i am new to the raw food thing.well-i keep reading all of your postings and am trying to piece things together.i guess there is omega's.i don't know what it is.i got flax seed today and flax seed meal.if i add this into my foods-will i have all the omega's i need?and how much is enough for a day and what is an omega?thank u so much.

Hi Taylor,

Dietary fats are broken up into categories such as omega, mono-unsaturated, saturated, and

The book by Udo Eramus titled "Fats that Heal, Fats that Kill" is important to read and will give you a good understanding of them. Udo's articles are at
[www.udoerasmus.com]

We need to eat both omega-3 and omega-6 fats. Omega-9 may be essential fats as well. Our bodies can make the rest of the fats and we don't need to eat them. Two of the best sources of the omega-3's are hemp seeds and flax seeds.

If you eat between one to three tablespoons of flax and hemp seeds daily then you should be getting adequate omega-3's.

If you have not been eating enough omega-3's, you may want to use a raw oil supplement to bring you back into balance. My favorite is Udo's Perfect oil blend. I also like hemp seed oil and flax seed oil.

There are two types of omega 3 fats, short chain and long chain. The long chain fats are called EPA and DHA. When eating raw vegan, the only source of EPA and DHA is Klamath Lake blue-green algae.

I like the E3 Live brand: [SPAM link to Mike's website removed by moderator] (check out the Newsroom link w/ audio/visual), some people need to eat the long chain fats, especially children and pregnant women because our brain and eyes are made from the long chain omega-3's. Babies need higher amounts of these fats for proper development. A nursing mother needs to eat more DHA and EPA so that her milk will supply enough to the child.

Mike



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/09/2007 07:09AM by Bryan.

Hi Taylor:

Flax is very good for you. It's a good idea to keep everything in the fridge so it stays nice and fresh. I like to just add a little flax oil to my smoothie in the morning, or else use it to make a salad dressing with some lemon juice and fresh herbs. It's pretty easy to find ways to incorporate. I also add flax seed to my smoothies, which I grind fresh each time I use it. I read that once it is ground it doesn't keep very long (you might even want to keep that in the freezer if it is already ground).

I don't worry too much about the omega's specifically - it seems to me that if you have a lot of fresh fruits and veggies, and freshly extracted juices, your omega 3's and 6's won't get too far out of balance. But there are lots of people on this board who are much more well informed than me, and they could probably explain this in more detail.

For a really good source of information about healthy oils, see if you can track down a book called "Fats that Heal, Fats that Kill" by Udo Erasmus. You could probably get that from the library.

Good luck!
Sapphire

I have an avocadoe almost everyday, plus a tbsp of various nuts or seeds, just to switch it up a bit.

Omegas are fatty acids. The most consumed fatty acid is omega-6. In general, no one has a shortage of omega-6 fatty acids, unless they are starving. There is another fatty acid called omega-3, which needs to be in balance with the omega-6 intake. The ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 should be somewhere between 4:1 and 1:1, the closer to 1:1 the better.

What throws the ratio out of balance is the overconsumption of omega-6s. Oils are notorious for causing this inbalance. Other overt fats (foods that are predominately fat) also contribute to this imbalance.

If a person eats no overt fats (oils, nuts, seeds, avos, etc), but gets all their fats from fruits and vegetables, they will have a balanced omega-3 intake.

Flax seeds are high in omega-3s. Most mainstream nutritionist recommend taking omega-3 supplements (like flax seed oil) rather than lowering omega-6 intake. However, eating too much fat is unhealthy. A healthy amount of fat is 10% fat (or less) as a percentage of calories. The body only needs about 3% to 5% of its calories from fat.

Its hard to say whether or not adding some flax seeds to what you eat will balance your fatty acids. First you need to do an analysis of how much fatty acids you consume, and how much omega-6 your are eating. You can use a tool like nutritiondata, which gives the omega-6 and omega-3 values for foods. I would recommend removing the high omega-6 foods from your staples rather than adding omega-3 supplementation.

