What Is the Omega-3-Omega-6-Ratio (and Why Should You Care?)

You’ve probably heard about ‘essential fatty acids’, especially the Omega 3, since it’s been a lot on the news lately. Like many people, you may be starting to understand the importance of getting enough of those acids into your body.

What you may not have heard of, though, is the Omega 6 fats, and even more importantly – the Omega 3 Omega 6 ratio.

Essential fatty acids are important for good health. We cannot manufacture these in our body and so we rely on a daily intake of these in our diet. Omega 3 fats are primarily found in fish and research has shown that most of us are deficient in Omega 3 in our diets.

Omega 6 essential fatty acids, on the other hand, are found in other food sources, and we are not generally deficient in these. For example, you find Omega 6 fats in many of the oils that we eat from day to day such as corn oil, safflower oil, sunflower oil, sesame oil and peanut oil, and soy oil is almost completely comprised of omega 6 fats.

Most of these vegetable oils are cheap and for this reason they are used extensively in a wide range of processed foods, including margarine, and as many of us eat plenty of processed foods, as well as vegetable oils, we generally consume too much Omega 6.

Research has shown that in the past most of us had an Omega 3 Omega 6 ratio that was roughly 1 to 1. This meant that we ate about the same amount of Omega 3 as Omega 6 fats. But because we now eat much more processed foods and vegetable-based oils estimates are that the Omega 6 Omega 3 ratio has increased to somewhere around, depending on the estimate, from 10 to 1 to 30 to 1. We are now eating much more Omega 6 fats than we have ever done in the past.

Omega 6 essential fatty acids are equally important to our health however just as important is the Omega 3 Omega 6 ratio, and over the past hundred years or so this has changed dramatically. By eating too much Omega 6 and too little Omega 3 we are all exposing ourselves to a wide range of health implications, including the possibility of various cancers, coronary artery disease and a range of other inflammatory diseases such as arthritis.

Combine this with the fact that in the past most of our meat came from animals which were grass fed, (and which therefore had a reasonable level of Omega 3 fats) but most of our animals are now grain fed, which reduces the levels of omega 3 fats and increases the level of Omega 6, and you can see that there is no need at all for supplementation with 6.

Whilst both Omega 3 and Omega 6 fats are important to our health most of us are deficient in our intake of Omega 3 and have an Omega 3 Omega 6 ratio that is way too high, and we need to reduce our intake of Omega 6 fats. This can be done by reducing the amounts of processed foods in our diets and by changing our cooking oils from vegetable oils to good oils such as olive oil. And we all need to be increasing our intake of Omega 3 fatty acids with daily fish oil supplements.

Note that although fish oil supplements are extremely cost-effective, not all are as good as others, you need to know how to compare the different fish oil supplements available to make an effective choice.

Find out how to make this comparison between the different fish oil supplement brands on my website.