wise

Sibiriak, thanks for the update on LA, ALAs, ARAs.

 

If 1% ALAs appears to meet the requirements, that means for example, in a 2500 kCal diet, an average energy of 25 kCal → about 2.8 grams of ALAs daily on the average.

 

That corresponds to 30 grams of walnuts in the USDA database, about 175% RDA for myself.

 

1.75 tablespoons ground flaxseed also add up to 2.8 grams ALAs, with much fewer omega6.

 

The takeaway lessons would be something like this:

 

• Take at least a coupla tbs. ground flaxseed per day
• Eat only few walnuts, what's required to ingest some specific phytosterols (walnuts are very rich in condensed tannins, as their astringent taste testifies)
• Eat as little as possible sunflower oil or foods containing sunflower oil and other vegetable oils (except few specific exceptions)
• Eat sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds in moderate amounts, to take advantage of specific phytosterols and protein and minerals in such inexpensive food
• Eat not too much of other nuts since they increase the LAs content

 

I can pretty much agree with the above, without getting fixated with it though. Nuts still make up a very valuable food, so their amount should be optimized, not drastically decreased. Although the minimum amount believed to be healthy, about one ounce or 28 grams, is pretty low. I'd take at least 2 ounces or more than 50 grams minimum daily quantity of nuts and up my intake of ground flaxseed.

 

I find nuts too tasty and healthy not to indulge with them sometimes.

Really great discussion. I'm curious, how much fat are you all eating daily? (Both % and total would be helpful I guess.) I struggle with deciding how much fat to put in my diet. Currently at about 22-25%, 65-70g daily. I eat a tablespoon of flax daily and walnuts a few times a week. The rest comes from tofu and peanut butter usually. I haven't really thought too much about my LA intake. I decided on taking a vegan DHA supplement.

Since I do not eat fish for ethical reasons, my intake of n3s for the latest 40 years has been restricted exclusively to the vegetable kingdom, and only since joining this forum I made a conscious effort to increase my ALAs consumption by flaxseed and walnuts. Before, I didn't even know the food content of omega 3s.

 

I'm pretty sure that for the latest 40 years there have been relatively long periods when I did not consume walnuts nor other sources, so my anedoctal, n=1 experience shows that not everyone needs with regularity the n3s amounts today taken as reference.  I may also be a good ALA → EPA converter, since I never took ALAs nor  EPA-DHA supplements. My hunch is that people without negative genetic polymorphism do not need many n3s, or that there is some unknown food source or some unknown so far metabolic mechanism producing n3s out of other lipids or molecules.

There is good evidence that as a vegan, after prolonged periods of time when you don't consume DHA/EPA, your body becomes more adept at converting ALA to DHA/EPA. There's a study here: http://dx.doi.org/10.3945/ajcn.2010.29457showing that vegans and vegetarians have similar blood levels of DHA/EPA despite not eating fish as omnivores do. Also, there's evidence that our fat can store DHA/EPA and release it over time so you may have stored those fatty acids in times when you ate walnuts and flaxseeds to accommodate times when you didn't. Very interesting data point though. I supplement but am considering stopping and switching to solely flax and walnuts. Also, what really matters, is brain levels, and we can't measure that for obvious reasons. Serum levels are just a proxy.

Vegetarian CA Adventists had average lifespans of 87 (men) and 90 (women).. That is far better than the traditional Okinawans (77.6 for men and 86.0 for women).  More info in this thread.

 

Interesting study there on EPA/DHA supplements vs. Salmon.   I wish they would repeat the study using vegan DHA (algae based) which some believe to be superior to fish oil caps (in fact I don't even think fish oil caps are recommended by most experts anymore, there are many noted problems with quality and perishability).  I get all my EPA from plant foods so I'm not concerned about that, but not completely sure I'm getting enough DHA.  Bernando LaPallo (supposedly lived 114 years) was a "vegan + salmon" guy, in the California Adventists, WOMEN who were (vegan + fish) lived the longest, but in MEN the vegans lived longest (however vegan + fish was not far behind).  It is notable how much eating fish seemed to help women though.

 

See:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4191896/table/T4/

As long as you're getting enough ALA to create sufficient levels of DHA or EPA, your body can convert between the two. If you supplement, you only need to worry about the total between the two, not individual amounts.

Edited for duplicate content