Here are the ratios (omega-6mega-3) of some common foods:

Olive oil 75:1
Avocado   15:1
Orange     3:1
Banana     2:1
Romaine    1:2
Mango      1:3
Flax       1:4
Coconut   No omega-3

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/09/2007 07:22AM by Bryan.

Brian, you're brilliant!

wow-this is sort of complicated for my brain but thanks to you smart people who have obvisously done your homework-have informed me of so much.I had high cholresterol before i went on my changes of my lifestyle in oct. of 2006...my granny had her first heart attck at 38 yrs old and her son at 34 yrs old.on my dads side -he had a triple by-pass at 49 and lived to 59...so to me this is a serious subject. ok. i have been eating walnuts cause i read they thin our blood.but i very small amounts...like say 4 walnuts at breakfast with a couple of apples,if i don't juice.ok-if i keep the omega 6's in control-the 3's will balance out and all will be ok.basically go real easy on the avocado's and nuts.got cha!man!thanks everyone-so much.

Taylor - I AM SO PROUD OF YOU!!!!

I remember when my husband's mom went through her experience with high blood pressure and high cholesterol. It drove me crazy that she was so unwilling to change anything about her life. I absolutely loved that lady, she was so kind and generous and such an amazing person, but the only thing she was willing to do to try to regain her health was to take her pills on time every day. She would not change her diet, quit smoking, lose weight, exercise or anything else they recommended. I think part of the problem is that hypertension has no real symptoms - she felt fine, so that might be one reason she just didn't take it very seriously.

Well, one day, she just died. Had a heart attack and did not survive. It was so sad. My kids were 5,4,2, and 6 months at the time. I am so sad that none of them really remember their grandma, she was such a wonderful lady. She would have really enriched their lives.

If you can do this - take charge of your health and keep yourself around to be part of your family's life for many years to come, then you will have given them the greatest gift they could ever wish for. And with those family stats, you really do have to take control! What a great example you could set for the rest of the family! One day these lessons could save them as well.

Wishing you luck and success,
Sapphire

Sapphire, Thanks so much for sharing your story! That is a real life testament to help others stick to healthy lifestyle choices, as encouraged by this great forum. I am a grandmother of a 4 year old boy, I'd like to see grow up. Blessings to you and your family. Janice

"spam link to mike's website removed by moderator?" umm, ok. nice. bright red name calling. very mature.
here's a link to the definition of spam, someone obviously doesn't know the meaning of the word.
[en.wikipedia.org])
can we expect to see that removed as well? are ALL links going to be removed from posts then, or just the ones the moderator has a personal dislike for?
pretty ignorant. feel free to censor me, goodness knows there's enough of that going around here. geesh.

Mike agreed to the same forum rules that everyone else here did. Specifically:

Quote

Not Permitted on the boards:
* Advertisments of products, services or advertising of other web sites

I've asked Mike to not engage in these practices in the past. However, he feels he is special and doesn't need to abide by forum rules. I don't make the rules here, I just enforce them. I've asked others to refrain from advertising their websites, and they have for the most part complied (there are a few more that have refused to act, or perhaps they don't read their private messages).

Mike is not the only person who has had links removed from his posting. Look for the last message posted by rawguru.

Bryan,

E3 Live is a raw vegan food. It is the same as a banana or romaine lettuce.

Why is it okay to post a link to a website with information on the nutrient content of a banana, but it is considered SPAM to link to a website with information on E3 Live?

The Klamath blue-green algae is the only raw vegan food containing EPA and DHA. Our brain and eyes are over 60% EPA and DHA.

You threatened to Ban me for posting links to my website, I guess your belief is that Klamath Algae is a worthless supplement and I am a snake oil salesman.

Mike

Mike,

The issue here is not what I think of the products you sell on your website. The issue is did you or did you not break forum rules? I explained to you in pretty simple terms in a private message that posting URLs that pointed to your website that sells stuff is breaking of forum policy. For some reason you think that this policy does not apply to you.

If you look at the bottom of the Forum Policy, you will see the following, to which you agreed:

Quote

BY REGISTERING AT THIS SITE TO USE THE BOARDS, I AGREE TO THE ABOVE POLICY, and ACKNOWLEDGE that my ability to use the boards may be terminated without warning for any reason.

