The Return of ω3 Fatty Acids into the Food Supply I. Land-Based Animal Food Products and Their Health Effects

Abstract

The papers presented and the discussions that took place the last two days of the conference indicate that 'nutrition has come a long way' and that old nutritional concepts are in great need of evaluation and revision. I shall touch on two of them: (1) rethinking dietary recommendations by taking into consideration genetic variation, and (2) redefining food safety to include nutrient structure and food composition along with contaminants such as protozoa, viruses, bacteria, toxins, etc. In the years past, recommended daily allowances (RDA) represented the amounts that are sufficient for healthy persons. The RDA has been superseded by the dietary reference values that are also designed for the majority of people. As such, the dietary reference values do not cover groups within the population with metabolic or genetic abnormalities or disorders; 'consumers with special needs' as they were called by Scriver [1]. Advances in genetics and molecular biology have made it possible to carry out studies on genetic variants or polymorphisms in populations and their relationship to disease. Such studies have shown significant differences in frequencies of genetic variants. A good example is the variant apolipoprotein E4 (apoE4) involved in cholesterol absorption and metabolism [2]. The effect of the apoE phenotype on diet-induced lowering of plasma LDL cholesterol has been extensively studied. In general, the data indicate that apoE phenotype modulates the LDL-cholesterol-lowering response to diet and that male subjects carrying the apoE4 allele are the most responsive to a low-fat diet. Genetic variation at the apoE locus results from three common alleles in the population-E4, E3 and E2. Population studies have shown that plasma cholesterol , LDL cholesterol, and apoB are highest in subjects carrying the apoE4 isoform, intermediate in those with the apoE3 isoform, and lowest in those with