CNN says fish oil pills linked to higher risk of cancer

I play a little word-association game at my lectures. I say, “What do you think of when I say OMEGA 3?” Many people yell out, “fish oil!” It’s true. A very profitable billion-dollar industry has educated America (even our doctors) that eating rancid fish oil pills is somehow going to save us from heart disease. After the fish are processed and the pills go through many other manufacturing processes, they sit in transit on hot trucks, and become even more rancid on store shelves.

I often say, influenced by my friend Dr. Brian Clement, “Would you go out in a lake and get a fish, dead for several months, floating belly up, squeeze it, and drink the oil?”

Everyone says, “Ewwww!” and turns up their noses. And I say, “What do you think you’re doing when you eat fish oil pills?” And, “If you don’t think it’s rancid, why do you get that nasty fish-oil burp later?”

That doesn’t happen when you eat fresh fish. Eating fresh fish is probably a great way to get Omega 3, and cultures that eat fish from clean waters (those cultures ALSO tend to eat lots of vegetables, by the way) have markedly lower disease levels than we do. But, of course, farmed fish are terribly high in toxins and heavy metals, and many waterways from which they are caught are as well. Clean wild-caught fish are terrifically expensive.

Fish oil pills are the #1 supplement in America. Like lemmings rushing off the cliff, we’re all swallowing billions of dollars in rancid, “purified,” processed oils. It’s such a lucrative business that some of the waterways in the world are being severely depleted.

We’re seeing a shift in the manufacturing marketplace to krill oil, where there is high supply, and perhaps fewer issues with sourcing, and rancidity.

But guess what: a new study published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute show a dramatically higher risk of developing prostate cancer if you eat fish oil. The oils may fight inflammation, but what if they also create oxidative damage to DNA in cells?

(Or maybe it’s rancidity creating that problem. Maybe it’s metals and other pollutants in the fish. The CNN article doesn’t ask that question, and I can’t tell that the researchers did, either.)

The CNN article I just linked you to assumes that fish oil is actually GOOD for your health. But if you feel like reading some science, HERE is a JAMA abstract of just one of the meta-analyses that make me wonder if we’re wasting a billion dollars a year purifying and deodorizing and manufacturing little blobs of the oil from salmon, mackerel, and tuna.

I love our sprouted TriOmega, or Sprouted Flax, or Sprouted Flax with Berries, in a green smoothie, as an alternative to get Omega 3’s in the diet without fear of rancid fish oils making us sick.

Posted in: Health Concerns, Supplements, Whole Food