Hi Bryan,

WHY are you going to ban me for posting an article about banana's? The article is on my website.

To everyone,
Bryan sent me a personal email and said he will ban me if I post a link to my website. I do not think this is fair. My website has articles about vegan raw and living foods, and it contains interviews with many raw food experts such as Dave Klein and Paul Nison.

I just posted the banana article so this may be my last post on this board.

Mike

regardless of the rules by which we must all abide, leaving a screaming red insult in someone's post is ignorant and unneccessary.

Mike,

The post had nothing to do with banana. The URL you gave was:

"[www.TheRawDiet.com];

When I look at this URL, your webserver comes back to me with a response:

"HTTP/1.1 302 Object moved". The new location of the document is:

"[www.myaffiliateprogram.com];

id=1352 must be some code for your business, that gets an advertisement credit for each click-through it generates, or perhaps your business gets a percentage of each sale made on the click-through. Going to myaffiliateprogram.com, I find that they are in the affliate tracking and management technology business, that is, they keep track of how many clicks you refer to their customers.

In any case, after the browser goes to the myaffiliateprogram.com, it gets another "HTTP/1.1 302 Object moved", and this time the new location is "[www.e3live.com"];.

I don't see why you get to make money off of members of rawfoodsupport.com via e3live. As far e3live is concerned, it was therawdiet website that referred the potential customer, and as such you get the financial benefit.

To the person who clicked on the link, it looks like you sent them to the e3live website, as they don't see the intermediate transactions. However, it is in those telling intermediate transaction where we see you profit from each click-through. Anyone with a little web-saavy can verify this sequence of events.

Again, its not OK for you to make money off of people visiting the rawfoodsupport.com website.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/10/2007 01:19AM by Bryan.

I did a little searching on the e3live website, and there it states that affiliates make a compensation of 20% per sale.

Thanks Mike for this great service you are giving your friends here at rawfoodsupport.com.

I'm sorry coco, you said I incorrectly called Mike's link SPAM? What's your definition of SPAM?

wikepedia definition of spam

Spamming is the abuse of electronic messaging systems to send unsolicited, undesired bulk messages. While the most widely recognized form of spam is email spam, the term is applied to similar abuses in other media: instant messaging spam, Usenet newsgroup spam, Web search engine spam, spam in blogs, and mobile phone messaging spam.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/10/2007 01:39AM by coco.

Why all this talk of SPAM, surely it's not vegan ;-)

Rob

When I go to the page on Forum Spam in Wikipedia, it says:

Quote

Spam is the posting of advertisements, abusive, or unneeded messages on Internet Forums.

Futhermore, it says

Quote

Most spambot forum spam consists of links, with the dual goals of increasing search engine visibility in highly competitive areas such as weightloss, pharmaceuticals, gambling, pornography, real estate or loans, and generating more traffic for these commercial websites. Some of these links contain code to track the spambot's identity if a sale goes through, when the spammer behind the spambot works on commission.

Hmmm. The bit about commission looks very reminiscent of what Mike's e3live link is doing via myaffiliateprogram.com.

Mike,

how 'bout dem bananas?

Bryan,

I'm really grateful for all the work you do to keep this forum healthy and functioning.

Thank you for devoting your computer knowledge and skills to this situation. I don't know anyone else here who could have figured out what was going on and exposed it. I appreciate your attempts to handle this privately and I support your decision to respond after being publicly attacked for doing your job.

I applaude your courage to do the sometimes tough jobs that draws the fire of some of the judgemental folk. For me the real "screaming red insult" is the one that is covertly directed at the unsuspecting forum members when someone insists that the rules don't apply to them and they attempt to profit off of the forum members after being privately warned not to do so.

Seems like 'dem banannas was just a little spam smoke. Oh well, this is a Raw forum ;-)

In Gratefulness and Gratitude,
Uti


Thanks for making this my choice for best raw food forum on the web.

you know, there are a few other people with their sites, etc in their signatures. if the rules really apply to all they should to apply to all. i dislike the singling out of certain individuals with opposing view points to the mods. the position of power is unfortunately not an incoruptable one, not even here.

