look at overall patterns, I think that fish eaters to tend to see an overall benefit and unlike the controversy with meat, particularly red meat, I think fish has overall shown more benefit. In the EPIC study (the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer), they have – you know it’s one of the biggest observational studies locally in Europe which is looking at nutrition and disease and those that ate most fatty fish they saw a lower risk of type-2 diabetes. Eating more fish has been shown to reduce the risk of coronary cancer. One analysis showed a reduction in mortality in those who eat at least two servings of fish a week or servings per 150gms. In general, increase in fish consumption has been shown to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease but some of the controversy comes in because when they then try to supplement people with fish oil, they don’t necessarily see the benefits. So the benefit is coming from fish but when you then use fish oil, you maybe then don’t see any benefits.

 

In the Health Professionals Follow-up and Nurses Health Studies, those are big observational studies over in the US, two servings of fish a week reduces the risk of heart disease. And when we are talking about the amounts, this is about 4g to 6g per week of DHA from those two servings. Say you eat something like salmon – that’s about 60% EPA and 40% DHA. And then there is a study that came out just this week from the Omega Remodel Trial and they gave people 4g of pharmaceutical grade which is SmithKline’s patented Omega-3 mixture, I don’t know what is special about it – I looked it up, it is just EPA and DHA as far as I can tell. But they gave 4g per day to people that have had heart attacks and they saw some improvements in cardiovascular function after heart attacks which is one of the long term effects of heart attacks. So, overall, whether you are looking at trial data or observational data, I think it is of real benefit to people who eat more fish – So, absolutely.

 

One of the things that you hear quite a lot is that chia seeds are the new superfood that we all need to be eating. And chia seeds contain eight times more omega-3 than salmon does. And so, I think that is actually true – I went to the USDA food database the other day and checked – I think it is true chia seeds do contain eight times as much omega-3 – so why don’t we all just eat chia seeds?

 

That is a good question. And we could – absolutely. If you like chia seeds, I don’t necessarily think there is anything wrong with eating chia seeds – they could be something to add to your diet. Some people who have gut issues – you know they sort of make this gum when you add them to some kind of fluid and some people think that irritates the lining of the gut in people who have gut issues so maybe that’s not an option for them. But the real reason is that the omega-3 that is in chia seeds is alpha-linoleic acid (ALA) which is an 18 carbon chain – so that is the length of the carbon in the fat – it is eighteen carbons. DHA is 22 and so what happens is when you turn ALA into DHA, you need to make that fat longer. You need to metabolize that fat to make it DHA. And only about 5% of ALA is converted into EPA and that’s a long way to DHA. It is only about half a percent that is converted into DHA.

 

If you are talking about the omega-3 fat that you need for the brain – DHA – it is selectively taken up in the brain. In babies, they only accumulate DHA and arachidonic acid (AA), which is different – it is an omega-6 fat. Only those two fats (DHA and AA), which are polyunsaturated fats, are accumulated in the baby’s brain because those are the essential fats. So when you are looking at the fat that you really need for the brain and brain development, then the omega-3 ALA is probably not going to be enough.

 

And interestingly, if you are looking at the metabolic pathways that create DHA from ALA, you also need iron, zinc, B6 and magnesium. And if you are looking at the best source of iron, zinc and B6 – again those are animal products – meat and fish. So in general it is thought that ALA is not a good substitute for DHA, because the DHA we produce from ALA may not be the best version for the brain and we will talk about that later about the exact structure of the DHA.

 

However, if you do blood samples from vegetarians or vegans, they do have less DHA but they are not often as we would expect them to be – deficient in DHA. And I think part of the disconnect there is the fact that is you do not take in any DHA you will up regulate those pathways that create it because it is so essential. But then, an argument against that would be that when you make DHA yourself it may not be in the most ideal form and a more bio-available and more useful form could actually come from what you get in the diet. So, overall it would be better to get naturally occurring DHA from the diet rather than forcing your body to make it by itself.

 

And it is important as we get older to have DHA as well, isn’t it? Because some studies have linked low levels with degenerative disease.

