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Harvard Health Letter

Why not axseed oil?

There's no mercury to worry about, and axseed oil does contain omega-3 fats...but not the best
kind.
Updated: July 29, 2019 Published: October, 2006

Troll the medical literature, and you'll come up with study after study showing that sh and sh oil are good for us, especially for our hearts but
maybe also for our moods and immune systems. Various epidemiologic investigations have found that people who eat sh regularly are less
likely to have heart attacks, su er strokes, or die from sudden cardiac arrest. The de nition of "regularly" varies, but it usually means at least a
couple of times a week, although eating sh even once a month has been shown to make a di erence.

Fish, and especially sh oil, have also been the subject of dozens of randomized clinical trials, most involving people with existing heart
conditions. In large amounts (several grams a day), sh oil has been shown to nudge various cardiac risk factors ("good" HDL cholesterol,
triglycerides, blood pressure) in the right direction.

Something shy
Getting sh oil into your diet can be di cult. Eating sh will certainly do it — if you feast on salmon, trout, mackerel, and other oily species. A
three-ounce serving of those sh supplies about a gram's worth. But you'd need to eat more than a pound of farmed cat sh to get that much
sh oil. Or 12 ounces of light tuna canned in water.

There's also mercury contamination to think about. Mercury accumulates in the food chain, so some of the heaviest concentrations are found in
long-lived predatory species that are also some of the most desirable from the standpoint of sh-oil consumption.

The third omega-3

The health bene ts of sh oil are believed to derive principally from two omega-3 fats, eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid
(DHA). Flaxseed oil contains a third, plant-based omega-3, alpha-linolenic acid (ALA). Other foods (especially walnuts) and oils (canola and
soybean, for example) contain ALA. But at about 7 grams per tablespoon, axseed oil is by far the richest source.

The main problem with ALA is that to have the good e ects attributed to omega-3s, it must be converted by a limited supply of enzymes into
EPA and DHA. As a result, only a small fraction of it has omega-3's e ects — 10%–15%, maybe less. The remaining 85%–90% gets burned up as
energy or metabolized in other ways. So in terms of omega-3 "power," a tablespoon of axseed oil is worth about 700 milligrams (mg) of EPA and
DHA. That's still more than the 300 mg of EPA and DHA in many 1-gram sh oil capsules, but far less than what the 7 grams listed on the label
might imply.

The bottom line on axseed oil

Flaxseed oil will give your diet a nice little omega-3 boost in the form of alpha-linolenic acid. You might try adding axseed oil to your salad
dressing. But axseed oils a backup, not a substitute, for the omega-3s in sh and sh oil because of the conversion factor. If you're in need of
omega-3s but are concerned about mercury, salmon, pollock, and cat sh are all low in mercury. And canned light tuna tends to be lower in
mercury than albacore ("white") tuna.

Image: © Xanya69/Getty Images

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