Fish Oil Processing - Get the Facts |
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Let's admit it; when we are out to buy a fish oil supplement, the last thing we pay attention to is fish oil processing. Most of us just look at the ingredients, how rich a particular brand is in terms of omega 3 fatty acids content. However, what we should never overlook is fish oil processing, i.e. what technology or method was utilized when the oil was extracted from the fish. Because, what you should always have at the back of your head is the fact that not all fish oil products have the same quality. Therefore, let's have a more detailed look at the issue of fish oil processing. While most of the manufacturers are ready to claim that their products meet the highest possible quality criteria, the sad truth is that their attention is focused first on cost cutting and then on quality. More often than not, many of the mainstream products are made from fish which have been processed a long distance from the place they were caught. You see, it's a matter of economies of scale. It's much less costly to catch fish in big numbers and carry them on big ocean going tankers (thus spreading the cost with other activities) to a large processing facility, rather than process them on site in smaller numbers. What's the result of this bad practice? Well, in order to better understand, just think it like this: When you want to cook fish for dinner, the first thing you do when you visit your local fish market is smell the merchandise. If it smells too "fishy", then this means that the fish is not fresh. The same applies for fish oil. If it is not made out of freshly caught fish, then it will have an unpleasant smell and, if you swallow the capsule, you are most likely to get a nasty, "fishy" aftertaste. To make matters worse, another issue that fish oil processing has to take into account is ocean pollution. The ugly truth is that most of the world's oceans are polluted with all sorts of harmful contaminants like heavy metals (mercury, cadmium, lead etc), PCBs, dioxins etc. All around the world, there are only a handful of places that are free from pollution: The most notable of these are the coasts off Alaska, Norway and New Zealand. Therefore, to sum up, your top priority when investigating the fish oil processing is twofold: 1. Find out whether the manufacturer processes the fish at a close distance from the place they are caught. Alternatively, check out in the documentation about a figure called TOTOX value. This measures the extent of oxidization of the product in question. The lower it is the better. Check whether it complies with international standards, information which should also be disclosed by the manufacturer. 2. Talking about purity (how much the product is free from any pollution), check about the method of fish oil processing. The best method by far is molecular distillation. This should be used even in the case that the fish that it comes from swims in pristine waters like the ones I mentioned above. Apart from man, nature also produces pollution. Volcano eruption is a good example of natural activity, which produces tons of pollution! |
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