 

Absolutely. Yes, particularly in the brain – low DHA is associated with so many neuro-degenerative diseases. So if you were deficient in DHA while you were in the womb or while you were growing up, then that has a number of problems in terms of your own cognitive development. You have a lower IQ; lower motor coordination as a baby and when you grow up, and then when you grow older DHA deficiency is associated with dementia but also things like Parkinson’s, potentially multiple sclerosis, ALS and motor-neurone diseases. All of these, you know, the nerves are so dependent on DHA that having a low DHA status is thought to be one of the reasons why we get so many neuro-degenerative disorders. I mean they are very complex and we have got lots of other things going on but a low DHA level is certainly potentially a part of that.

 

It is crazy really; that we are not told more to eat fish – because I know there is an emphasis in the dietary guidelines that we should include some fish. But they don’t emphasize it that much and it is never really explained what the benefits are, but I guess that is the same with all the dietary guidelines.

 

Well, that is the thing – it is strange because people very vehemently say remove saturated fat from the diet because that’s going to give you heart diseases but nobody says eat lots of fish because that will reduce your risk of heart disease. So, people are much more – they focus a lot more on what they think is bad rather than what they think is good. I think that is just human nature in general.

 

Ok. So we have talked about the omega-3s. What other nutrients do you get from fish and seafood other than omega-3? Is there anything else that is beneficial?

 

Yeah, so we talked about iodine particularly so iodine is very hard to get from anything other than a sea-based source. So particularly rich in shellfish – both crab and lobsters and things like that and like mussels and oysters. Vitamin D – vegetarians have a lower intake of Vitamin D but if they are pescetarians then that seems to improve. And then a lot of minerals, iron, copper, selenium, zinc and they are also again high in shellfish. Selenium you will find a lot of it in things like tuna, sardines and such.

 

One of the reasons a lot of people say they avoid fish or worry about fish is mercury and you kind of hear the whole time that mercury is a big problem. I did read somewhere about selenium and how it offsets the mercury problem – so could you just explain a bit?

 

There is some naturally occurring mercury that ends up in the sea. There are also lots of pollutants and lots of things we do with mercury that end up in the sea. And mercury is particularly accumulated in the muscles of the larger fish. So we often think about being at the top of the food chain so things like tuna and swordfish, shark are some of the worst offenders but actually in things like shellfish, octopus, mussels, oysters, clams there is actually much less mercury. We tend to focus on the mercury in bigger fish. However, of two of the main toxins that are present in fish, mercury is one. Methol-mercury is the form that we see in fish but also things like Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs) and dioxins which are basically organic molecules that can act as both neurotoxins and endocrine disruptors and things like that. And most of them tended to come from what we are actually feeding the farmed fish. And most of these studies were done ten years ago and a lot of these were found in the food they were throwing into the water. However, since this came to light they have made a great effort to change what they have been feeding farmed fish and actually you saw a recent study on Norwegian Atlantic farmed salmon that showed that over the last ten years the levels of dioxins and PCBs has more than halved, mercury levels have more than halved. So now we think that those levels – you can eat well over a kilo of farmed fish a week and you wouldn’t get anywhere near what we think are dangerous levels of PCBs and dioxins.

 

And it is much, much more for the mercury levels – it is five to six kilos a week before we see a problematic mercury dose. One thing that people often talk about is that mercury is a neurotoxin and in reality any mercury is too much mercury, but unfortunately this stuff is everywhere.

 

They have done some really nice studies in the Seychelles looking at DHA intake and mercury and development in kids. This is during pregnancy. And what they did is they took the mum’s – they measured omega-3 in the blood and they measured mercury in the hair. This is not just people telling you what they eat – we are actually looking at real physiological data. And what they see is that mums who have a great DHA intake, their babies have better developmental outcomes, so better cognitive outcomes. Interestingly, if they have a higher omega-6 to omega-3 ratio – too much omega6 and too little omega3, that worsens developmental outcomes probably because those babies are not getting enough DHA. And if you have more mercury obviously that is found to be more detrimental. But if you have got a good DHA intake, then that appears to overcome the mercury problem and is still beneficial. So on some level DHA is protective against mercury in terms of baby development. They have done a number of studies where they give DHA to mums and they see improved outcomes in the babies.

