4 replies to this topic

[SeekingSerenity]

Do you or anyone you know use it? If so, what do you think of it? How does it compare to other fish oils that you've used?

As of 2014, I know of only one company that makes it.

[JamesNV]

I like it. I've been taking it semi-regularily (and skate liver oil by the same company) for a few years now. It tastes like crap, but that doesn't really bother me. Most important to me is that it's for our kids. We put this in their smoothy every morning (along with a single drop of Thorne Vitamin K2 MK4.)

I like the fact that our kids are getting vitamins a & d from a natural source. It's a food, so it has all kinds of compounds and vitamin variants, many of which remain unstudied. So it's a whole food, not some discreet synthesized chemical compound.

Does this make it a more effective product? At the end of the day I simply don't know. But I like the company, I like their approach and I'm happy to support them. And because it's a food I feel totally safe feeding it to our kids. We are going to re-introduce spirulina into their smoothies soon.

[niner]

What happens when cod liver oil is fermented? Is the oil exposed to oxygen during this process? My main concern is with oxidation of the highly unsaturated fatty acids. I don't see how calling it a food makes it safe for children. That's really determined by what is in the fermented CLO, and I'm not sure we know what that is.

[timar]

It's the Weston A. Price variety of snake oil.

I would avoid it. First for the risk of oxidation, as niner pointed out, second for the same reason I would avoid any kind of cod liver oil: vitamin A toxicity. Vitamin A is a weak vitamin D receptor antagtonist and there is known toxicity from doses of preformed retinol you can easily ingest from an ordinary amount of cod liver oil. See this article.from the vitamin D council.

[JamesNV]

No, simply calling it a food does not automatically make it safe. However, I see no harm in a little bit of cod liver oil, prepared the old fashioned way (or as close to it as possible).

As for oxidization:
http://www.greenpast...peroxide-value/

My understanding is that many oils are stripped of their nutrients, then synthetic vitamins are re-added. Regarding vitamin a toxicity, from their site: "The main Vitamin A in Real FCLO is Palmitate form not retinol."

Anyways, I recommend further research on this particular brand of oil, especially before trashing it publicly. But good fodder for discussion I suppose.