A Month of Omega-6
Susan Allport, having written The Queen of Fats, unsurprisingly eats a diet high in omega-3 and low in omega-6. For one month, however, she ate a diet with more omega-6 and less omega-3 and wrote about it– like Supersize Me, except far more realistic.
O magazine commissioned a story about it but didn’t run it. “My weight gain was only 0.5 pounds and they thought their readers wouldn’t see the importance of that,” says Allport. Her draft is here. There were three striking changes over the month: the omega-6/omega-3 ratio in her blood doubled (implying that this ratio is controlled by diet rather than by stored fat); her belly fat noticeably increased; and the elasticity of her arteries decreased by 20%. This supports Allport’s belief (and mine) that omega-6 is dangerous when consumed in large amounts, as it is if you eat a lot of food cooked in vegetable oil.
The American Heart Association recommends that Americans eat more omega-6. The justification of this recommendation says nothing about the Israeli Paradox, which to me is the best reason to avoid a diet high in omega-6. Allport’s experience is another reason.
Allport is also the author of Explorers of the Black Box, about neuroscience research.
July 30th, 2010 at 6:12 am
Seth – What are foods that are typically high in Omega 6? I’m a vegan and have a feeling that this diet naturally keeps Omega 6 levels low anyways.
Put differently, what are foods that are high in Omega 3s, but not high in Omega 6s? Flax oil is one, I’m assuming.
July 30th, 2010 at 7:12 am
interesting. how do they measure the the elasticity of arteries? (i can look that up myself, and i will.)
July 30th, 2010 at 6:05 pm
Annie, you should read the article
It appears Allport keeps her omegas balanced by using
- flax, walnuts and canola
and NOT using
- peanut butter, soy oil, corn oil
There are other ways to balance, but for a vegan her approach is perfect…except it relies on ALA for omega-3. Now that they have vegan supplements of DHA, which is the form immediately usable by the human body…I suggest those.
July 31st, 2010 at 11:29 pm
Seth- How do you avoid lots of food cooked in vegetable oil in Beijing? It seems it’s very hard to do here!
August 1st, 2010 at 12:57 am
The “Israeli Paradox” is no paradox at all – it’s simply more evidence that a low-fat diet high in vegetable derived PUFAs is unhealthy.
To those of us who generally follow the opposite of the food pyramid and who consume plenty of natural saturated fat from grass-fed beef and fish with excellent 03-06 ratios, recommendations from the American Heart Association or the USDA are irrelevant.
August 1st, 2010 at 9:41 am
“How do you avoid lots of food cooked in vegetable oil in Beijing?”
Because I eat lots of butter, flaxseed oil, and yogurt, I eat only one normal meal per day. Sometimes I cook that meal myself (using no vegetable oil). Sometimes I have grilled meat or boiled fish at that meal.
August 1st, 2010 at 9:35 pm
“Because I eat lots of butter, flaxseed oil, and yogurt, I eat only one normal meal per day.”
Interesting. I’m going to try amping up my butter + omega 3 oil consumption and similarly try 1 meal/day. (When I don’t eat enough butter or fish/coconut oil, I get hungry for extra meals and/or get carb cravings.)
Seth, one question…are you finding that taking that much oil is resulting in ‘intestinal difficulties’? (If I take more than 1 T fish oil I am likely to need to race to the bathroom at some point the following day.)
August 4th, 2010 at 12:57 am
Joel Kauffman only rated Susan Allport’s book with 2 stars because it had so many errors of science (see amazon customer review forum for his main issues). For a list of 67 more errors email him at kauffman@bee.net
August 27th, 2010 at 1:04 pm
[...] I’m interested in the omega 3/6 ratio. If you still aren’t convinced by all the fuss then it’s interesting to read about Susan Allport’s experiment, summarised and linked to on Seth Robert’s blog. Shame on O magazine for not publishing the final article. If you want to learn more about omega 3 testing then Mike T Nelson interviewed Dr Doug Bibus about the subject: [...]