The Queen of Fats: Why Omega-3s Were Removed from the Western Diet and What We Can Do to Replace Them

3. HOW THE OMEGAS GOT THEIR NAME

THREE HOW THE OMEGAS GOT THEIR NAME I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. REVELATION 1:8, 21:6 WHAT JØRN DYERBERG AND RALPH HOLMAN DID NOT DISCUSS, AS far as either of them can remember, was Holman’s work over the past three decades, work that revealed the competition between fatty acids such as arachidonic acid and eicosapentaenoic acid for enzymes and for coveted spots in the membranes of cells. This discussion would have put Dyerberg and Bang’s unusual findings about Eskimos into a broader context and might even have led to an earlier understanding of the role of omega-3s in healthy diets. Holman showed Dyerberg around the Hormel Institute where he worked (it is somewhat ironic that the most important work on unsaturated fatty acids was funded by the company that makes the highly saturated meat product Spam). But for some reason, perhaps because Dyerberg was already overloaded with new information, they did not talk about this competition, or about how Holman and his graduate students had deduced this metabolic rivalry, painstakingly and brilliantly, from feeding experiments in rats. Eating fish helps prevent heart disease. That was the medical advice that emerged out of Dyerberg and Bang’s trips to Green25 land. But the effectiveness of fish depends very much, as an understanding of Holman’s work would have made clear, on what other fats are hanging around the body. Will the fats in fish have a chance to become the building materials and messengers of cells? Or will they be swamped, outnumbered and overwhelmed by different kinds of fats? Dyerberg left Holman’s lab with standards for both eicosapentaenoic acid and DHA, two fats that are more abundant in the blood of heart-healthy Eskimos than in that of Danes. But he didn’t go home with an appreciation that “the metabolism of unsaturated acids is influenced by the concentrations and kinds of other fatty acids present in the diet and in the metabolic pool,” as Holman wrote in 1964. Or that “the concept of balanced diet must include a consideration of balanced concentrations of the several polyunsaturated, monounsaturated and saturated fatty acids.” His lack of appreciation isn’t altogether surprising, since most physicians have yet to grasp this important concept. The nutritional guidelines of the United States Department of Agriculture don’t mention it in their most recent dietary recommendations. Instead, one after another of the fats in the food supply has been vilified (saturated and animal fats in the 1960s, tropical oils in the 1980s, trans fats in the 1990s), until the public has become so confused , disbelieving, and rebellious that it now indulges in all fats. We could have spared ourselves a lot of trouble and heartache (as well as other heart problems) if we had incorporated Holman’s findings earlier on. But to do so might have required that we learn some fairly complicated things about fats. And it is probably true, as Alexis de Tocqueville once remarked, that Americans prefer a simple lie to a complex truth. Ralph Holman, the son of a streetcar driver in Minneapolis and the grandson, on both sides, of Swedish immigrants to Upsala, 26 HOW THE OMEGAS GOT THEIR NAME Minnesota, has spent most of his life thinking about fats. His interest in the subject began in 1943, when his first thesis project, a study of sugar metabolism, was derailed by the Second World War and the beginnings of the Manhattan Project. This covert operation corralled many of the scientists who were experienced in working with radioactive materials, including a member of the University of Minnesota’s Department of Physics. Suddenly—in fact, overnight—Holman was left without a source of radioactive glucose, a key ingredient of his studies. Exempted from war duty himself because he was teaching physicians and nurses at the University of Minnesota and because he was underweight for his height (when he tried to enlist, he was told to come back after gaining 40 pounds), Holman went to his thesis advisor, George Burr, for a new project; and Burr suggested that he try his hand at fats. Fats had always been a research interest of Burr’s, the one for which he is best remembered, but he had been forced to put them on the back burner for want of the right techniques with which to isolate and study them. More than a...