 

And interestingly, selenium is another mineral that you find particularly in seafood and again, it is big fish and shellfish or things like mussels and oysters and that kind of stuff. And the effect that mercury has on the mitochondria, the function of the mitochondria, is directly – and this is mainly in the test tube, we have seen it in a number of studies as well: but if you are looking at the mitochondria function in the test tube, the effect of mercury is counteracted by selenium. It is also counteracted by up-regulating a pathway that is associated with something called NRF2. And people do not need to know what that means, but that is basically something that is up-regulated in other states that we think are beneficial like ketosis, or eating lots of sulphurous vegetables like cabbage, and things like that because isothionates increase NRF2. So, mercury is a problem but I kind of think if you eat more mussels, shellfish and oysters…..

 

And the fish smaller down the food chain like sardines and things like that?

 

Yes. And interestingly, sardines, mackerel and salmon all have a similar mercury content. So it is actually maybe just the top of the food chain, something like tuna, that is the worst then the rest are about the same. So, sardines have a similar mercury content as salmon but you could focus on those and reduce your omega 6 if you are having a baby and you are worried about brain development. And already anybody who is worrying about stuff this much is getting a great head start and I don’t want people to worry about it too much. We definitely think that the benefits outweigh the negative side-effects of the mercury. If you are eating a lot of fish and you are worried about it then maybe take a DHA supplement and that gives you a sort of shortcut.

 

With the selenium thing, doesn’t the selenium bind to the mercury so that you do not actually absorb the mercury?

 

It can compete with where the mercury is causing a problem. But if it is already in there – if you are taking them together at the same time, absolutely. So it could have multiple protection. Selenium can also protect against radiation toxicity or radiation poisoning.

 

That was the other thing I was going to ask about because that is the other thing that you read about fish – it is the mercury content and then it is radiation in nuclear disasters and people are becoming increasingly concerned. And you see some reports saying that it isn’t anything to worry about but obviously that is something that people are going to always be concerned about.

 

Particularly what I think people are talking about is Fukushima because I think that is around the coast, close to these huge fishing areas and one of the things that people were particularly worried about was radioactive metal or the radioactive version of the metal cesium. It has a long half-life and they know they would have lost some in the ocean in 2011 Fukushima. And they have done a number of studies particularly on the west coast of America – the Pacific Northwest up near Oregon and Washington states and then also up in Canada. And actually the levels of radioactive cesium in the fish are still below detectible levels so they haven’t seen an increase there.

 

And then some Japanese scientists did an analysis of what they thought would be an increased risk to the fishermen in Japan – the guys who were handling fish day in, day out – and they thought that the extra radiation that had been dumped into the sea and that would then end up in fish, would cause an extra 2 cancer deaths per 10 million people. So they may not actually ever see those deaths. So the extra total lifetime dose of radiation they did in this calculation to people who were eating fish from this area, was 0.9 to 5.7 micocuries and curies is just a measure of radiation. That is about a quarter of what you get from a transatlantic flight – so if you ever fly anywhere, that is more radiation than you get from eating radioactive fish from Japan. And actually I had an anecdote from the time – which is when this went off – British citizens from within a certain circumference, a certain number of kilometres from the power plant in Fukushima, were evacuated by the British consulate in Japan and by flying them back to the UK they exposed them to more radiation than they would have been exposed to if they would have just stayed in Fukushima. So I think overall it is probably not something worth worrying about.

 

Ok. So we have touched on, wild versus farmed fish a little bit before, so would you always recommend wild over farm fish and if yes, is farmed fish still better than no fish? From a health point of view – there is obviously the sustainability point of view as well which I do understand some people are really anti-farmed fish because of the feed, like you said the things they are fed on and the amount of fish that goes into feeding farmed fish is not sustainable. But if you are just looking from a health point of view.

