Encouraging Health

Yes, eating omega-3-rich fish is a great way to reduce your risk of stroke. But not if you order the Friday fish fry!

In fact, eating fried fish actually raises your risk of stroke. So ask the kitchen for broiled or baked — and no butter. You’ll be glad you did, for these two reasons.

Tipping the Scales
One, fried foods are typically high in trans fats. The other reason to steer clear of the fryer? Fried fish can skew the balance of omega-6 and omega-3 fats in your diet — and that’s not good.

Omega 3 and Omega 6 fatty acids
Although most foods contain a combination of the different types of fatty acids, it is helpful to know which foods are good sources of certain types of fat in order to include them in your diet.

Foods high in Omega 3 include:
flax seeds
English walnuts
cold-water fish (salmon, herring, mackerel)
sardines

Foods high in Omega 6 include:
sunflower seeds
vegetable oils (corn, sunflower, sesame, soybean, safflower)
margarine
pumpkin seeds

Fish Favorites
For high-omega-3, low-mercury fish, choose baked or broiled salmon, trout, or pollock, or try herring or sardines.

For most people, the healthy fats in fish provide a huge benefit to your heart and overall health — even with a little mercury. Skeptical? Get this: Eating one to two 6-ounce servings of omega-3-rich fish each week reduces your risk of dying from heart disease by 36 percent! And your all-cause mortality rate drops by 17 percent.

Unfortunately, most fish contain some mercury, thanks to industrial processing. But the less time fish spend simply living in a mercury-laden environment or eating other fish containing mercury, the lower the contamination levels will be. So for low-mercury fish, we’re talking small fish that don’t eat many other fish (or fish meal) and don’t have a long life span. Here are five good choices:

1. Salmon (wild): 1 gram of omega-3 fatty acids per 2 ounces of fish;* 0.014 parts per million mercury concentration
2. Herring: 1 gram of omega-3 fatty acids per 1 ounce of fish;* 0.044 parts per million mercury concentration
3. Sardines: 1 gram of omega-3 fatty acids per 2-3 ounces of fish;* 0.016 parts per million mercury concentration
4. Trout (freshwater): 1 gram of omega-3 fatty acids per 3-4 ounces of fish;* 0.072 parts per million mercury concentration
5. Pollock: 1 gram of omega-3 fatty acids per 6.5 ounces of fish;* 0.041 parts per million mercury concentration

For more articles on Omega-3 and Omega-6 fats, browse Encouraging Health.