You may have seen the above headline; I’ve seen it over and over again.
While I hate to even dignify this with my time, it appears that there is now enough money and desire for “something new” in the Omega 3 market that even krill oil, which up until recently had been completely ignored for years, has become a minor player in the Omega 3 marketplace.
Here is how it started.
Schiff Vitamin Company, a company with a big budget, released a krill-based supplement and made the claim it was 3x better than fish oil.
Here is what happened to them.
They were asked to modify or discontinue certain advertising and label claims for their Krill Oil dietary supplement, following an inquiry by the National Advertising Division (NAD) of the Council of Better Business Bureaus. The Council for Responsible Nutrition filed a challenge, which led to the NAD requesting proof and substantiation for certain claims related to heart health effects and efficacy compared to fish oil.
Please note this was heart health benefits only, not all the other benefits. But with a 3x better headline you think it means everything.
And what about those heart benefits?
Well the NAD determined the information did not provide a basis for making unqualified superiority claims for CRP* levels as the best marker for assessing heart health. As such, NAD recommended the company discontinue comparative health and dosage claims between its krill oil and fish oil, and modify claims related to krill oil’s impact on cholesterol levels.
In other words there was no basis for these claims and they needed to stop using them in their advertising.
Yet other people who are marketing Krill must not have gotten the message because occasionally my customers send me the very same false claim as a headline used by yet another health care professional who is selling it.
To those professionals all I can say is, “there is a price to pay for letting copywriters write your articles! And there is a price to pay in the trust of your readers who know better!”
I will not spend any more time addressing Krill and I will refer anyone who asks to this blog.
Just remember this: the success of any Omega 3 is based on the already proven success of fish oil. Without the years of trials and gradual grudging acceptance of fish oil as a necessary and valid dietary adjunct none of these other products would even be on the map.
Here is what I find very gratifying about the whole situation.
In the past year or so every medical conference I have attended has mentioned fish oil in a very positive light. Krill, Salba, Chia, lyprinol and even flax have not even been mentioned (of course because they are all so good and revolutionary, modern anti-aging medicine just hasn’t caught on yet, right!).
Seven years ago when Dr. Dave’s Best had only fish oil to sell I was told by my medical director that I needed psychiatric help for making, backing and taking a natural supplement and expecting and believing that it would do any good at all. My own former friends looked at me funny and shook their heads. Now they are all on fish oil!
My, how times have changed.
Doc
* Regarding CRP levels: CRP levels remain a valuable predictor of heart disease but as a SINGLE agent they are not considered useful yet by clinicians. While they are occasionally reported as an independent risk factor for heart disease, these terms can be deceiving even to doctors. Any independent risk factor is worth improving if it is high but it does not mean that fixing it will save you from a heart attack because there are many independent risk factors including: bodyweight, body fat, stress levels, other inflammatory/nutritional markers including blood sugar, TNF, IL-6, homocysteine levels, cholesterol good and bad EPA/DHA levels (fish oil levels in the blood cells), patient symptomatology and family history, smoking and so on and so forth.
Doctors and scientist continue to look for the “magic marker” for heart disease so they can make simple and easy decisions in a 5 minute office visit. The human body and human health continue to resist becoming an assembly line process!
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Hmm you may be right Krill will be 3 times better that fish oil but i would like to say some of benefits of fish oil that - At first, most people were wary of fish oil, especially veggies. But with the addition of a flavour(mostly lemon), fish oil is gaining in popularity everywhere. Fish oil can now be taken as a regular health supplement. It acts as a wonderful drug in the field of coronary heart diseases. Blood pressure is normalized and cholesterol and triglycerides are reduced to healthy levels. Pregnant women can safely take fish oil as it increases the mental growth of the unborn child. It further promotes the motor skills and coordinates the mental activity of a toddler.
Besides heart disease, fish oil works well in arthritis, especially the osteo one. Alzheimer’s disease has also been retarded as a direct effect of fish oil. Cancer too has received encouraging information with the administration of fish oil. Same is the case with gout. In fact, fish oil benefits can affect you from head to toe. Age is also not a barrier.
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