/Fish oil pills or fatty fish?

From Wendy
There’s a lot of advertising and discussion on our TVs about fish-oil pills or fatty fish. Well it seems to me that we ought to eat fish rather than go down the track of visiting pharmacies and health-food shops!

I buy lots of cans of sardines at $1 each from the cheap no-frills remainder shop called ‘Not Quite Right’ which is only a few blocks away. Okay, the name sounds dodgy but we just check the date etc. Also tuna by the can every week. I’ve hardly ever taken pills in my life and I don’t want to start now.

Anyway I checked out some internet sites and some are really about selling products, but others give medical and nutritional information. We apparently do need certain substances such as Omega-3 Fatty Acids to maintain health – that is found is fatty fish. There are references to Alzheimer’s disease, arthritis, heart disease, etc. The chart is from http://ibscrohns.about.com/cs/alternremedies/a/fishoilibd.htm
Of course the good things given to us from the fatty fish are probably counteracted by the kind of oils we sometimes cook fish in!


Table - Food Sources of Omega-3 Fatty Acids
Food Serving Size Omega-3 Fat
Atlantic Salmon or Herring 3 ounces cooked 1.9 grams
Blue Fin Tuna 3 ounces cooked 1.5 grams
Sardines, canned 3 oz. in tomato sauce 1.5 grams
Anchovies, canned 2 ounces drained 1.2 grams
Atlantic Mackerel 3 ounces cooked 1.15 grams
Salmon, canned 3 ounces drained 1.0 gram
Swordfish 3 ounces cooked 0.9 gram
Sea Bass (mixed species) 3 ounces cooked 0.65 gram
Tuna, white meat canned 3 ounces drained 0.5 gram
Sole, Flounder, Mussels 3 ounces cooked 0.4 gram
Wild Catfish, crabmeat, clams 3 ounces cooked/steamed 0.3 gram
Prawns 6 pieces 0.15 gram
Altantic Cod, Lobster 3 ounces cooked/steamed 0.15 gram
Trout, Orange roughy 3 ounces cooked <0.1 gram