 

Well, I mean, I also think that most of the data people are quoting on famed fish is actually quite old. It is at least ten years old. And they have gone to a lot of steps to try and improve this and I am not saying it is ideal, but it has definitely been improved. I heard recently that Norwegian companies farming fish in Canada have imported some salmon viruses and are now killing off the traditional salmon in the West coast of Canada. I haven’t seen any robust data but that is kind of floating out there on the Internet.

 

But in general, actually, I do not think there is any reason to suggest that you have to go wild over farmed. And I do understand why people would rather go for wild – it is usually line caught, it does not have risk of disease because it has been eating just what it is supposed to eat. So, in general wild salmon does have lower mercury content, it does have lower PCB and dioxin content and other toxins. But it is not that much lower and it is not so much lower that you would say that farmed salmon isn’t worth it. So people generally talk about salmon when they are talking about this in the States because that is where most of the study is done and we have more farmed salmon in the US than in Europe. And obviously we have a good comparison of wild salmon. And so, some studies done about ten years ago found that Scottish farmed salmon was the most toxin laden – had most mercury, most dioxins, most PCBs. Again, this is ten years ago so I do not know where that is at now. Like I said, in the Norwegian population that’s improved dramatically in the last ten years. And then compared to the Norwegian salmon farm, salmon from the Atlantic, or from Norway or from anywhere in the pacific, that was better in terms of toxin content.

 

Like I said, wild is best – it is interesting to note that anything that apparently says it’s Alaskan Salmon, it can’t be farmed so it has to be wild. So they have lower toxin content but if you look at farmed salmon it tends to have a higher EPA and DHA content so it has a higher omega-3 content. So I think overall the two are potentially pretty equal. And again you see more omega 3 in the colder fish – those coming from Norway or the Atlantic Ocean versus something like the Pacific Ocean on the west coast of the US.

 

So for someone who is vegetarian or vegan – again we have touched a little on why DHA is important – if someone was avoiding fish for health reasons, not for ethical reasons because obviously if you are avoiding fish for ethical reasons that is a completely different thing. But if you are avoiding fish because you think for health reasons it is better do you think there is any good reason to do that or not?

 

I certainly haven’t seen it. All the data points towards a benefit of eating seafood even despite the potential toxin levels and it is just a sad fact of life like I was saying there are toxins in everything that we eat. So if you are talking about things like PCBs and dioxins again which is what people tend to focus on, because obviously people eat most of these compared to something like seafood, most – almost a third of them in the diet come from other meat products like meat, pork or chicken, dairy products give about a third, vegetables give over 20% and fish and shellfish are much lower down the list. So, people who are avoiding fish but eating a lot of anything else they are still going to get it. So there is little evidence to suggest that they will be getting a lower overall toxin dose.

 

Denise Minger talks about if people are really vegan for ethical reasons and you know, just don’t want to eat fish or anything like that. They could perhaps consider eating bivalves just because they are non-sentient and they will provide a huge variety of nutrients that they wouldn’t be getting otherwise. So what kind of – could you just explain more about that – what kinds of things should people consider eating.

 

So – I mean if people are worried about, you know. It kind of depends on what is your worry. Some people are just kind of no animal products for ethical reasons and that is absolutely their choice. But I do understand Denise Minger’s point, which is that bivalves are sort of in between – if you see what I mean. They obviously do have a nervous system, so they are sentient as such they can sense their environment but then again so do plants. It kind of depends where you lie with that. Things like oysters or mussels or clams – iodine, iron, zinc, DHA – you are going to get them in the form that is much more bioavailable than you can get from plant foods. And they really are essential for things like brain function and iodine for thyroid function.

 

And what I was talking about earlier about DHA coming from seafood – what we know or what we are starting to find out now is that the structure that we get DHA in from seafood – the DHA is probably in the ideal position. So the way that fats are transported in the body, they come in things called triglycerides. It is basically three fat chains attached to a glycerol molecule and in fish, naturally, it comes in what we call the SN2 position. Basically you have three fats and the DHA is in the middle in position number two. And in this position, it is more bio-available so absorbed more easily. It is much more likely to be transported across the blood-brain barrier. We need DHA in that position to get across the blood-brain barrier and in this position it is much more protected so it is less likely to be oxidized and so for all of these reasons, the DHA in seafood is really the ideal DHA in order for us to make the best use of. You know, it gets incorporated into mitochondria better which is where we need a lot of our DHA for proper mitochondria function. So, I think if people are worried about eating fish for certain reasons but maybe they are less worried about something like a clam or a mussel or an oyster then eating some of those does have some real potential.

