feature article written on nutritional medicine.
Nutrition - Nature's Medicine.
Omega 3 fatty acids and omega 6 fatty acids - the imbalance.
By Sudha Hamilton.
Great leaps in understanding have recently occurred within nutritional medicine. For many years what we ate was studiously ignored by the scientific community, & with the funding for many of their studies coming from pharmaceutical companies, who focus on patenting artificial derivatives we can see why. There is no serious money to be made from food as medicine & this is another shining example of where the free market economy does not serve the whole person within the whole community.
In matters of nutritional health we need some guidance beyond the money making principle, we need in my opinion our governments to get up to speed on these matters & to offer some leadership. Which we are now seeing to some extent here in Australia, with the senate enquiry into childhood obesity. The huge costs we as a community are now facing in maintaining a national health budget that continues to blow out in managing hospitals in particular, which are basically dealing with things when they have reached the 'too late' stage, may finally spur our political leaders to seek a preventative health strategy. It will not be cheap to begin with, we will have to spend more educating doctors, health professionals & the media so that they can pass that knowledge onto the general public. Eventually however in ten to twenty years it will save billions of dollars & improve the quality & life expectancy of our societies.
A perfect example of the institutionalised neglect of food is in our hospitals, where meals are still served with scant regard for their potentially healing properties. Unappetising fare produced by those without the most up to date knowledge of nutritional medicine & with definitely little understanding of the importance of colour, freshness & presentation is not serving us well in our healing instititions. The highly publicised TV chef Jamie Oliver & his recent attempt to revolutionise a British school canteen highlights a similar need to reappraise our attitudes to the diets of our children. It has been quite a journey that so called health food has been on, since the nineteen sixties & seventies when those who consumed mung beans & lentils were derided as hippies, up until now, where we see the large supermarkets rapidly expanding their range of organic foods to cater for ever growing demand.
We in the general community tend to receive nutritional health information in piece meal bits that have filtered through by word of mouth, stray news reports & the like. For example suddenly the concern may be the high level of salt in processed foods, then it is bad fats like monounsaturated fats versus polyunsaturated fats, low carbohydrate diets or high fibre diets and so on. We hear the alarm bell warning, "don't eat this or that," but we do not understand the whole picture as it is either considered too complex for the media or we just want the result and can't be bothered how we got there.
Recently the focus on polyunsaturated fats has been refined to take in Omega -3 fatty acids and Omega-6 fatty acids which are essential to our bodies cellular make-up and needs. Common Omega-3 fatty acids within our body are alpha linolenic acid (ALA); eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA). Gamma-linolenic acid is an Omega-6 fatty acid, as is arachidonic acid, and the latter is an important precursor of anti-inflammatory prostaglandins. It is the anti-inflammatory activity of the Omega-3 fatty acids that has raised the attention of scientists in regard to many common diseases in the western world. Coronary artery disease; myocardial infarctions or strokes; cancer and arthritis are all caused or worsened by inflammatory reactions within the body. It is now also being posited that depression may be an inflammatory condition of the brain and there have been several randomised placebo-controlled studies into the effectiveness of EPA in the treatment of severe depression that have showed profound results. These tests have been written up in leading journals like the American Journal of Psychiatry and the United Kingdom's Archives of General Psychiatry.
The key to understanding the effects of Omega-3 fatty acids within us is to look back into our very origins and our first diet. The two essential fatty acids Omega-6 & Omega-3 are all present in our foods. Omega-6 are derived primarily from grains and today we consume most through oils and animal fats and through the meat of grain fed animals. Omega-3 are found in algae, plankton and some leaves including grass. Although both are vital for our cellular wellbeing, too much Omega-6 can provoke inflammatory responses throughout the body. At the time when the modern human brain developed, early humankind lived in Afrika, around the lakes of the Great Rift. Scientific evidence points to their diet being balanced on a 1 to 1 ratio between foods containing Omega-3 and Omega-6 fatty acids. This combination is now seen to have provided their bodies with the perfect nutritional resources to develop the new kinds of neurons that enabled them to evolve new skills like language; self-awareness and the utilisation of tools.
