Take a ‘Krill’ Pill

From olive oil to coconut oil, fish oil to primrose oil, there’s no shortage of oils health nuts can go to for optimum nutrition.  And there’s no shortage of information you can find on this Web site for nutritional education.

But in a recent search of mine for past articles I’ve written on oils, I was somewhat chagrined to find that one of the more healthful oils—krill oil—was not listed among them.
That’s all about to change.

Before we get into what makes krill oil so good for our bodies, let’s first discuss what krill even are.

If you’re at all interested in marine biology, you probably already know what krill are, but for people new to the natural health scene, krill are crustaceans that look almost identical to shrimp.  From seals to squid, they serve as food fare for just about every sea-loving creature, even of the human variety (krill are considered a delicacy in Japan).

Aside from the nutrition krill provides to whales—which eat an estimated 85 million tons of krill per year—they provide tremendous nutrition to humans as well, but more in the supplement form than the food form.  Sure, krill can be eaten as-is, but what makes these crustaceans particularly pleasing is the oil they produce.

Krill are composed almost entirely of omega-3 fatty acids, primarily DHA and EPA.  It’s not just that they are high in omega-3s that makes them so worthwhile, but the structure of those omega-3s.  Because they’re in a phospholipids structure in krill, they’re more readily absorbed by the body than omega-3s are in fish oil.

You don’t have to take my word for it, though; nor the word of Dr. Mercola, who’s a huge advocate of krill oil.

Take science’s word for it.

In a recent study published in the journal Nutrition Research, researchers from Provident Clinical Research provided approximately 80 obese men and women with one of three supplements:  a fish oil supplement, a krill oil supplement or an olive oil supplement.  All of the supplements were in capsule form and were two grams worth of the oil.

At the end of the four-week trial and after taking blood samples, they found that those who took the krill oil had absorbed more DHA and EPA compared to the others.

Writing in Nutrition Research, lead author Kevin Maki reports, “These results suggest that the EPA and DHA from krill oil are absorbed at least as well as that from [fish] oil.”

Krill oil is fairly new to the nutrition scene, but it’s gaining in popularity each and every day.  Expect sales to really jump with this latest news.  That won’t come as good news for environmentalists, though.

Environmentalists fear that all this krill harvesting will devastate marine life, that our using krill for nutritional/supplemental purposes is robbing whales of an important resource.  But as organizations like the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Sources has found, past declines in krill catches has been due to economic factors, not a diminishing krill crop.

And as Dr. Mercola points out in a past column of his, the krill collected for human nutrition is a pittance of what’s consumed annually by whales and other sea life.  Just 12 percent of all krill catches is used for human consumption, one percent of that is used for krill oil supplements.  In other words, there’s plenty of fish in the sea for all of us.

Sources
articles.mercola.com
nutraingredients.com
en.wikipedia.org