 

Ok. And what types of fish or seafood would you recommend people to focus on? Because like you said, most of the studies have been done on salmon and you are always hearing that we should eat salmon. But there are so many other varieties of fish out there and earlier when I said I was looking at something about EPA and DHA and it was saying that fish eggs are far higher than a lot of fish. But you never really see recommendations to eat fish eggs – I don’t know why – because obviously caviar is expensive, but other types of roe are not expensive.

 

Yeah. Other types of fish roe are really cheap and I am in Norway at the moment and it is a really popular thing to spread on bread. It has a very high omega 3 content, but they are also a great source of things like vitamin E, vitamin D, people talk a lot of fish eggs being a good source of Vitamin K too. I haven’t seen any exact studies where they’ve mentioned that but it is very possible. And a lot it comes from the Weston A. Price line of thinking where these vitamin K2 containing foods were some of the most highly prized foods and fish eggs were one of the most highly prized foods but I haven’t yet seen a study there. So people think that fish eggs are high in K2, which is very beneficial for cardiovascular disease and osteoporosis risk and things like that.

 

Other than that, I think people should just focus on what they enjoy and what they can afford. So if you are pregnant, you stay away from things like tuna, get a good balance – you know. I think you should go for sustainably fished. So, some farmed salmon is very sustainably grown. But then smaller fish, you can get more omega-3 fats and other things. So if you are eating things like mackerels or sardines from a tin, but you do not eat dairy products, then some of the bones and stuff that are in there that gives you a good source of calcium. And people often shy away from things like mussels and clams and oysters but – it terms of nutrition that they provide versus the potential negative effects, they really are where the money is so mussels, oysters, clams, you know, they have loads and loads of nutrients and low toxin content. So if people are worried about the balance there, then maybe they should focus on those.

 

And what about things like prawns, which are obviously eaten quite a lot, are they good or bad?

 

Yep. Prawns are great and along the lines of shellfish, those kinds of crustaceans are very similar in nutrient content. And we used to be told not to eat prawns because of the high cholesterol content but we know that’s not an issue.

 

Ok, the last couple of questions are about fish oil and cod-liver oil. So that could a pocast in itself. I have read so many articles online about fish oils and cod liver oil. But is there any benefit of taking fish oil supplements particularly for people who do not eat much fish? So I am interested in this because my daughter, she’s only three, I can’t get her to eat fish. She just won’t eat it. My son is only eighteen months and I have given him loads of fish and he eats it all the time. But for her, I can’t get her to eat fish at the moment. Is there any benefit to her taking fish oil supplements or cod-liver oil?

 

Yes, I think absolutely. And one of the studies I mentioned earlier, you know we talk about omega-3 and omega-6 balance and I know some people think that if you just reduce omega-6 then omega-3 intake matters less. But some studies suggest that something like your cardiovascular risk, heart disease risk is reduced by omega-3s regardless of what your omega-6 intake is. So I think there is a real potential benefit there, particularly for people who do not eat fish. And one thing I think people need to take into account is that the difference in the quality of the products that you are taking is going to vary hugely.

 

They have done a number of studies just looking at the quality of fish oil and what they contain, and they never contain what they say, whether it is the fatty acid content or oxidized fats or whatever. Because these fats are very susceptible to processing – so if you process fish oil, you know I talked about the SN2 position of DHA. In fish oil, that often seems to flip and it ends up in the SN1 position. So it is the less bio-available, less useful form. And that tends to happen – it is almost a naturally occurring reaction – when fish oil is heated up. So, the more you process it, the less the potential benefit you might get and I think that is part of the reason – I mean you are not getting all of the other nutrients that you get from seafood – but I think that is the reason why we do not necessarily see a benefit in trials giving people omega-3. Because they just give these highly processed fish oils that are put in a capsule and kept in a cupboard, whatever temperature and all of that.

