Omega Fats Are Not Created Equal

I thought all omega fats are healthy.” I can’t tell you how often I hear people saying this.

While many people imagine that the term omega is synonymous with omega-3 fats, that impression is far from correct. It’s easy to get confused, because the fats and their names can be a bewildering tower of Babel, especially for the uninitiated. There are different omega fat families, which have completely different effects on health and disease. Even within the category of omega-3 fats, you’ll find more than one type. Then there are saturated and unsaturated fats(with the latter no longer universally viewed as the healthy class of fats).

How do you keep it all straight? Before we delve into the specifics of omega-3 fats and how to get them to work best for you (let alone get enough of them), let’s get familiar with the various types of fat. Figure 2.1 provides a general overview of how the different fats we eat are interrelated.

Meet the Omega Families

Omega actually refers to the system of how the fatty-acid atoms are counted and named (see sidebar). Each fat family is very different from the other, as in a neighborhood, where families reside on the same street but each at a different address, which signifies a completely different household. (You don’t expect the family living on 33 Main Street to be the same family living on 66 Main Street.) We will focus primarily on the omega-3 and omega-6 families, but you might like to know that olive oil comes from the omega-9 fat family, which is considered healthful.

Each omega family has individual members called fatty acids, each with a different name. Each omega-3 and omega-6 fat family has a parent fatty acid, from which the other individual fats can originate. Notably, each of these parents is considered an essential fat, meaning the body cannot make it and it needs to be supplied by the diet. Table 2.1 identifies dietary sources of the major types of omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids.

What Is “Omega”?
The term omega refers to how the various fat families are
named, based on a counting system. Fat molecules are long;
the typical fat molecule found in food is between 12 and 22 carbon
atoms long. Think of each carbon atom as a link in a bracelet. We
would represent a 22-carbon “bracelet” this way:

C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C

That’s a lot of carbons to count. To save time, scientists count from
the end of the chain, where the fi rst unsaturated pair of carbons is
located (known as a double-bond arrangement). So that everyone
remembers this counting system, the beginning of the chain is designated
as the alpha side, named after the fi rst letter in the Greek
alphabet. The end of the chain is the omega side, named after the
last letter in the Greek alphabet.

C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C

Alpha Omega
In the case of the omega-3 family, the double-bond arrangement
is located three carbons from the end (the omega side):

C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C=C-C-C

Similarly, in the case of the omega-6 family, the double bond is six
carbons from the end:

C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C=C-C-C-C-C-C

This difference may seem inconsequential, but it’s huge. It’s like
the impact the location of a decimal point has on a number (especially
money!). For example, would you rather have $1.500000 or
$1500.000? Both quantities have the same digits, but the values
of these amounts differ considerably, just because of where the
decimal is placed. The one dollar and fifty cents is like the omega-
6 fats; the decimal point is six digits from the end. Likewise, the
fifteen hundred dollars is like the omega-3 fats; the decimal point
is three digits from the end. Just as a decimal point can make numbers
far different, the location of the initial omega bond on a fat
molecule makes a huge biological difference to the body.

The individual fatty acids differ in significant ways. The omega-3 fat found in plants is very different from the omega-3 fatty acids found in seafood. It’s possible to eat plenty of plant-based omega-3 fats but still be deficient in the other omega-3 fatty acids found in marine foods. This is a big source of confusion for consumers. Here’s a brief
description of the key omega-3 fatty acids:

• Alpha-linolenic acid (ALA). The parent of all the fatty acids in
  the omega-3 family is known as alpha-linolenic acid (ALA). Technically,
  all the omega-3 fatty acids can be made or originate from
  ALA, but research shows that this is rarely the case. ALA is one
  of the shortest among the omega-3 fats, making it a short-chain
  fatty acid (see Table 2.2). ALA is found in plants, green leafy vegetables,
  flax oil, canola oil, and hemp.

• Eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA).
  EPA and DHA are known collectively as long-chain fats and are
  found primarily in fish and fi sh oil. Stories about the marvelous
  benefits of omega-3 fats usually involve one (or both) of these
  powerful fatty acids.

Here’s the problem. Although laboratory tests showed that ALA can be made into EPA and eventually DHA, recent studies on humans indicate that this is not what the human body actually does. Therefore, you cannot assume that if you eat the parent form of omega-3 fats, ALA, it will indeed create EPA and DHA. If you take flax seed oil supplements or eat a lot of flax foods as your primary source of omega-3 fats, they provide ALA, but you could still be deficient in
EPA and DHA. In fact, the latest research shows that less than 1 percent of ALA gets made into EPA, and seldom (if ever) does it make DHA. That’s why many researchers believe that all three of these omega-3 fats are essential.

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