(NaturalNews) It is becoming common knowledge that eating foods containing omega-3 fatty acids
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega-3_fatty_acid) can contribute to heart and vascular health. The FDA now has a program where food suppliers may label their products as such if approved. Sources of omega-3 include certain fish, nuts, and oils. A list of these foods has been compiled with additional data that was used to calculate the cost per day for at least 1 gram of omega-3 fatty acids. The following chart shows the results. The least expensive products were seeds, nuts, and oils while the most expensive were sea foods.
Click here to view chart 1 (
http://jmyarlott.com/Food/Diets/costpergram.jpg)
The FDA also recommends the Mediterranean diet (
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/mediterranean-diet/CL00011) in conjunction with the high omega-3 foods. "As you may know, eating fat can kill you but you may not know that eating Walnuts can save your life, when you have eaten too much fat," Said Dr. Robert J. Rowan in a recent Newsletter. He further states, "Walnuts contain wonderful plant-based polyunsaturated fatty acids, such as alpha-linolenic acid, as well as antioxidants. They also contain the amino acid arginine. Arginine is the raw material for nitric oxide (NO). NO relaxes the lining of your arteries and keeps platelets from sticking to each other and to the endothelial cells".
Research published in the British Journal of Nutrition (Blomhoff R, Carlsen MH)(
http://www.whfoods.org/genpage.php?pfriendly=1&tname=foodspice&dbid=98) found walnuts, pecans and chestnuts have the highest antioxidant content of the tree nuts. Peanuts also contribute significantly to our dietary intake of antioxidants.
A review study of the evidence linking nuts and lower risk of coronary heart disease was published in the British Journal of Nutrition by Kelly JH and Sabate J. In this study the researchers looked at four large prospective epidemiological studies - the Adventist Health Study(
http://www.llu.edu/llu/health/nuts.html) , Iowa Women's Study (
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids...), Nurses' Health Study (
http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/287/14/1815) and the Physician's Health Study (
http://1stvitality.com/artman/publish/article_228.shtml). When evidence from all four studies were combined, subjects consuming nuts at least 4 times a week showed a 37% reduced risk of coronary heart disease compared to those who never or seldom ate nuts. Each additional serving of nuts per week was associated with an average 8.3% reduced risk of coronary heart disease.
The next chart shows the portion size in ounces required to have at least one gram of Omega-3 fatty acid. Again, the seeds, nuts and oils require the smallest portions while sea foods require larger portions. All portions are in ounces by weight, including the oils.
Click here to view Chart 2 (
http://jmyarlott.com/Food/Diets/Portionsize.jpg)
For those who are watching their calories, I have calculated the calories per portion and presented the results in this chart. The foods with the lowest calorie count are the oils, Flax seed and Walnuts.
Click here to view chart 3 (
http://jmyarlott.com/Food/Diets/Calories%20per%20gram%20w3.jpg)
Omega 3 Data References:
(
www.fishfoundation.org)
(
www.intelihealth.com)
(
www.americanheart.org)
About the author
John Yarlott developed his writing skills during his career as a Mechanical Engineer with Pratt & Whitney Aircraft. His work included testing jet engines and writing the test reports for use by the design and management groups. He later worked at IBM as writer of guides for computer design. He ran technical symposiums and published the hundreds of technical reports on computer packaging. John was also a store systems engineer in IBM marketing where he wrote computer programs for customers that generated reports based on transaction data in the checkout terminals. John’s last assignment before retiring was as a technical support engineer for IBM’s database software. During retirement he wrote training manuals for Microsoft Office Products at Hill & Knowlton, a division of WPP. He wrote web based data acquisition programs that captured human resources data in a MS Access database. The firm had offices in 52 countries therefore using the Internet to communicate with the database in New York was a time saving solution. Now retired for the second time, John has turned his attention to web publishing about matters of his own interest including health, nutrition, food economics, and global energy on his personal website:
http://jmyarlott.com .
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