 

I think if you can get minimally processed fish oil or something like cod-liver oil – again this is for somebody who isn’t a big fan of eating fish and would rather get it from a less sentient source someone can get cold-pressed fish oil that is minimally processed. And again I think something like cod-liver oil or a whole liver or a whole fish oil – especially a cod-liver oil because it is the most studied and what people use the most, I think is better than a highly processed omega-3 oil or fish oil because of the naturally occurring antioxidants like vitamin E. So we think that having the vitamin E naturally present in the oil will prevent some of the damage that will happen to the fats when you process them. That’s why I think in general when you are looking at fish oil versus omega-3 oils versus cod-liver oil, then I think cod-liver oil is probably the best.

 

And cod-liver oil, it used to be, not prescribed, but recommended by doctors and it was what we were told in the UK – take cod-liver oil. And my parents and grandparents, they all remember being given this awful tasting cod-liver oil. God knows whether it was rancid or not – I don’t know! But they were forced to take it everyday and people really remember those days. I don’t see that happen now, but cod-liver oil must have a good history with safety and results and all that kind of thing because it has been used for so many years.

 

Absolutely. My grandparents, my grandmother has told me so many times that – she’s Icelandic and she grew up on a farm in Iceland – you know, every day you got your spoon of cod-liver oil whether you liked it or not. This has been a big part of the culture and you know, and I can’t say it is down to the cod-liver oil but Iceland has some of the longest living people in the world. So, you know, they are probably doing something right and part of that is the culture of fish and of cod-liver oil.

 

The Weston Price Foundation recommend the one to take is fermented cod liver oil and they say they have concerns about normal cod-liver oil because it might be rancid and whatever else and I just wondered if there is any evidence that that is better? And is that the recommendation you would give to people – to get a fermented one if they can or do you think normal cod-liver oil is ok?

 

I haven’t seen any studies on fermented cod-liver oil versus normal cod-liver oil. I don’t think that is anything people have looked into. One thing I think they talk about is that if you get any bacterial fermentation you increase things like vitamin K2 I think that is one of the essential reasons they say that fermented is better. But I find it very strange that they say that fermented – that you should have fermented cod-liver oil but not normal cod-liver oil because normal cod liver oil might be rancid. But the process of fermenting fats makes them rancid. So I imagine the fats in fermented cod-liver oil being more rancid and having less of the DHA in the structure that you’d ideally want it. So I’d actually, just on basic bio-chemistry, disagree with that and say that probably normal minimally processed cod-liver oil from a good source is just as good. Again, I haven’t seen any studies – nobody’s compared these in trials or anything. But just from a theoretical standpoint I think normal cod-liver oil is fine and that is what I suggest people take.

 

And also, cod liver oil (as opposed to fish oil) does have vitamin A and D which fish oils never really have. And that is another reason why people were told to take it – because especially in places like Iceland vitamin D levels maybe not, you are not going to get much from the sun. And same in the UK especially through the winter we are not getting much vitamin D. That’s one reason to take cod liver-oil over fish oil, isn’t it? Because fish oils won’t have those vitamins on their own.

 

No – absolutely. And I have recently – and again I talk about my grandmother I’m sure she will not mind – I looked at some blood results from her and I looked at vitamin D levels and she eats a lot of fish, she has a small amount of cod-liver oil every day and her vitamin D level was 90, in the winter, in Iceland. So, you know I think that is a very good potential source of vitamin D if people are not getting a lot of sunshine.

 

Ok, I have gone through all of my questions.

 

Great. We are well under an hour there. People are going to be ecstatic!

 

It is one of those topics that is so specific that you can’t waffle on for too long about it! Ok, thank you everyone for listening.

 

Yeah, thanks guys. Just a reminder – any questions can come through iTunes or through my website which is drragnar.com or Chloe’s website paleo-britain.co.uk. We always love to hear from people, information, studies, things that we haven’t read before or thoughts and we’ll be back soon.

 

Thanks for listening.