From: "Steve Harris" <sbharris123@ix.netcom.com>
Newsgroups: sci.med.nutrition
Subject: Re: Flaxseed = Linseed???
Date: Tue, 7 Aug 2001 18:48:51 -0600

"Quentin Grady" <quentin@paradise.net.nz> wrote in message
news:hqc0ntkgmloudujda85uju263hkedvomp7@4ax.com...
> This post not CC'd by email
>  On 7 Aug 2001 10:40:20 -0700, peaton@pt.lu (Paul Eaton) wrote:
>
> >Any way I also found a health food store, they did not have similar
> >bottles of this stuff however they had Leinol capsules with the same
> >pretty blue flower my bottle has and the shop assistant did say it was
> >flax or more probably 'flach' when I asked her.
>
> The open blue flower is linseed.
> Flax of course has orange or yellow flowers that are often furled.


"Of course," your rear end! The two colors you won't ever find in flax
flowers are orange and yellow. Flax (Linium ssp) IS linseed. The fiber from
it is "linen" for that reason. Flowers are generally shades of blue, but
they go all the way in that spectrum from white to violet. Very occasionally
pink or red. Sometimes the SEEDS are yellow, but not the flowers.

From: "Steve Harris" <sbharris123@ix.netcom.com>
Newsgroups: sci.med.nutrition
Subject: Re: Flaxseed = Linseed???
Date: Wed, 8 Aug 2001 00:35:47 -0600

"Quentin Grady" <quentin@paradise.net.nz> wrote in message
news:7fe1nt0rnvdk00bj9oi5921n80mbql0tl6@4ax.com...
> This post not CC'd by email
>  On Tue, 7 Aug 2001 18:48:51 -0600, "Steve Harris"
> <sbharris123@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>
> >
> >"Quentin Grady" <quentin@paradise.net.nz> wrote in message
> >news:hqc0ntkgmloudujda85uju263hkedvomp7@4ax.com...
> >> This post not CC'd by email
> >>  On 7 Aug 2001 10:40:20 -0700, peaton@pt.lu (Paul Eaton) wrote:
> >>
> >> >Any way I also found a health food store, they did not have similar
> >> >bottles of this stuff however they had Leinol capsules with the same
> >> >pretty blue flower my bottle has and the shop assistant did say it was
> >> >flax or more probably 'flach' when I asked her.
> >>
> >> The open blue flower is linseed.
> >> Flax of course has orange or yellow flowers that are often furled.
> >
> >
> >"Of course," your rear end!
>
> G'day G'day Steve,
>
>   Guess you are the reason rear vision mirrors were invented.
> That way the rest of us are safe ... at least on the roads.
>
> >The two colors you won't ever find in flax flowers are orange and yellow.
>
> How interesting.  Perhaps you are not acquainted with New Zealand
> flax.  Flax as we know it is quite unrelated to linseed.  In New
> Zealand both are grown.


Sigh. No, I didn't know about the Phormium spp which is not the true flax,
but which New Zealanders persist in calling "New Zealand Flax".  A web
search has now informed me of this Southern perversion in nomenclature.
However, since this thing is not a source of linseed oil or any oil, I'm at
a loss as to why you bring it up in this discussion. Thanks for the
confusion. Weave yourself a basket.

SBH

From: "Steve Harris" <sbharris@ix.RETICULATEDOBJECTcom.com>
Newsgroups: sci.med.nutrition,sci.med,sci.chem,sci.physics
Subject: Oxidation/polymerization of polyunsaturates (was Re: alpha lipoic acid 
	eliminates wrinkles?)
Date: Wed, 6 Mar 2002 13:30:35 -0800
Message-ID: <a661o8$bo8$1@slb3.atl.mindspring.net>

DB wrote in message ...

>I wonder if 4-8 grams is enough. A tablespoon of flax oil weighs around 14
>grams. Just make sure it is properly preserved. It is much more susceptable
>to peroxidation than normal oils.


Yep. I have this picture of people applying enough flax oil (paint thinner)
to their faces to give themselves a permanent lacquer-job, and come out
looking like Goldie Hawn and Meril Streep in _Death Becomes Her_.

This free-radical driven cross-linking and oxidation reaction in linseed oil
is what drives the "drying" of oil based paints (and what starts spontaneous
fires in thinner-soaked rags). It's a very interesting reaction, as the
polymer finish which is left is very tough and impermiant.  One of the few
things that mummies have in common besides being jerked by a lot of
salt-packing, is in being lacquered by linseed oil painting afterwards.

