Perhaps you’re already aware of the health benefits of essential fatty acids, and in particular Omega 3 fatty acids. There’s been plenty of news lately about these health benefits and many people now understand about the importance of maintaining an adequate intake of Omega3 fats, in which most of us are deficient. But have you heard about Omega 6 fats, and do you know what the Omega 3 Omega 6 ratio is?

We all need good fats known as essential fatty acids for good health. Our body cannot manufacture these itself and so relies on getting them through our diet every day. Omega 3 fats are found in fish, and the vast majority of us are deficient in Omega 3 intake.

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.

In the past, according to research, we ate roughly as much Omega 3 as Omega 6 fats. This produced an Omega 3 Omega 6 ratio around 1 to 1. But because of our dietary reliance on food sources such as vegetable oils and processed foods there are estimates suggesting that our Omega 6 Omega 3 ratio has changed to around 10 to 1, and some estimates are that it is now as high as 30 to 1. Most of us are eating way too much Omega 6 fatty acids.

Whilst 6 is important to our health increasing the ratio between the 2 as we have done over the last hundred or so years is not. There are a range of health implications from eating too much Omega 6 fatty acids and too little Omega 3. In particular it is thought that we are exposing ourselves to an increased range of lifestyle diseases including cancer, coronary artery disease and various inflammatory related diseases such as arthritis.

On top of this is an issue with our meat. In the past our meat came from animals raised on grass. Grass fed meat is reasonably high in Omega 3. However most of our meat now comes from grain fed animals, and grain fed animals have virtually no Omega 3 and are high in Omega 6 fats. So as you can see we are all eating plenty of Omega 6 and there is absolutely no need to supplement our diets with more.

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.

However, although all of us should be taking daily fish oil supplements, you need to be aware that there are wide variations in the amount of the Omega 3 fatty acids found in the different brands of fish oil supplements, and you need to know how to make an informed choice when choosing your fish oil supplements.

If you’re interested in finding out more about the Omega 3 Omega 6 ratio, or about how to compare the different brands of fish oil capsules, then visit my website to do so.