Recently I read an article from Victoria Boutenko about greens and omega-3, and I found the answer to why Essential Fatty Acids (EFA) are important yet when over-consuming oily stuffs, we can have lots of health problems including diabetes. All these are about the ratio of omega-3 and omega-6 consumption and the state of the EFA (fresh or rancid).
While I was taking my Holistic Nutrition many years ago, I was taught that we must make sure the ratio of omega-3 and omega-6 is balanced. If the ratio is off-balance, we will have many problems to our health, mentally and physically in addition to the ability to handle pain. But the course was not thorough enough (or may be the research was not published yet...?) about the reason behind it.
In our modern society, there are many sources of EFA-rich food, such as almond nuts, walnut, sesame seeds, olive oil etc. However, their amount of omega-3 is less than Omega-6. If we only consume these products we might end up eating more omega-6 than we need and still lack of Omega-3.
I had a friend asked me once, where should we get more of the omega-3 from food other than fish/fish oil (even fishes from fish farms are being fed grain which are rich in omega-6). I had only one answer that time -- Flaxseed/flaxseed oil. But I usually received the same response: the flaxseed has less-than-pleasant-taste plus it gone rancid easily and flaxseed oil was not easily available that time.
Now, we know there are have more omega-3 rich food easily available to us -- Greens and chia seeds. Greens are easily available from any market, and chia seeds are getting more popular and easily available now. Try to include more raw greens in our diet by blending green smoothies everyday (read http://footprint-of-life.blogspot.com/2010/08/my-fav-green-smoothies.html for some tips of making green smoothie). In addition, you can add chia seeds to your drinking water to let it soaked and consume all day (read http://footprint-of-life.blogspot.com/2010/08/chia-seeds-superfood.html for the benefits of chia). Its easy and convenient to have more healthy omega-3 in our life now.
The benefits of increasing your omega-3 intake included but not limited to:
* reduce cholesterol level in blood
* lower high blood pressure
* increase physical agility
* improve mental clarity
* improve depression, anxiety and mood disorders
* prevent obesity and diabetes and etc
Well, you can still consume nuts and seeds (including the tasty almond milk!!). Just need to remember moderate is the key to health, and try to balance out with more chia seeds and greens that are rich in Omega-3 and you will do fine!
More info from Victoria Boutenko's at http://www.rawfamily.com/newsletters/green-for-life-2nd-edition
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