Raena Morgan: We’re talking with Dr. Jorn Dyerberg about omega 3s. Dr. Dyerberg, do
we eat enough fish, in general, to benefit from it, or should we be
supplements, I guess is the question.
Dr. Jorn Dyerberg: By ‘we’, you mean Americans?
Raena Morgan: West—American’s, Westerners.
Dr. Jorn Dyerberg: Western society. My simple answer—do we eat enough—will be no, we
don’t.
Raena Morgan: No?
Dr. Jorn Dyerberg: We don’t, we don’t.
Raena Morgan: What kind of fish should we eat?
Dr. Jorn Dyerberg: We should eat fatty fish. Fish store their fats differently. Let’s take a cod.
Raena Morgan: Alright.
Dr. Jorn Dyerberg: Cod store the fat in the liver and we normally do not eat the liver because
we don’t like it, or it’s not sold, or it’s pressed for cod liver oil and those
people don’t take cod liver oil. But the cod will not deposit its fats in
muscle. The cod is a lean fish. But other fishes deposit their fats in the
muscles. And the good example is a salmon, the mackerel, the herring, the
eel. And the fat content in some of these, for example in the mackerel, can
be rather high—12, 15 percentage of the weight. So how much should we
eat of that? We have been speculating on that in advisory terms for quite a
long time and the American Heart Association has come up with advice
that suits with the studies that have demonstrated that this fits in with the
studies that this amount is associated to a lower risk or coronaries and that
it 2 to 3 servings of fatty fish per week, 2 to 3 servings per week. If you
don’t do that—if, of course, you don’t like it, or because you live in areas
in the midst of America where the supply of coastal fish is low—then, if
you want to have omega 3s, you have to go for supplements. And as I
mentioned in one of the previous discussions we had, food is—instead of
another food, so it’s not a weight issue—but if you supplement, you add a
little more fat—one or two grams—and then you have to cut down on
other fats. As I said, drop another cookie and you’re well done with that.
So, my general thing is you don’t eat enough—especially here in
America—but 2 or 3 servings of fatty fish per week will, regarding risk of
coronary, bring you in a lower risk group. I must stress, as a nutritionist,
it’s a nutritional issue and my advice is to increase the amount of fatty fish
consumption. And only if you don’t do that, you can consider
supplementation.
Raena Morgan: Okay, well, thank you, Dr. Dyerberg.
Dr. Jorn Dyerberg: Thank you.
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