Omega-3 and Vitamin D

My extended family

When is comes to human nutrition, it is a struggle separating the wheat from the chaff. Each era has its red hearing and blind alleys (or worse) of nutrition.  What was once thought good for health may be found bad; what was once thought bad for health may be found good. In the 70’s I got ‘nutrition religion’ and wanted to find out the ‘truth’. I spent many hours at Stockholm’s main library searching for all information I could find on nutrition, great apes and tangential issues, e.g., biology, history.⁽¹⁾

I soon discovered a wide divergence of opinion on nutrition. The science was ‘in progress’. For all I knew it might take science 1000 years to settle things. I couldn’t wait, so I decided to begin by finding out what  the other great apes ate. While humans and the other apes are vastly different in life style, they share pretty much the same biology. I figured that knowing what they ate would give me a sound base line upon which to study the matter.

The chart below is a summary of the content of some essential nutrients in three food groups. It shows which nutrients would be available if one were forced to get their daily 2000 calorie from only that food group. As you can see, consuming only 2000 calories of green vegetables gives you copious amounts of what you need without the fat that the other two groups provide. Moreover, the other two groups are void of vitamin C, an essential vitamin that our body can’t synthesis, and a paltry to none amount of vitamin A, another essential vitamin… and who knows what other subtly essential veggie nutrients yet to be discovered!

Not surprisingly, the chimpanzee diet is more similar to the ‘greens’ food group than the other two. In fact, Jane Goodall found that chimpanzees in the wild consume over 200 different plants.

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Vitamin D

Vitamin D remained hidden from me until I read research some years ago. I realize, of course this makes total sense – we evolved in a sunny environment, Africa. The people who move up north developed whiter skin to let more sunlight in to make more vitamin D. Now we do most of our living indoors, and there’s no sunshine there. Hence, supplements would be crucial. Even more so for darker skin folks living in northern climates. It turns out then that we need at least 10 x what was long thought to be the Daily requirement. Science gets there eventually, it just take time.

Omega 3

The lack of essential fats in our diet has been another recent discovery. Unlike most fat in our diet, these turn out to play a key role in the immune system (among other things). A major source for this was found to be fish. However, great apes don’t eat a lot of fish. In fact, none I’d guess. So where would animals like us get these essential oils? Interestingly, the most widespread source of these particular lipids (fatty acids) is green vegetables! There you go; just eat your several kilograms (about 10 pounds).

Well, that’s not practical as we know. It turns out, animals that eat green veggies have a higher proportion of omega-3 in their fat, and insects are the main green veggie predator out there. There you go; just eat your bugs.

Insects would have been a major food for our ancestors, just as they are for chimpanzees today. Alas, insects in our diet are not that practical either. A good alternative is to eat green veggies, walnuts, and ground flax seed. Tasty and also containing many other essential nutrients.

Faulty information and hype

Vitamin E is a good example of faulty, perhaps hyped, information. I have noticed over the years the buzz surrounding vitamin E. However, I found no natural source for ‘mega doses’ of vitamin E for our ancestors or other apes. Hmm… Come to find out, ‘mega dose’ vitamin E actually helps cancer grow. One problem with ‘mega dose’ vitamin E (or ‘mega dose’ anything, I’d bet) is that this creates an imbalance vis-à-vis other nutrients.

Balance is key

Alpha-linolenic acid (ALA)

The same balance issue surrounding vitamin E is true of the amounts and types of fat we consume. The body manufactures omega-3 fatty acids (EPA and DHA) by converting the essential fatty acid, alpha-linolenic acid (ALA) — found in veggies, flaxseeds, walnuts, etc. This ability is lessened if the diet is too high in omega-6 fatty acids from vegetable oils from corn, sunflower, soybean or safflower. And guess what? Modern diets are extremely over weight in the latter, omega-6 fatty acids. Oops.

⁽¹⁾ It is odd looking back on this now, pre Google. What an information wilderness that was. Without Google it was much harder to come by information. Ironically, the difficulty now is sifting through the tons of information to find what is relevant. Win some lose some. In this post, I’ve just given an overview of this situation – the big picture. Now, with the Google, you can chase down the particulars you need.