My new signature sells nothing and has nothing to do with rawfood (I'm hoping to find a game programmer interested in my project). Kind of like this thread has nothing to do with Omegas fatty acids.

Hey Bryan, just out of curiosity, what do you do for a living?

I noticed that Mike's posts are basically advertisements linking to his websites recently; and I hardly feel sorry for him when he claimed in another thread here that he makes $2,000 per month selling people zeolite alone, not counting all of the other stupor-foods he sells. I'm sure he is just so hard up on that salary that he has to come here and post doctored links.

This thread is about omega-3 fats

Omega-3 is also written as n-3

I wrote that the Klamath Lake Blue-Green algae
is the only raw vegan food that contains the
essential long-chain omega-3 fats DHA and EPA

I am sorry that Bryan and Uti disagree with me. I
guess they think they don't need to eat DHA.

** Our brain and eyes are over 60% fat, mostly DHA and EPA. **

If you are not eating enough omega-3 fats, your brain and
eyesight will suffer.

Foods with DHA include:

- Klamath Algae E3 Live (vegan),

- Fish, Fish Oil, Eggs, (all not vegan)

- and supplements.

The following info is on my website, it is an
article by Udo Erasmus, author of "Fats that Heal,
Fats that Kill"

Quoted from

"DHA is the primary structural component of brain tissue,
so it stands to reason that a deficiency of DHA in the
diet could translate into a deficiency in brain function.

In fact, research is increasingly recognizing
the possibility that DHA has a crucial influence
on neurotransmitters in the brain, helping brain
cells better communicate with each other.

Asian cultures have long appreciated the brain-building
effects of DHA. In Japan, DHA is considered such an important
"health food" that it is used as a nutritional supplement to
enrich some foods, and students frequently take DHA pills
before examinations.

Just how important is DHA for brain development? Consider
these research findings:

* Infants who have low amounts of DHA in their diet have reduced brain development and diminished visual acuity.

* The increased intelligence and academic performance of breastfed compared with formula- fed infants has been attributed in part to the increased DHA content of human milk.

* Cultures whose diet is high in omega 3 fatty acids (such as the Eskimos who eat a lot of fish) have a lower incidence of degenerative diseases of the central nervous system, such as multiple sclerosis.

* Experimental animals whose diets are low in DHA have been found to have smaller brains and delayed central nervous system development.

* Some children with poor school performance because of ADD, have been shown to have insufficient essential fatty acids in their diet. (See A.D.D. - A Nutritional Deficiency?)

Fats make up sixty percent of the brain and
the nerves that run every system in the body.
So, it stands to reason that the better the
fat in the diet, the better the brain.

The essential fats are the prime structural components
of brain cell membranes and are also an important part
of the enzymes within cell membranes that allow the
membranes to transport valuable nutrients in and out
of the cells.

The omega-3's are Essential Fatty Acids, which
are substances from fats that must be provided
by foods because the body cannot make them, and
yet must have them for health. The ALA omega-3's
are the plant based fats.

Two studies published in the British Journal of
Nutrition (BJN) which measured the conversion of
alpha-linolenic acid (ALA), the short chain n-3
essential fatty acid, into the long chain n-3
derivatives EPA, DPA, and DHA.

The first study, carried out with six women, showed
that these women converted an average of 36% of the
ALA they were given into long chain n-3 derivatives
(21% EPA, 6% DPA, 9% DHA).

The second study, done with six men, showed
that the men converted an average of 16% of
the ALA they received into long-chain n-3
derivatives (8% EPA, 8% DPA). ....



** In this study, the men produced No DHA. **



Udo Eramus's Comment: Women must be able to
convert enough ALA to long chain n-3 to feed
two brains, theirs and that of the child growing
within them. Men have only one brain to feed,
and therefore require less conversion to DHA
than women do.