The only stuff I know of that oxidizes and polymerizes in this way faster
than alpha linolenic acid, is docosahexaenoic  acid, (DHA) the major lipid
in brains. If you ever wondered at why the Eskimos tanned and preserved
hides by pounding brains into the raw skin sides, now you know. It's
basically a super lacquer, and it dries into a polymer which keeps oxygen
out in much the same way as for painted walls and mummies. Same mechanism.

Steve

From: "Steve Harris" <sbharris@ix.RETICULATEDOBJECTcom.com>
Newsgroups: misc.fitness.weights,sci.med.nutrition,
	alt.animals.ethics.vegetarian
Subject: Re: News: Sizing up omega-3
Date: Thu, 9 May 2002 13:56:09 -0600
Message-ID: <abekdt$5s1$1@slb7.atl.mindspring.net>

"Lotus" <lilweed@esatclear.ie> wrote in message
news:3CDACF91.26E68A76@esatclear.ie...
> Isn't Omega-3, like other essential fatty acids, destroyed by heat,
> i.e cooking, anyway?

It's rapidly oxidized at high temps, and even at room temp (oil based paint
"drying" is the omega 3 linseed crosslinking).

Usually this isn't a problem, since high omega-3 oils have so much ALA in
them that the loss doesn't matter-- though people do wonder what the
breakdown products do (nobody knows-- probably nothing or all the broiled
fish eaters would be long dead). Nobody fries in linseed oil because the
breakdown products taste terrible. They do fry in unhydrogenated canola
which is about 10% ALA, and doubtless bad things happen to that ALA in the
process.  I don't think it's a good idea, but can't give you any solid
scientific evidence not to.

SBH

From: "Steve Harris" <sbharris@ix.RETICULATEDOBJECTcom.com>
Newsgroups: sci.med.nutrition
Subject: Re: Too much fat in flaxseed oil?
Date: Thu, 23 May 2002 16:31:41 -0700
Message-ID: <acju6j$ivf$1@slb3.atl.mindspring.net>

Michael Roose wrote in message ...
>On Thu, 23 May 2002 15:47:57 -0700, "Steve Harris"
><sbharris@ix.RETICULATEDOBJECTcom.com> wrote:
>
>|It's a non-issue, inasmuch as you're only supposed to be taking a teaspoon
>|or two a day of it (which is all it takes to give you your needed ALA and
>|more).
>
>Steve, the "common" interpretation of flax supps is 14g daily.  You
>are saying 1/2 to 1/3rd as much.  This would reduce the sat fat even
>more so tell me it's so, Joe!


I don't care what the common interpretation is.  Flax oil is 57% or so ALA
by weight, so a teaspoon (5 mL or 4.3 g) will give you around 2.7 grams ALA.
Your daily requirement is about 1 gram, so 2.7 times this ought to be more
than enough to satisfy your n-3 nutritional needs.

--
I welcome email from any being clever enough to fix my address. It's open
book.  A prize to the first spambot that passes my Turing test.

From: Matti Narkia <mnng@surfeu.fi>
Newsgroups: sci.med.nutrition
Subject: Re: Too much fat in flaxseed oil?
Date: Fri, 24 May 2002 03:26:49 +0300
Message-ID: <8p0reucp3bf3msob4lnf713dpsln7di9gm@4ax.com>

Thu, 23 May 2002 16:31:41 -0700 in article
<acju6j$ivf$1@slb3.atl.mindspring.net> "Steve Harris"
<sbharris@ix.RETICULATEDOBJECTcom.com> wrote:
>
>I don't care what the common interpretation is.  Flax oil is 57% or so ALA
>by weight, so a teaspoon (5 mL or 4.3 g) will give you around 2.7 grams ALA.
>Your daily requirement is about 1 gram, so 2.7 times this ought to be more
>than enough to satisfy your n-3 nutritional needs.

Who says that daily requirement of ALA is about 1 gram? I'm not saying that it
isn't, but I'm interested in the source. It may well be enough, if EPA and DHA
intake is not relying solely on conversion from ALA, but there are also some
direct dietary sources for EPA and DHA. I think that the optimal daily intake
of EPA and DHA is not known, but on the web page

PUFA Newsletter
Vol. 3 - No. 2 - June 1999 - Polyunsaturated Fatty Acids in Nutrition and
Disease Prevention
http://www.medev.ch/pufa/pufa9906.htm

there is the article

Workshop on the Essentiality of and Recommended Dietary Intakes for
Omega-6 and Omega-3 Fatty Acids
Artemis P. Simopoulos, MD, Alexander Leaf, MD, Norman Salem, Jr, PhD

where a working group tries to estimate adequate daily intakes for fatty acids.
I borrow the following table from there:

