Oh yes, it's true. Monsanto is here to rescue us from overfishing. How, you ask? By engineering a variety of soybean with extra omega-3. And last week, the FDA decided that the oil of the new omega-3 soybean is GRAS - Generally Recognized as Safe.
The confirmation of GRAS status enables food companies to develop and test foods containing the new omega-3 oil, which are important steps towards consumers being able to benefit from this omega-3 product in a variety of food products with an acceptable taste experience.
As you can see on Monsanto Today, Monsanto is very pleased to give the world such a great product - one which will provide a source of omega-3s in our diet without a fishy flavor, and one which will mean we don't need to overfish the oceans in order to get enough omega-3s. I'm sorry, but that's like inflating the tires on a Hummer and saying you're doing something to help fight global warming. Let me explain. |
| It's true we have a big omega-3 problem in our diets. But the omega-3s are only half the story. The other half are omega-6s. The two nutrients compete within our body, so it's not the absolute amount of either one that we eat but the ratio of one to the other that matters. You want to have something like 2-4 times as many omega-6s as omega-3s. But we've got way, way, way more omega-6s than that (compared to omega-3s).
It's probably true that omega-3s have decreased in our diets. We remove omega-3s when we take animals off pasture and feed them grain instead, for example. But I think it's more true that we've astronomically increased the omega-6s in our diets in the last half-century. Check out this chart of omega-6: omega-3 ratios from a previous diary I wrote about the systematic removal of omega-3s from our diets.
Ratio of Omega-6 to Omega-3
Egg yolks, pastured: 2:1
Egg yolks, grain fed: 52:1
Butter, organic and grass-fed: 1.5:1
Butter, grain fed: 9:1
Beef, grass fed: 3:1
Beef, grain fed, 17:1
Omega-6 to Omega 3 ratios of various plant oils
Flaxseed or linseed: 0.2: 1
Canola: 2:1
Canola (for light frying): 3:1
Walnut: 5:1
Soybean: 7:1
Wheat germ: 8:1
Olive oil: 12:1
Hydrogenated soybean: 12:1
High oleic sunflower: 19:1
Corn: 46:1
Palm: 46:1
Sesame: 137:1
Less than 60% linoleic sunflower: 200:1
Cottonseed: 259:1
Safflower: No omega-3s at all
The problem is less that we eat few fish and more that we eat a lot of processed foods made with corn oil, palm oil, and hydrogenated soybean oil and we eat grain-fed animal products. Omega-3s aren't shelf stable. They go rancid quickly. That's why you don't typically find them in processed foods. The Monsanto article recommends using their new soybean oil in salad dressing. If you're making salad dressing, why not use flax oil instead if omega-3s are what you're going for?
The answer to this problem is going to be found in eating whole foods instead of processed foods and eating grass-fed animal products instead of grain-fed ones. The vast tracts of land planted in soybeans are the problem here, not the solution. The solution isn't going to come from tweaking the type of soybeans grown on 20-25% of U.S. cropland.
UPDATE: I should also add that the answer to overfishing has nothing to do with landbased sources of omega-3s. It has to do with international laws to limit fishing and enforcement of those laws. |