The retina of the eye contains a high concentration
of the fatty acid DHA, which the body forms from
nutritious fats in the diet. The more nutritious the
fat, the better the eye can function. And since most
people are visual learners, better eyes mean better brains.

Why should we eat DHA and EPA?

EPA is needed to make health-protecting
'eicosanoid' hormones that keep cell
metabolism on an even keel, and DHA is
required for brain development, brain
function, vision, and sperm formation, and
has heart-protective and anti-inflammatory
functions as well.

The truth is that most people do not get
enough ALA in their diet.

Our n-3 intake is only 1/6th of the amount
eaten by people 150 years ago, and intake
was far from optimal in 1850.

Even today, 95 to 99% of the population gets
too little n-3 in their diet. N-3 deficiency
increases the risk of increasing cardiovascular,
immune, autoimmune, diabetic, and inflammatory
disease, and leads to sub-optimal intelligence,
concentration, mood, and performance.

Fats can also influence brain development and performance,
especially at either end of life -- growing infants and
elderly people. In fact, there are two windows of time in
which the brain is especially sensitive to nutrition: the
first two years of life for a growing baby and the last
couple decades of life for a senior citizen. Both growing
and aging brains need nutritious fats.

The most rapid brain growth occurs during the first year of
life, with the infant's brain tripling in size by the first
birthday. During this stage of rapid central nervous system
growth, the brain uses sixty percent of the total energy
consumed by the infant.

Fats are a major component of the brain cell membrane and
the myelin sheath around each nerve. So, it makes sense
that getting enough fat, and the right kinds of fat, can
greatly affect brain development and performance. In fact,
during the first year, around fifty percent of an infant's
daily calories come from fat.

Mother Nature knows how important fat is for babies;
fifty percent of the calories in mother's milk is fat.


~*~*~*~*~*~
~*~*~*~*~*~

Does Udo recommend eating foods with the DHA and EPA Fats?

Udo Erasmus writes

"Eating clean, wild catch fish two to five times a
week provides the health benefits that are attributable
to long chain n-3 fats, including lowered risk of
cardio, cancer, diabetes, inflammation, and even osteoporosis."


** Lets ask another expert Dr. Bill Sears, who writes:

"Popular sources of DHA are: salmon, sardines, and
tuna. Eggs and organ meats have a small amount of DHA
in them, but the healthiest source of dietary DHA is
seafood. Two 4-ounce servings of omega-3-rich fish per
week should yield a sufficient amount of omega-3 fatty
acids, especially DHA. I shoot for 1,500 milligrams a
week. To insure this amount, I eat at least four 4-ounce
servings of fresh or frozen salmon or tuna each week."

- Dr. Sears


<End Article>

~*~*~*~*~*~
~*~*~*~*~*~

This being said, I feel that Klamath Algae is one of the
most important foods for raw vegans. I eat it every day.

If I did not eat E3 Live, I would be eating chicken eggs
because they are the only other vegetarian food with DHA & EPA.

Mike

Thank u sapphire for your encouraging words. i appreciate them so much. i am so sorry about your kids being deprived of there granny.that is sad.u come to a point where u are heavy from S.A.D. and then u think is this normal old age or disease cause of poor health...i was 245 pounds. so horrid.i am cruising into the 190's now.since oct.18th.so i am trying to learn more about how to eat better.i am seeing it is tuffer to be raw than i thought.it has been so cold here. i had a mug of hot soup yesterday.i did hear some one on this site tell another to put 3 cloves into a cup of water and warm -in place of tea. i tried it and loved it so.i am really appreciating everyones experiences and the learning power of this site.my mom died at 52...so my kids did not have there granny either.she died from smoking.

thanks mike. efa's are the most important thing a pregnant woman can consume for gestation and lactation alike. not only that, they are a major contributor to avoiding post-pardum depression. it's hard for a lot of people to catch up on an efa deficiency as well. i'm mega dosing right now, taking a high-end fishliver oil supplement. not the least bit vegan, i know, but affordable, easy and very essential.

wild-aloe,

I'm glad that you are seeing the nature of Mike's contribution.