However today we have lost that balance in our diets between the two essential fatty acids Omega-3 & Omega-6. In fact it is now so far out of kilter that in some countries like Australia, USA, and the UK for instance it is thought to be one Omega 3 to every ten or twenty Omega-6 in our diets. Why has this occurred? Once again it is due to economics, this time in the livestock industry, where the practice of feeding animals grain, rather than pasture grass has taken root. Also the over whelming presence of Omega-6 rich vegetable oils in all our processed foods, with the likes of soy beans being in just about everything. Basically we are feeding ourselves the wrong ingredients because it is superficially seen to be cheaper, but of course in the long run the consequences to our health will & is now much more expensive.
If we look to coastal Asia where the diet is seafood rich, there is not the prevalence of depression and heart disease that we see in our own western communities. Fish is rich in Omega-3 fatty acids because of the diet of the fish, eating plankton and algae or other smaller fish who have eaten plankton and algae. Seafood stores the Omega-3 fatty acids in their fat tissue. The best source of Omega-3 are smaller fish as they are the least contaminated by mercury, dioxin and organic carcinogens. Flax seed is an excellent vegetarian source of Omega-3, but like all non-animal sources they do require a further metabolic step to become part of our neural membranes. Green leafy vegetables contain precursors of Omega-3 fatty acids in small amounts. Organically raised grass fed animals are a good source of Omega-3 and the eggs of free range chickens contain up to twenty times more Omega-3 than their grain fed counter parts.
Omega 3 Food Table
• taken from Healing Without Freud or Prozac by Dr David Servan-Schreiber
Food Source Omega 3 level
100g mackerel 2.5g
100g herring 1.7g
100g tuna 1.5g
100g anchovies 1.5g
100g salmon 1.4g
100g sardines 1g
1Tbsp Flax seed 2.8g
1Tbsp Flax seed oil 7.5g
1 Tbsp Canola oil 1.3g
100g Walnuts 2.3g
40g Spinach 384mg
1 Tbsp Seaweeds (dried) 268mg
1 Tbsp Spirulina 260mg
40g Watercress 528mg
Olive oil has more Omega-6 than Omega-3 but has very little of either so can be used without adding further to the imbalance in our diets. It is this imbalance that we need to address in our own diets if we are to return to a time and place within our own bodies that is not headed toward so many of the potentially fatal diseases that our community so often suffers from. Limiting the use of processed foods from your diet, if you cannot comfortably eradicate them all together. Becoming far more aware of what is actually in the foods that you eat, as coeliacs soon discover the prevalence of wheat additives in processed food is endemic. It is not only about adding more Omega-3 rich foods to your diet it is also reducing the many Omega-6 foods that is important
I think one of the underlying messages here is that we are of the sea, that we originated from the oceans & that our bodies work best when we feed them foods from the sea. "Never forget where you came from," someone famous once said. With this in mind it is another timely reminder to stop polluting the oceans of the world. For if we are truly dependent upon the sea as a food source, it will be a bugger if we mess it up with our petro-chemical toxins and the like. There is so much to learn from looking at ourselves instead of always out at the world. Let's teach our children about themselves, how their bodies work, before we teach them anything else. In the words of Dr David Servan-Schreiber, "On the day historians begin to analyse the history of medicine in the twentieth century, I believe they will point out two major events. The first one, without any doubt, was the discovery of antibiotics, which practically eradicated bacterial pneumonia- the leading cause of death in the west until the second world war. The second is a revolution that is still in the making: the scientific demonstration that nutrition has a profound impact on practically all the leading causes of disease in western societies."
.In terms of the possible anti-depressant effect of Omega-3 fatty acids you would need to imbibe between 1 and 10 grams of the combination of DHA and EPA, which are the two Omega-3 fatty acids in fish oil. These can be taken as supplements but as with all nutrition it is better consumed as wonderful food.
Here are a few of my recipes that will boost your intake of Omega-3 fatty acids & hopefully provoke your taste buds into delicious new territories. If the salty fish in My Omega Pie are too daunting for you, why not swap them for a less offensive but still oily fish like trout or tuna. Vegetarians can leave the fish out & use spinach & other green leafy vegetables instead.
