Tips To Finding The Highest Quality Fish Oil Supplements
You’ve decided to take Omega 3 supplements. You know how good they are for you, you know about the warnings over eating too much fish and you’ve decided the best way to get your Omega 3 fatty acids is daily capsules. But how to you find the highest quality fish oil supplements?
Firstly let me say, not all Omega 3 supplements are the same. There is a good reason to find high quality Omega 3 capsules. Here’s what you look for.
1. Cleanliness and purity.
Fish can be contaminated with toxins and the FDA tell us not to eat a lot because of this. Fish oil supplements can be too and in the past some have been withdrawn. You need to know that the fishoil supplements are clean and free of toxins.
Most oil from fish that is to be used for making supplements is purified by a process called molecular distillation, and this works ok. But at least one company doesn’t think this is sufficient and adds a secondary purification process to supplement molecular distillation. They also believe that they need to control the process of extracting the oil right from the moment the fish is caught and so they do so, right from the fisherman.
2. The freshness of the oil.
Fish oil can go off. It oxidizes and goes rancid, and that’s why you get that “fishy” taste, or even fishy burps, from capsules. It’s gone off. Some manufacturers even add nice scents to mask the fishy odor. You must choose high quality fish oil supplements that use only the freshest oils that haven’t gone rancid.
3. How much DHA you’re getting.
The most important Omega 3 fatty acid is DHA. Most Omega 3 capsules contain 18% EPA and 12% DHA, so for a 1000 mg capsule you’re getting 120 mg of DHA. The rest, apart from 180 mg of EPA, isn’t that important.
But the best quality Omega 3 capsules give you 28% DHA, so 280 mg per 1000 mg capsule. That’s somewhere around 280 mg of DHA per 1000 mg capsule, and that’s around almost 2 1/2 times more DHA than your “average” Omega 3 supplements.
4. How effective are the Omega 3 fats?
There’s a number of different factors that affect how well the Omega 3 fats work. “Bioavailability” is one. It gets a little complicated and you can find out more on my website, but basically it means how well your body takes up and assimilates the good healthy fats.
Not all fish oil brands work the same, the quality fish oil supplements do work better. The major benefits of Omega 3 fatty acids are their anti inflammatory effects. And one brand of fish oil supplements has been shown to work over twice as well as an anti inflammatory.
And price comes into it when you’re looking to find the highest quality fish oil supplements and it isn’t easy to go a price value comparison.
That’s a simple summary of what to look for in a quality fish oil supplements. Because fish oil quality does matter.
On my website I write extensively on how to find a quality fish oil supplement and also present a price/value comparison.