Not to be confused with Intelligent Design. This has to be one of the most entertaining and informative articles I have read in a while.

My only complaint is that the title could have been a tad more clever. “The Government’s Big Fish Story” just doesn’t have the same ring as “The Government’s Fishy Story”, for example. Leave it to the British press to have a more refined sense of humor.

Anyway, here is a good example of the issue(s) at hand:

So far, the Food and Drug Administration has issued only a tepid statement that “supportive but not conclusive research” indicates that DHA and EPA are good for your heart. And the Food and Nutrition Board—the scientific panel that, funded mostly by federal money, creates Daily Recommended Intakes (DRI) for essential nutrients—has shrugged off the issue altogether. It crowned ALA essential, but ignored DHA and EPA. “We didn’t feel the data were sufficient,” says Linda Meyers, Ph.D., director of the board. It’s precisely the sort of comment that leaves omega-3 researchers flabbergasted.

“They’re in the Dark Ages,” says Bill Lands, Ph.D., a retired National Institutes of Health (NIH) biochemist who has written extensively about omega-3s and is widely considered the field’s elder statesman. “The science was very clear 15 years ago. But they’re not interested in science. All they’re interested in doing is preserving the status quo, when they could be saving lives.”

We all know the FDA is a bunch of loonies. They have banned Vegemite on a stupid technicality, while using another technicality to allow harmful color additives into widespread use in America. It seems like they are in the pocket of big industry to the point where they would only approve Omega-3 if it was associated somehow with a giant government lobby group. Apparently no such lobby group exists, and thus the topic is “lacking data” (e.g. campaign contributions) and has become “controversial” (e.g. open for bidding).

But wait, there is more to the story than just the health and welfare conspiracy theory. Evolution, speaking of controversy, is also up for discussion.

I stare down at the fish lying on the laboratory countertop. It stares back with one dead eye. Hours ago it was swimming in the Chesapeake Bay with 2 million of its brethren; tomorrow they’ll all be squashed in a giant screw press to make 10,000 gallons of oil destined for fish-oil capsules and omega-3 fortified foods.

[…]

Bony, oily, and without much meat, the menhaden isn’t even considered edible by most people. And yet, hidden inside is a substance that some anthropologists claim was critical to our very evolution; without it, they say, we’d still have brains like chimps’.

Ask most scientists and they’ll tell you that Stone Age man evolved on the African savannas, developing his big, complex brain as a result of all the animals he’d hunt and eat. But most scientists would be wrong, according to Michael Crawford, Ph.D., who, along with researchers from the USDA, conducted a 2002 study challenging the prevailing theory, which he calls “a load of rubbish.”

Uh, oh. I hear the footsteps of angry fundamentalist religious leaders coming to dispute the notion that man has evolved. Perhaps the Catholics will be the least vigilant as this story might have the side effect of driving people to return to Friday fish services.

On to the next issue (could you see this one coming?), it seems the pharmaceutical and agriculture industries also have a hand in all this:

Changing agricultural techniques have worsened the situation. The natural omega-3 contents of meat, milk, and eggs have plummeted now that our livestock no longer graze on ALA-rich grass, instead consuming corn, wheat, and other grains that are loaded with another group of fatty acids, called omega-6s. In fact, the disappearance of omega-3s from our diets has coincided with an upsurge in omega-6s, mainly in the form of cereals, grains, and processed foods made with hydrogenated oils. Dr. Simopoulos estimates that in caveman days, we ate an equal amount of the two types, but that the average American now eats 16 times more omega-6s than omega-3s.

“That’s what’s really killing us,” says Lands. “The balance of 6 and 3 got out of whack.” These two types of fatty acids have a biochemical yin-and-yang relationship: While omega-3s reduce our body’s inflammation response, omega-6s encourage it. Each fatty acid is crucial: For example, if your inflammatory response is too weak, you won’t be able to fight infection properly. And in theory, the push and pull should create perfect balance. Instead, the excess of omega-6s in our diets may have left us in a perpetual state of inflammation.

“The reason you take ibuprofen and Celebrex and all those nonsteroidals is to prevent the manufacture of these inflammation molecules in the first place,” says Joseph Hibbeln, M.D., a neuroscientist with the NIH. “The mental picture I have is of the Dutch boy with his finger in the dike, where the finger is expensive pharmacology, and the flood is omega-6s.”

Great stuff. Security, food, history…all rolled into one. And they did not even get to the part where the solution, more fish or equivalent natural sources of oil, are threatened by environmental abuse. Instead they give hope that “molecularly distilled” versions may provide a safe future for the food industry.