Talk:Fatty acid ratio in food

Request for Information on Meat
Hi everyone. The article is great. I love that it gives information objectively which is not easy to find on the web when reading anything health related so it's definitely rendering good value to the reader.

I wanted to bring up the potential relevance of meat in the article. Obviously meat is a very common source of fatty acids especially compared to vegetables which are listed. It is also valuable to the reader because the information can be hard to find for the layperson in a reliable form and as organized using a google search.

So I think it is relevant, important for completeness, and pertinent to a reader who may have stumbled on this article from google.

I understand that a big driver of what gets covered and what doesn't is access to information that is reliable and serves the format of the article and I'm guessing that is the big reason why meat wasn't mentioned. I'm no wikipedia writer so I do have to say sorry and leave it up to the more seasoned writers but even if no information is available that would allow for the same format to be continued would it be possible to say something about meat in general because there is nothing here to help the reader understand anything about those ratios within meat. I know some will say why don't I not be lazy and write it. One I'll screw up and someone will need to edit it anyway, two I'm not as good at figuring out what information is reliable compared to a seasoned writer but most importantly I have tried writing for wikipedia before and I have to say I have zero interest in it because of the political nature of actively writing for wikipedia.

Hopefully this user feedback is useful in developing the article further.

Take care writers of Wikipedia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.178.10.107 (talk) 16:15, 11 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Meat is kind of difficult like butter (mentioned below). What the animal has is largely determined by what they eat — our food vertebrates, much like us humans, do not make 6 or 3 from scratch, but can elongate existing fatty acids, like ALA to EPA and DHA. In other words, they are not going to deviate from the ratio in feed much, unless some special, selective tissue accumulation mechanism is at play.
 * It would likely be most cost-effective to not supplement any fatty acid unless there’s an obvious effect on the animal’s growth. (Farmed carnivorous fish is a case where adding n-3 is customary, for fish health and customer nutrition reasons.) Artoria2e5 🌉 17:31, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

Reverse the Ratios
This is very useful info. However, given that dietary recommendations are expressed as Omega-6:Omega-3, I think it would be more consistent to do this in the tables as well. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.89.79.76 (talk) 17:26, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

Changed 31st Dec 2015 — Preceding unsigned comment added by DrPhilErrington (talk • contribs) 12:43, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

Undue Weight?
Why mention the ratios for Inuit, who live in a very unusual ecosystem, and eat very large amounts of fish and little grain - and are surely not representative of hunter gatherers who lived prior to 10,000 BCE, when hunter gatherers lived in much more diverse ecosystems (that farmers later pushed them out of) Ricardianman (talk) 20:49, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

Oils Expand. Serving size delete
Please someone with more time add the more important oils than obscure ones

Ghee Butter Corn Palm Extra virgin olive Hydrogenated soy Hydrogenated corn

Also delete serving size from all tables. It has no value. Pbmaise (talk) 00:38, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

HUFA
It is very unhelpful to introduce an undefined quantity. Readers may have had saliva or blood tests to look at Omega 6 to Omega 3 ratios in their bodies. It would be helpful to explain the serum or other ratios that individual people may have measured in the hope of obtaining an effective good ratio for themselves. It is very hard to find this information without paying for a subscription to a learned journal or without the noise created by suppliers of food additives who are trying to appeal to health-worriers. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.124.13.16 (talk) 10:27, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

Non sequitur: we don't know the effects of 6:3 ratios, so it's useful to know the ratio?
From the first sentence of the article: "There is some debate as to the optimal ratio of omega-3 fatty acids and omega-6 fatty acids for human health. This means that knowing the ratio of these two classes of polyunsaturated fats can be a useful tool in maintaining a healthy diet." No, it does not mean that at all.