Recipes:
My Omega Pie
Pastry
1 ½ cup plain wholemeal flour
1 cup Linseed Sunflower Almond Meal
100g unsalted butter
1 tbsp Linseed Oil
2 freerange eggs whisked
1 tsp purified water
Filling
4 fillets fresh sardines or 2 tins
4 fillets anchovies
1 lge desiree potato cooked & sliced
1 can diced tomatoes
1 tbsp canola oil
1 spanish onion diced & sauted
3 cloves garlic minced & sauted
1 punnet cherry tomatoes sliced & sauted
1 cup chopped continental parsley
1 tbsn fresh rosemary chopped
1 tsp fresh oregano chopped
1 cup fresh ricotta cheese
1 cup walnut meal
½ cup parmesan cheese
sea salt & black pepper to taste
Preheat oven to 180C
Beginning with pastry, sift flour into mixing bowl or food processor & combine remaining ingredients to form a soft dough. Knead until smooth & place in fridge for 30-60 minutes. Remove & roll out pastry to about 5mm in thickness & cover a 15-20cm pie dish, prick pastry & bake blind for 10-15 minutes or until golden brown. Remove blind beans & bake for a further 5 minutes. Then set aside to cool. While the pastry is resting in the fridge you can begin your filling.
In a large fry pan or saucepan, saute your onion, garlic, & cherry tomatoes in oil for 5 minutes. Then add in your can of tomato, rosemary, oregano, salt & pepper & simmer for 10 minutes. Stir in parsley & set aside.
Lay your sliced potato & fish fillets inside your pastry case, top with the tomato sauce, then crumble ricotta over this before sprinkling walnut meal & parmesan to finish. Salt & pepper to taste before baking for 20-30 minutes or until golden brown.
Serves 4.
Marinated Salmon with Spinach & Watercress
2 fillets of salmon sliced into 8 wafers of 1cm in thickness
1 lemon juiced
1 lime juiced
sea salt & black pepper to taste
2 cups baby spinach leaves washed
2 cups watercress washed
2 tbsp flax seed oil
1 tbsp tamari soy sauce
2 tbsp lime juice
1 tbsp sliced pickled ginger
1 tbsp capers
sea salt & black pepper to taste
Place your salmon wafers in a shallow flat container & cover with lemon & lime juice. Cover & refrigerate for 30 minutes. Remove, drain & dry with paper towel. In a salad mixing bowl toss your washed & dried spinach & watercress, add capers & pickled ginger, sprinkle with flax seed oil, tamari, lime juice & salt & pepper. Arrange salmon & salad on plates & serve at room temperature.
Serves 4.
Steamed Mackerel with Pan fried Shitake Mushrooms & Seaweed
4 mackerel fillets
1 punnet fresh shitake mushrooms sliced
1 cup wakame seaweed, rehydrated in water & chopped
1 bunch bok choy washed & chopped
1 tbsp canola oil
2 tsp minced garlic sauted
2 tsp minced ginger sauted
1 tbsp tamari soy sauce
1 tsp lemon juice
1 tbsp rice wine
sea salt & black pepper to taste
Have your steamer ready to cook. You will need to cook your fish & the pan fried mushrooms at the same time to coordinate the serving of this dish.
In a large saucepan or frypan saute your garlic, salt, ginger & oil for 3-5 minutes before adding in your mushrooms, seaweed & finally bok choy. Finish with rice wine, tamari & lemon juice. Pepper to taste.
Place your fish fillets inside your steamer & cook for 3-5 minutes depending on the thickness of your fillets. Place your fish on the plate & spoon over mushrooms & seaweed.
Serves 4.
I would like to acknowledge the inspiration & source material that I garnered from Dr David Servan-Schreiber's book Healing Without Freud or Prozac, Rodale, Pan Macmillan Books. The Revolution in Nutrition, is but one chapter in an extra-ordinary book that I highly recommend. www.instincttoheal.org
©Sudha Hamilton
Appeared in WellBeing Magazine
