Nick Mitchell’s Ultimate Performance

Any of you who have regularly read my work now the importance that I attach to omega 3 supplementation.  Not only is it the best fat burning supplement on the market, its also the best muscle building.  The things that it does to both health and body composition can be so startling that sometimes it almost feels like cheating.  Without an ounce of hyperbole it is by far the single most important supplement used by all our hundreds of clients at Ultimate Performance.

Many people labour under the misapprehension that they can get enough omega 3s by eating a few servings oif oily fish every week.  Nothing could be further from the truth, as in “the old days” (before mass farming saw grain rather than grass fed animals) all meat and eggs were much higher in omega 3s and our general diets saw us consume 10 to 100 times more than the average consumption in the 21st century.

The following study I have recently found identifies yet another reason why supplementation is so vital - the fish we eat now are increasingly full of the wrong kind of fat!  Now where is my tropical island where I can fresh and organic every day…

Journal of the American Dietetic Association Volume 108, Issue 7, July 2008, Pages 1178-1185
The Content of Favorable and Unfavorable Polyunsaturated Fatty Acids Found in Commonly Eaten Fish
Kelly L. Weaver PhD, Priscilla Ivester MS, Joshua A. Chilton, Martha D. Wilson PhD, Prativa Pandey and Floyd H. Chilton PhD,

Changes in diet during the past century have caused a marked increase in consumption of saturated fatty acids and n-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) with a concomitant decrease in the intake of n-3 PUFAs. Increased fish consumption has been shown to be the only realistic way to increase dietary quantities of beneficial long-chain n-3 PUFAs such as eicosapentaenoic acid and docosahexaenoic acid and re-establish more balanced n-6:n-3 ratios in the diets of human beings. Our objective in this research was to characterize some of the relevant fatty acid chemistry of commonly consumed fish, with a particular focus on the four most commonly consumed farmed fish. To do this, 30 commonly consumed farmed and wild fish were collected from supermarkets and wholesalers throughout the United States. Fatty acid composition of samples from these fish was determined using gas chromatography. The 30 samples studied contained n-3 PUFAs ranging from fish having almost undetectable levels to fish having nearly 4.0 g n-3 PUFA per 100 g fish. The four most commonly farmed fish, Atlantic salmon, trout, tilapia, and catfish, were more closely examined. This analysis revealed that trout and Atlantic salmon contained relatively high concentrations of n-3 PUFA, low n-6:n-3 ratios, and favorable saturated fatty acid plus monounsaturated fatty acid to PUFA ratios. In contrast, tilapia (the fastest growing and most widely farmed fish) and catfish have much lower concentrations of n-3 PUFA, very high ratios of long chain n-6 to long chain n-3 PUFAs, and high saturated fatty acid plus monounsaturated fatty acid to PUFA ratios. Taken together, these data reveal that marked changes in the fishing industry during the past decade have produced widely eaten fish that have fatty acid characteristics that are generally accepted to be inflammatory by the health care community.