If no one clarifies this soon I am inclined to just delete it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by IAmNitpicking (talk • contribs) 15:14, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

✅ revised &mdash; soupvector (talk) 21:53, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

Bias
No effort is made to present expert views without bias. Two persons, Stoll and Allport are anointed to represent all opinion on the topic. It is not that I say they are wrong, but that this is written as propaganda, not an even-handed view of the evidence. Nicmart (talk) 04:13, 21 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Welcome to Wikipedia - the encyclopedia that anyone can edit! &mdash; soupvector (talk) 06:24, 21 December 2017 (UTC)

Butter/Ghee discrepancy
Wikipedia isn't necessarily the place to resolve such an issue, but on its face the difference in reported ratios between butter (8.7:1) and ghee (1.5:1) seems improbable. Ghee is simply clarified butterfat with water and proteins removed, a process one would not expect to alter the polyunsaturated fat composition. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.54.221.243 (talk) 17:29, 27 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Not necessarily. The ratio depends on whether the cow is feed with grains (more omega 6) or only grass (more omega 3).Reing (talk) 07:04, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
 * This does not have anything to do with whether it is clarified or not. Contraverse (talk) 21:24, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

Outdated?
At least some of information is outdated.

Most of information rely on single source (Self Nutrition Database) which is based on USDA SR21 dated 2008 (but actual USDA SR28 dated 2018 is not improved for most food ).

For examples:

Tuna, canned in oil - there is no information about type of oil used (probably soybean or sunflower), but changes occur in food production industry

Flaxseed - two new groups of varieties with modified ratio of omega 6 : omega 3 were developed. Ratios within the groups vary around 1:1 and more than 10:1 respectively. The second one is intended for food production (cooking oil and margarines).

Canola and soybean with low omega 3 content were developed too.

Reing (talk) 08:01, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

Reflist dump
Dumping stray reflist items from comments above.

Optimal ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fats - References
No idea why someone wrote Who? for Susan Allport and Andrew Stoll, when their books are referenced in the same sentence. Removed those comments and added who they were.Contraverse (talk) 21:25, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

Table format
Why are most of the table items in the first column (food) formatted in italics? This is not even consistent as many items are in regular font.

I don't feel like fixing the inconsistency, because my preference would be to remove the fatuous italic font unless I'm told a good reason.

Note that I just fixed the column headers to be initial cap only rather than title cap. We already had one multi-word column header formatted this way, but many others that were not. Most particularly, "Omega 6" was internally capitalized despite not needing a capital outside of title caps. &mdash; MaxEnt 00:35, 23 September 2021 (UTC)


 * I meant to also add that the reference column should not be the second column but the last column. &mdash; MaxEnt 00:39, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

Page title fix
Commonly a two-word modifier in page titles is hyphenated: Fatty-acid ratio in food. Should this also apply here? &mdash; MaxEnt 01:01, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

Sesame oil?
Does anyone know why sesame oil is not on the chart? 68.194.113.38 (talk) 02:11, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

Omega3-6 ratio
The omega 3-6 ratio you write for the canned sardines, the canned tuna and the canned mackerel is wrong. It's probably the other way round : you present the numbers as if they give the omega 3/6 ratio when they obviously give the omega 6/3 ratio. 94.64.241.9 (talk) 19:19, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

Omega3-6 ratio
To add to my previous comment, all the list of the omega6/3 ratio of the fish is wrong. It's the other way round. 94.64.241.9 (talk) 19:22, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

Omega3-6 ratio
Sorry, my bad, please ignore my 2 previous comments. The stats are right. 94.64.241.9 (talk) 19:27, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

EPA and DHA?
The first statement in this article is obviously wrong. EPA (Eicosapentaenoic_acid) and DHA (Docosahexaenoic_acid)are essential Omega-3 fatty acids that are more important than ALA. These two can be converted from ALA, but only with a 5-10% efficiency.

So why does this article not even mention these two? This needs to be corrected. Contraverse (talk) 22:41, 15 February 2024 (UTC)


 * You are quite likely correct in thinking that something beyond 6/3 ratio matters, but human thinking tends to have a lot of inertia, especially in the medical field which discourages skipping steps. The old 6/3 ratio might fall short on the specifics of what each FA does, but it probably works well enough, has data for more foods than the alternatives, and gets put in statistical tests against health outcomes more often. Shrug. Artoria2e5 🌉 17:23, 20 April 2024 (UTC)
 * (While we’re on the topic of more specific FAs, the article can probably cover other FA ratios — there are a bunch of FAs that you can put into fractions. People have written about DHA/EPA ratio, AA/EPA ratio, oleic/palmitic ratio, steric/oleic ratio and so on and so forth.) Artoria2e5 🌉 17:44, 20 April 2024 (UTC)