Table 1. Adequate Intakes (AI)* for Adults

Fatty Acid 		Grams/day (2000 kcal diet)   	    % Energy
LA 				4.44 				2.0
(Upper limit)¹ 			6.67 				3.0
LNA 				2.22 				1.0
DHA + EPA			0.65 				0.3
DHA to be at least² 		0.22 				0.1
EPA to be at least 		0.22 				0.1
TRANS-FA (Upper limit) ³ 	2.00 				1.0
SAT (Upper limit)  		-- 				<8.0
MONOs  				--

The Working Group also recommended that the majority of fatty acids are
obtained from monounsaturates.

The abstract of the study

Gerster H.
Can adults adequately convert alpha-linolenic acid (18:3n-3) to
eicosapentaenoic acid (20:5n-3) and docosahexaenoic acid (22:6n-3)?
Int J Vitam Nutr Res. 1998;68(3):159-73. Review
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_

writes: "The use of ALA labelled with radioisotopes suggested that with a
background diet high in saturated fat conversion to long-chain metabolites is
approximately 6% for EPA and 3.8% for DHA. With a diet rich in n-6 PUFA,
conversion is reduced by 40 to 50%."

So it's obvious that 1 g of ALA will not satisfy the 0.65 g estimated adequate
intake of DHA+EPA.




         -Matti Narkia

From: "Steve Harris" <sbharris@ix.RETICULATEDOBJECTcom.com>
Newsgroups: sci.med.nutrition
Subject: Re: Too much fat in flaxseed oil?
Date: Fri, 24 May 2002 18:50:05 -0700
Message-ID: <acmqmf$igi$1@slb3.atl.mindspring.net>

wuzzy wrote in message ...
>Why do you need flax to satisfy ALA needs?
>Mayonnaise is a bigger source of ALA in american diet.. As long as
>you're eating mayonnaise or any other of the major non-olive oils you
>should be okay for plant n3-s, no?  Also you need alot of fat per day
>to match 1 serving of fish per week..
>
>-wuzzy


Comment:


This turns out to be a tough question. My earlier estimate of 1 g of ALA
needed per day is per recommendations of nutrition texts to prevent fatty
acid deficiency in hyperal patients, and it turns out to be less than recent
"adequate daily intake" recommendations (not USDA official in any sense)
that ALA intakes be at least 2 grams a day. My problem with the latter is
that this recommendation if true means that most Americans still get less
than the "adequate intake", since the American ALA intake now stands at a
mean of 1.6 g a day, and even that's following a big increase in ALA due to
better penetration of unhydrogenated Canola (about 10% ALA) into American
markets in the 90's.

So can you get enough ALA by eating mayonnaise?  That depends. Most
Americans don't, if you believe Matti's sources. On the other hand, America
is not a country of people with dry flaky skins of the sort that you get
with clear fatty acid deficiency either.

For the  longer chain n-3's EPA and DHA which can be made in limited amounts
from ALA, the question of how much is enough, is even harder. Matti's source
suggests that the conversion is less than 10%, which means that in order to
get your 0.4 g of EPA and DHA a day you're going to need 4 g of ALA a day,
if plant sources are all you go on.  Hardly anybody but the Canola salad oil
fiends and the flax/linseed supplementers get that much ALA.

American intakes for EPA and DHA are in the range of 0.1 to 0.2 g a day, so
again most of the country doesn't get enough if you believe the most recent
"adequate intake" recommendations, even if you add this to ALA conversion.
You can make up the difference by eating fish just once a week, but there
are a lot of Americans who never eat fish at all (you either like it or you
don't), so I'm sure EPA/DHA intake is a real bimodally distributed thing.
It's NOT like everybody eats fish on Fridays.  Probably Americans would be
healthier if they did, but that's not the way nutrition works.  These things
are calculated from average food disappearances at stores, and a big eater
of fish and nuts like myself probably statistically skews my whole
neighborhood.

A teaspoon of flax is 2.7 g of ALA, or you can go with about 4 times that
much Canola. If you can't stand fish and never eat it at all, nor any
fishoil supplements, then Matti's numbers suggest you had better double this
ALA intake, which would require 2 teaspoons flax or maybe 3 TABLEspoons of
Canola (starting to get into significant calories there for Canola, but
still not for flax/linseed). At these intakes, whatever you get from other
sources, unless you have a quite unusual diet, is probably nearly
irrelevant.

SBH


--
I welcome email from any being clever enough to fix my address. It's open
book.  A prize to the first spambot that passes my Turing test.