You may disagree, but hear me out.  What you must be aware of when you are shopping for an omega-3 supplement is that fish oil price should not be the deciding factor in whether or not you buy a product.  Prices can vary wildly when it comes to supplements, and the most expensive brands are not always the ones that are of the highest quality.  Of course, you should not base your purchase on how much money you are saving on a product either.

As wildly as these supplements can vary in cost, they can also vary in purity, freshness, and bio-availability.  These are the important factors when it comes to buying omega-3 fatty acid products, because those formulas lacking in any of these departments are worse than not taking any supplements at all.  That your fish oil exceed industry standards in all three categories should be your focus.

Purity is far more important to you than fish oil price, because the fish from which these oils are extracted tend to accumulate high levels of toxic heavy metals, and chemical contaminants.  This is due to the fact that these predatory fish not only collect toxins from the water they live in, but they also store all of the toxins that the prey fish they feed upon have absorbed.  The higher up on the food chain a fish is the more toxic it will be.

Fish oil price does not reflect the levels of mercury, arsenic, cadmium, nickel, lead, furans, dioxins, chlordane, or PCBs that may be present, as some of the most expensive omega-3 fatty acid supplements tend to register the highest levels of toxicity.  These formulas are allowed on the market, because there is no real regulation when it comes to dietary supplements.  Limits are typically put on food containing these oils instead.

There is a group that calls themselves the International Fish Oil Standards, or IFOS.  They have set forth a set of standards showing what they believe to be an acceptable level for contamination in an omega-3 fatty acid product, but since they are a private organization and not a regulating body many of the companies regard these standards as merely a suggestion.

Regardless of fish oil price you need to make sure that the formula you are thinking of choosing has been through both a proprietary purification process, and molecular distillation.  The combination of these two purification methods will ensure that toxin levels are low enough that they cannot be measured.  Then, in order to ensure the bio-availability of the fish oil makes sure that the oil is present in both its natural triglyceride form and in an ethyl ester form for easy and effective absorbability.

In conclusion, in order to verify freshness the measurement of the peroxide value and the anisidine value are as low as possible, because the combinations of these two values give you total oxidation.  The lower the number the less chance that your oil will have formed harmful free radicals.  When all of the measures of purity, freshness, and bio-availability have been met; then and only then is fish oil price a consideration.

Laurel Cohen is a strong advocate of natural health in all its forms: skin care, supplementation, and farm fresh foods. She enjoys introducing people to the best natural products she can find and uses herself daily. Visit her site http://www.omega-3-for-health.com to learn about the omega 3 fish oils Laurel uses daily for optimal health.

Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/supplements-and-vitamins-articles/why-fish-oil-price-should-not-determine-your-choice-1476054.html

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Have you heard about the International Fish Oil Standard? If you’re looking for quality omega 3 supplements, you may have come across this organization. But do you need to worry about these so-called standards? What do they mean for you, the consumer?

The International Fish Oil Standard (IFOS) is an organization that rates fish oil products for purity.

Purity is assessed by measuring the levels of heavy metals, PCBs and dioxins. These toxic substances can be bad for your health, causing cancers and developmental problems, so it stands to reason that you need to be certain that the product you buy is free of them.

But despite this official-sounding name, the International Fish Oil Standard is a private organization that charges a fee for testing. If manufacturers pay the fee and meet the guidelines, they can call their products ‘pharmaceutical grade’, which refers to a product that has been highly refined to eliminate impurities and contaminants.

Unfortunately, there’s no globally recognized standard to define what pharmaceutical grade really means. Various organizations, including the IFOS, detail some standards that are really not very high so it’s actually a rather meaningless term.

What does this mean for you, the consumer, when you just want to make sure you get a supplement that’s free of contaminants?

It means that you will need to carefully examine the label of the product you want to buy to make sure the purity levels quoted are good enough. You can’t just rely on a statement that says that the product is ‘pharmaceutical grade’ or meets the International Fish Oil Standard, since we now know this is quite meaningless.

Here’s some hints about what to look for.

A quality supplement should state its purity level on its label in a Certificate of Analysis (COA). This certificate records the actual tested levels of different impurities and toxins.

The amount of impurities should be shown as parts per billion (ppb) and parts per trillion (ppt).

For example, the IFOS, the Council for Responsible Nutrition and the European Pharmacopoeia all allow up to 100 ppb of mercury in a fish oil supplement.

This is actually quite a high figure – it’s possible to find supplements that have less than 10 ppb of mercury.

So you can see that an omega 3 supplement that boasted that it was ‘pharmaceutical grade’ might have as much as 99 ppb of mercury!

Make no mistake about it – some marketers will push the International Fish Oil Standard as a measure of purity but you can easily find supplements that exceed the rather weak standards of this unofficial organization.

If you would like to know more about my research into omega 3, and get some information about supplements that exceed the International Fish Oil Standard, please visit my website today.

My name is Therese Samson and I promote natural approaches to health and well-being for the whole family at http://www.my-omega-3.com, where you’ll find out about the many ways omega 3 fish oil can improve heart, brain, skin and immune system health.

Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/supplements-and-vitamins-articles/what-is-the-international-fish-oil-standard-and-should-you-worry-about-it-1460270.html

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