Narration
And Tony's theory is, if you have LOW Omega 3, your membranes will be more sluggish - slowing metabolism down.
This may be the key to why the modern diet makes us fat - and if it is, it's not just that we're eating too much.and:
Tony believes we've slowed our metabolisms down by eating food with the wrong balance of fats.
We've moved away from the Omega 3 rich hunter gatherer diet we evolved with towards a diet dominated by another fat: omega 6.
Professor Tony Hulbert
Back in hunter gatherer times ... the balance between omega 3 and omega 6 was more one to one, whereas nowadays it's much more biased towards the omega 6, So sometimes up to 30:1... more omega 6 than omega 3.
Narration
Omega 6 comes from seeds and grains, and is particularly high in the kinds of vegetable oils we rely on in the western world. The most common oil in processed food, Soy oil is almost 90% omega 6.
And we haven't just changed our diet, we've also changed the diet of the animals we eat. We're increasingly feeding them Omega 6 rich grain,
dramatically reducing the Omega 3 content of the meat.
Professor Tony Hulbert
The meat we eat if it's been pasture fed it's got a much better balance of omega 3's relative to omega 6's - about 40% to 60%. If it's fed grain it'll be about 20% omega 3 to 80% omega 6.
Narration
Tony believes that this reliance on Omega 6 at the expense of Omega 3 will put us at risk of many of the diseases of the modern world.
Professor Tony Hulbert
If the omega 3 is too low your omega 3 in your membranes will be low, you're more likely to become insulin resistant, develop uh... obesity and various other uh... cardiovascular diseases that arise from that and also uh... other diseases like depression uh... seem to be associated with not enough omega 3 in your cell membranes.
http://www.uow.edu.au/research/proflectureseries/UOW009451.html
http://www.uow.edu.au/health/healthsciences/mrc/Members/UOW039108.html
http://www.uow.edu.au/science/biol/biolschoolstaff/UOW057175.html
