In nature, nutrition always follows flavor.
What are you going to measure?
Years ago, when Doug began his journey to healing, as conventional health care failed him, he found the Weston A. Price Foundation. The scientific and traditional wisdom agreed that products from animals raised on pasture resulted in healing and health. What was the secret sauce behind this wisdom that had been handed down from generation to generation but is now missing in the Standard American Diet (SAD)? All indicators pointed to the fact that our SAD diet is way out of whack with a normal human diet, and most of us are walking around in a constant state of inflammation. Looking at the science behind how our bodies function, it didn’t take long to figure out the source of this inflammation… Omega 6 Fatty Acids.
Seed Oils not Vegetable Oils
For years, we had been lied to about the health benefits of “Vegetable Oils”. Vegetable Oil is just a marketing term that sounds way better than Seed Oils. I even bought into the marketing of seed oils by choosing margarine over good old butter. Luckily, when I married Sheila, she quickly had me consuming one of nature’s best fatty acids, butyric acid (aka butter). As a side note, do you know that your intestines actually make butyric acid? So why not save your body some energy and just eat it! As another side note, your body also makes cholesterol, another very important fat like substance that your body must have to thrive and survive. We were told to fear these lipids (fats), and the marketing worked.
The successful marketing of seed oils for human consumption, previously used for machine lubrication, caused our bodies to become inflamed. Looking at the science, this becomes obvious. Plant seeds are full of Omega-6 fats. Omega-6 fats are very stable. Omega-6 fats allow seeds to be dormant for thousands of years and then able to germinate when conditions are favorable. Omega-6 fats are valuable in our bodies when we cut ourselves. Omega-6 fats help clot the wound, which is good inflammation. But here is the problem: eating a SAD diet gives us way more omega-6 fats compared to the anti-inflammatory omega-3 fats. Our bodies are in a constant state of inflammation due to the high O6:O3 ratio in our diets.
Why we measure Omega-6 to Omega-3 ratio
We are all a little different, so I do not know the best ratio of Omega-6 to Omega-3 fat intake for everyone. But it is safe to say that if you are eating a SAD diet, you are consuming more omega-6 fats than were available in much of human history. That is why if you are looking for one thing to change in your diet, try reducing the amount of omega-6 fats you are consuming. The quickest way to do that is to replace a high O6:O3 ratio food with a low O6:O3 ratio food. Simply look at the omega-6 to omega-3 ratio of the current food you are consuming. Replace high O6:O3 ratio food with food that has a lower omega-6 to omega-3 ratio. O6:O3 ratio is fairly easy to investigate with a tool like MYFOODDATA. But the data might not represent niche food products very well, such as pasture raised beef from your local farmer. Remember also, there are a number of essential fatty acids. These fats are essential because our bodies cannot produce them. Healthy animals raised on pasture provide an excellent source of these essential fatty acids.
“The fastest way to success is to replace bad habits with good habits.” Tom Ziglar
There are many variables we could measure in our farm operation. Based on research and good luck, we picked Omega-6 to Omega-3 ratio of our FINAL product to monitor/measure our work. Everything we do during the life of an animal is ultimately expressed in the meat we harvest. You can read about other thoughts we have had concerning O6:O3 ratio through the years by looking through our past posts on Omega-6:Omega-3 ratio. If you are looking for a source of LOW Omega-6:Omega-3 ratio meat, look no further than pasture grazed from DS Family Farm.