KC and Monica Craichy talk about the 5 major things to consider when choosing the best fish oil for your family.
Audio Transcript
KC: Hello. I’m KC Craichy, Founder and CEO of Living Fuel, and this is my wife, Monica. We’re here today to talk to you about Omega-3 fish oil, and the five major things you need to consider when choosing your fish oil.
Monica: You know, it’s such a confusing decision because there are so many different kinds of fish oils on the product shelves these days, so what would you say is the first thing that people need to consider when choosing a fish oil?
KC: Well, first of all it’s amazing that grandma knew what she knew and that she used to say, “Take two teaspoons of cod liver oil and you’ll be all better.” A lot of research now points that there’s some wisdom in that. That’s really a better source for Vitamins D and A than it is for Omega-3, but the first thing I would say is, “Don’t take liquid fish oils”. Liquid fish oils are subject to spoilage, rancidity and lipid peroxidation in your body. You really do want to avoid liquid fish oils. You want to take your fish oil in a gel cap, and preferably that gel cap will be a buffalo gelatin, not a pig or a cow, because those other forms, those animals, tend to spread diseases and they can spread it through the gel cap.
Monica: So if it’s in the gel cap, then the oxygen obviously cannot get to it. So it’s sealed and there’s no oxidation.
KC: Correct.
Monica: All right.
KC: And along those lines, number two would be make sure you take fat- soluble antioxidants along with your fish oil. Fat-soluble antioxidants would be Vitamin E, and when we’re talking Vitamin E, we’re talking natural Vitamin E which comes in eight forms not the one form you generally see in a fish oil. So it would be alpha, beta, gamma, delta, tocotrienol, alpha, beta, gamma, delta, tocopheral. That is Vitamin E. de-alphaed [SP] tocopheral is a natural fraction of Vitamin E and generally only enough to keep from spoiling in the bottle.
Monica: So when you see the little ‘D’ in front of the tocopheral, does that mean it’s pharmaceutical grade or what?
KC: No, that means it’s one fraction of eight fractions and not working together. Now if it’s DL alpha tocopheral, that means it’s synthetic Vitamin E, but that’s another subject entirely. So the point is Vitamin E, Vitamin A, astaxanthin, Vitamin D, they all work together to keep the oil from spoiling in the body. Lipid peroxidation is what you want to avoid. Lipid peroxidation could be worse than not taking fish oil. So take your fat-soluble antioxidants along with your fish oil is number two.
Monica: So that helps it in the body, to not oxidize in the body.
KC: Right. And there are other benefits for those antioxidants being in your body as well.
Monica: OK. What would the third thing be?
KC: The third thing would be to try to get your fish from the front side of the food chain – sardines, anchovies and so on. The big fish, the fatty fish that have Omega-3s are salmon, mackerel, tuna, herring, sardines, anchovies and so on, but these bigger fish that have been around for years can have tremendous levels of toxins built up. Now there’s a good process for taking those out, but the best bet is to just stay with the early side, the front side of the food chain that eat the plankton, the algae and so on.
Monica: So the bigger, older fish have eaten a lot more garbage from the sea basically.
KC: And have been exposed to trace levels of pharmaceuticals and so on that you just can’t get out.
Monica: So you’re safer with the smaller fish at the front of the food chain that are eating the plants.
KC: That have been molecularly distilled, yes.
Monica: Beautiful. OK. What would the next one be?
KC: The next one would be to avoid pharmaceutical-grade fish oils. Now, super concentrated oils are marketed; Dr. Sears and his marketing team called pharmaceutical-grade fish oil. Now, pharmaceutical-grade is a marketing term. No such thing exists, but interestingly pharmaceutical-grade is representative of a fish oil that has unnatural levels of EPA and DHA, and it’s this process of making it concentrated, breaks it out of its natural triglyceride and therefore it’s in an unnatural form.
Monica: What does that do in the body?
KC: Well, we don’t really know. It’s probably better than taking no fish oil, but the net of it is that fish oil that is unnaturally concentrated is probably better than not taking it, but we really don’t have any studies on the long-term implications of taking that form of fish oil.
Monica: So it’s better to take it in its natural state.
KC: Natural state. If you look on the bottle and you see 180 mg. of DHA or 120 mg. of DHA, that’s the highest you want to see in a fish oil. Otherwise, you can assume that it’s unnaturally concentrated. There may be one or two brands out there that are naturally concentrated. It’s really not commercially available yet.
Monica: So what should the ratio be?
KC: 120/80 or 180/120 of EPA to DHA.
Monica: OK. And what would the last thing be?
KC: Well, there’s a lot of hype out there about shellfish oils, and you really need to be informed, to understand. Shellfish oils – that would be green lipid oils and krill oil. You’ve seen a lot of that. Bayer Pharmaceuticals has now joined with a company to make a krill drug, but the truth is there’s so scant literature on shellfish oils. The one study I saw regarding krill oil showed that you would have to take approximately an entire bottle of 60 caps to get the benefits demonstrated in that study at the cost of about $60 or $70 a day. It really is hype. There’s a lot of hype surrounding krill oil and green muscle oil or green lipid oils, but the net of it is that it is really an over-hyped and over- priced way to get Omega-3. It’s very small amounts of Omega-3. Now there are some fat-soluble antioxidants naturally in those, but there are better and more cost-effective ways to get those. So I just encourage you to be informed and don’t think that fish oil is somehow obsolete because of this new hype surrounding these shellfish oils.
Monica: Now talk about, real fast, what do the shellfish eat in the ocean? I think that’s important.
KC: I think you have a great analogy for that.
Monica: Go ahead.
KC: They’re filters. Basically, shellfish are filters. You don’t eat your filters at home, and you certainly wouldn’t want to eat fish. Now, they do have processes to purify the oils, and I’m not saying they’re not pure, maybe they are, but they are shellfish oils and if you avoid shellfish, you’ll want to avoid the oils as well.
Monica: So it would seem that the oils that come from the fish at the front of the food chain would be purer.
KC: Most definitely. The purest ones are the sardines and the anchovies.
Monica: OK.
KC: Anyway, those are the five things you want to consider when choosing your fish oil. Have a great day. We wish you super health. God bless you.
