denyerec.co.uk

Yesterday I purchased a bottle of Sainsbury’s own brand cod liver oil. My lasting memory of the stuff from my childhood was a viscous yellowish oil that not only tasted outrageously fishy, but also coated your tongue and lips for hours and repeated on you for the rest of the day. (For the less eloquent of you out there, ‘Repeating on you’ is a posh and wordy way to say ‘Makes your burps stink’)
Anyway, the point is that this Sainsbury’s stuff (£1.29 for a large bottle compared to £4.59 for some stuff by Seven Seas) isn’t really that bad. Upon taking it it wasn’t *too* bad plus I’ve tried belching and it’s not particularly fishy. Either there have been advances in fish-oil refinery over the last 10-12 years or adults are not nearly as sensitive to the stuff as children are. I need to find a willing 12 year old kid and find out if fishoil tastes worse to kids.

Oh, about the conspiracy…

Fish oil is good for you. Really good. In fact so long as what you’re taking isn’t laced with vitamin A (Which is toxic in large quantities if I remember correctly…) you should have lots of it. Fish oil contains Omega3 things that not only make your coat shiney and healthy, but keep your teeth strong and reduce the number of trips to the vet you’ll have to take.
Now, you’ll most likely have seen the cod liver oil capsules on sale. They promise “1 a day” and that they don’t taste bad, have clove oil and all sorts in to stop the repeating (belching) thing. However… They only contain 500mg of the fishy goodness you’re taking them for, along with a 100% RDA dose of vitamin A. Please, compare this to the 4600mg of fishy goodness contained in a single teaspoon of neat cod liver oil. Then factor in that you usually get around 60 capsules for a fiver and there are 60 5ml servings in a £1.29 bottle of cod liver oil from Sainsburys. This means you’re paying 0.4p per gram of fish oil if you drink the stuff, but 16.6p per gram if you take it in capsule form.

Not only that, but to get from capsules what you’d get from the neat stuff would mean taking nearly 9 capsules a day which, if they’ve got vitamin supplements in, could be potentially dangerous not just to your health but to your wallet as well.

All numbers are approximate. I’m not a doctor. I don’t work for Sainsburys and I haven’t been paid to undermine the fishoil capsule industry.

I will report in a month about whether the numerous aches and ills that I currently indure have improved any.