X-Message-Number: 20369
From: "Mark Plus" <>
Subject: RE: Fish and essential fatty acids (EFA's)
Date: Sun, 27 Oct 2002 11:16:05 -0800

In Message #20364, Kirk Talmadge writes,

>There may be a problem with just eating fish.  Fish, like cattle, used to
have a fair amount of Omega-3 EFA.  The cattle started losing their Omega-3
content when they were being fed mostly grains instead of range
feeding.  Because of the demand for fish, as a healthy food, we've started
to raise them on fish farms...and feed them grain.  They don't have the
same EFA balance.  They are much lighter in Omega-3's.

We may not have much choice about where we get our fish from now on, as wild 
supplies of seafood are fished to near-extinction. For example, North 
Atlantic cod stocks are apparently dangerously depleted:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2361763.stm


>Grain fed animals have lower omega-3 contents vs. natural or free range
animals.  Unfortunately, fish are now being farmed, and fed grains.  The
grain diet is lowering their omega-3 values.

The New York Times ran an article a few months back about how the grass-fed 
cattle business in the U.S. is growing from boutique status into a 
respectable industry, like organic farming. Apparently the current American 
strains of cattle, having been bred to fatten up on grains in feedlots, 
don't do well on grass (!). So the grass-feeding ranchers have had to import 
cattle from Europe, where cattle still eat a more or less natural diet, to 
cross-breed with American cattle to come up with strains suitable for the 
local grazing conditions. The article mentioned that grass-fed beef has a 
better omega-3 ratio, and is presumably healthier.

This ties in with something I've noticed about the relative attitudes 
towards food & pharmaceuticals in America versus Europe. America holds food 
to lax standards, & pharmaceuticals to really strict standards. By contrast, 
European countries hold food to strict standards, & pharmaceuticals to 
standards arguably more rational & less paranoid than our Food & Drug 
Administration's. That's why America's food is often suboptimal for human 
health, and produced in environmentally damaging ways, while a lot of 
perfectly good pharmaceuticals aren't approved here even though they've been 
available in Europe for years. The Europeans' priorities actually make more 
sense, because we eat food every day, while we use pharmaceuticals only as 
needed.

Mark Plus
It's not "religious" or "science fictional" if you can do it.

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