Considering how much we trainers recommend a good fish oil, the title of today’s post may come as a surprise. It’s really more of a sarcastic poke at an article that ran recently under the title “Study: More omega-3 fats didn’t aid heart patients“. Many people these days have short attention spans and may give such an article no more than a cursory look. In fact, they might have source amnesia down the road when they tell you “Oh, I heard that omega-3 stuff doesn’t help anyway!”. It’s quite unfortunate that we have such a sensationalistic media that requires digging further to find out the truth. After reading the article, you will find out that all they provided to the study subjects was a margarine that had some omega-3 added.

My first issue with that is considering the vehicle for the omega-3: margarine. I doubt this test was using some of the worst variety of margarine with hydrogenated oils, but that doesn’t change that almost all margarines are made using vegetable oils that are quite high in omega-6 content. The entire purpose of taking supplemental omega-3 is to balance out the high level of omega-6 fatty acids present in the SAD, so you might be better off without the margarine at all. Secondly, the subjects were given nothing additional over and above the trivial amount in the margarine. Perhaps the article should have been titled “Laughably small amounts of omega-3 didn’t aid heart patients”, but that’s not quite as flashy. Hopefully when you take your daily fish oil at work, you won’t get some know-it-all coworker telling you how it’s useless. But in the case you do, at least you can tell them how they’re wrong.

WOD 08.30.10

Bench Press 3×5, 1×10-15

Then,

• 2 min – Double Unders
• 1 min – Rest
• 2 min – Box Jump (M: 24″, W: 20″)
• 1 min – Rest
• 2 min – Split Jerk (M: 75lbs, W: 55lbs)
• 1 min – Rest
• 2 min – Double Unders

courtesy CF Ventura