Greetings, it's Eric Bakker, Naturopath from New Zealand. How you all going?
I'm the naturopath from New Zealand. Thanks for checking out my channel.
Isn't krill a superior source of omega-3 than the Alaskan pollock fish? So krill is something
I've been looking at now for a long time. I got excited with krill when I first saw Dr.
Joseph Mercola marketing krill, I think it was back in the '90s.
And I looked into it and I thought, "Wow, this looks pretty cool,"
but I've always been skeptical and suspicious of these kinds of new fandangled omega-3 supplements.
Krill has only been really fished and used on humans for a few years, so we don't really know
what the long-term health effects are on it at all. We do know,
however, looking at the deep sea cold water fish species like cod and pollock, for example,
which have been studied now for 50-plus years. I mean, we know the health benefits from the high
DHA and EPA from that. So I'm sticking with fish. The other reason, the main reason I've kept away
from krill is because I discovered some things that got me quite upset because I like sea life.
I like all kinds of creatures, but some of the whales, I think it's the humpback whale
relies almost exclusively on Antarctic krill for its food. Right?
I found this interesting report online,
a scientist called Dr. Carly Holyoake from the Murdoch University in Australia.
She said, "There's an active krill industry in the Antarctic waters that the whales feed
in and that there's little to no research in these areas was currently undertaken regarding
the increasing stranding of malnourished whales and the shrinking krill population."
So what Dr. Holyoake did was take many fat samples from all these dead whales that she found,
all these malnourished female whales that were pregnant. And she found they just weren't getting
the krill that they normally get, but she did point out it was due to overfishing and
probably also global warming. So for that reason, I wouldn't touch krill because I think we should
leave it in the oceans for the whales to feed on. The whales don't feed on the Alaskan pollock. All
right? So Alaskan pollock is not that important in the food chain in terms of the pelagic species,
nowhere near as important as the krill is, and it's predominantly harvested in the Antarctic.
And it's really sad because we're taking food away from creatures that are becoming malnourished.
So both krill and omega do contain EPA and DHA. While krill oil may have benefits,
the research points out it's better to rely on omega-3 sources that have received a much greater
deal of scientific scrutiny. And that's the fish omega-3. Okay? So if you look at Alaskan pollock
fishery in United States, it's apparently one of the largest, most well-managed fisheries on
earth. It's been going a long, long time and it will be fished for many, many more years to come.
Living in icy cold, pristine waters of the Bering Sea, the Alaskan pollock are a premium
and sustainable natural source of high-grade and clean protein as well as the omega-3 fatty acids.
While the Alaskan pollock is now widely regarded as one of the healthiest natural
sources of fish protein in the world and in a very low risk category for
any environmental toxins like mercury or pesticides, so that the stocks are not
over-fished and the spawning mass targets are above level for all three fish stocks.
So yeah, the other thing I always recommend people to do is, of course,
to consume alpha linoleic acid, which is the starting point for DHA and EPA. You can convert
ALA into EPA and DHA, but it's not nowhere near as good as consuming the fish oil direct. So that's
why I don't like krill, all right, for a couple of reasons. We haven't researched it thoroughly
enough. We don't really know exactly what's going to happen in 50 years from now people.
And also it's the food chain thing I don't like. Thanks for tuning in.