With all the talk of EPA and DHA and ALA, how do you choose your Omega 3 capsules?

And it gets worse when you start reading all about converting ALA to DHA, then about long chain and short chain fats and so on.

One of the people who read my site recently asked me how to go about choosing his Omega 3 capsules because he had got confused about long and short chain fats.

I can understand his confusion. Heres a short explanation, and then well have a look at how to choose the best Omega 3 fish oil supplements.

The three Omega 3 fats weve mentioned (DHA, EPA and ALA) are polyunsaturated fats. They are all good for your body but by far the best and most important is DHA. Remember DHA is the fat that makes up a large part of your brain, though of course that isnt the only reason.

You find ALA in plant foods like flax seeds but you find DHA and EPA in sources like fish. ALA is the least important and whilst ALA is a short chain fatty acid DHA is a long chain fatty acid. It gets complicated here, so I’ll stop with the chemistry.

The most important Omega 3 fat that you need is DHA and that comes from fish oil capsules, along with EPA. No need for flax seed capsules.

Every fish oils capsule has DHA regardless of the brand.

So it seems that fish oil supplements are better than flax seed Omega 3 supplements, but how do you choose between the different fish oil supplements?

Theres 2 things you need to look for to find the best rated Omega 3 fish oil capsules. You need to look for the quantity of DHA in the capsules, and the purity of the oil.

To decide which are the best value fish oil capsules you must consider how much DHA are in them, not just the price.

Supplements with a third of the amount of DHA than other supplements are not good value even if they are half the price, because on a price/DHA quantity comparison they are actually more expensive.

And thats not all, you need to consider the purity of the oils too, because, sad to say, many of our fish are contaminated with toxins. You wouldnt want to take Omega 3 capsules with traces of mercury and PCBs would you?

That’s all you need to consider when choosing Omega3 supplements.

That though, isn’t easy to do. Actually making that comparison isn’t as simple as you may imagine. The good news though is that I’ve done some serous comparisons and one brand comes up as the best value on DHA quantity and the same brand comes up as the best on purity as well.

If you want to find out which brand visit my website.