I'm quite sure most of us would have heard about the benefits of omega-3s fats. How can we not? The advertising is so rampant; foods from soya milk to margarine boost themselves fortified with omega-3s fatty acids, claiming all sorts of health benefits.
What the advertisers don't want you to know is that there are actually 2 types of omega-3s:
- the long chain fatty acids, the goods ones, from fish (and of course more expensive), and
- the shorter chain counterparts, the less beneficial ones (and cheaper) from flax seeds and soya.
Of course they will not tell you which type of omega-3s is used to fortified their product. The claim that the food is fortified with omega-3s is of course not wrong, but this half-truth, this purposeful withholding of information is , in my opinion, morally worse. It is because it intentionally misleads people to buy their products. In order to increase their sales, they disregard the whole truth and compromise the health of the consumers.
To complicate things further, the benefits of omega-3s can be offset by the increase intake of omega-6s. If you were to remember, we consumers are also asked to replace the saturated fats, such as butter and lard, with the healthier omega-6s unsaturated fats from maize and sunflower oils. The story is not that simple. See details below. It is an abstract from the recent article from The Economist.
You can get the full article at:
and
Eating healthily is sometimes not that simple. But, that does not give the advertisers an excuse to 'simplify' the information given to consumers. We must demand more rigour in their testing and research, and more accurate reporting of information.
On a more general note, it is not uncommon to see people 'simplify' information when disseminating or communicating it to others. We have to ask ourselves are we truthful, sincere and accurate about the information communicated; or, do we have an intention to hide and mislead, packaged in innocent pretence?
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