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How Do You Locate The Highest Quality Fish Oil Supplements?

By Peter Clark
Sep 1, 2009
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. Purity and cleanliness.

Fish is generally contaminated and the FDA tells us not to eat too much for this reason. Supplements can be too and some have been withdrawn for this reason. One of the biggest determinants of fish oil quality is it's cleanliness.

Most marine oil is cleansed by a process of molecular distillation. This is effective, but there is one company that considers this insufficient and adds it's own cleansing process in before molecular distillation, just to make sure. They also control the entire process of extracting the oil from the moment the fish is caught right through to making the capsules. Most companies buy in their oils from a wholesaler.

2. Freshness.

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. The amount of DHA.

DHA is the most important of the Omega 3 polyunsaturated fatty acids, along with EPA. It's really the DHA that you're buying, the rest is just the carrier. Most Omega 3 capsules are 18/12 capsules. That means you get 18%, or 180 mg, of DHA in a 1000 mg capsule, and 12%, or 120 mg of EPA.

But the best Omega 3 capsules give you 28% DHA, or 280 mg per 1000 mg capsule. Up to or over 2 1/2 times more DHA than most.

4. The effectiveness of 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 but basically it means how well your body takes up and assimilates the good healthy fats.

And some brands of fish oils have been shown to work better than others. The main benefit of a quality fish oil is that it works to combat inflammation. One supplement has been shown to work 2 1/2 times better than "average" capsules as an anti inflammatory.

And of course price comes into it too, though isn't the most important factor. But you still need to do a price and value comparison which isn't easy.

That's a very brief explanation of how to find the highest quality fish oil supplements. To really go into detail would take way too long.
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