The queen of fats

Eating too much fat is bad for you. But maybe it's the type of fat which makes a difference - saturated, unsaturated, polyunsaturated, and then there's good cholesterol and bad cholesterol. And now there's Ω₃ and Ω₆. If you find all of this confusing then you're not the only one. In The Queen of Fats: Why Omega-3s Were Removed from the Western Diet and What We Can Do to Replace Them Susan Allport helps to sort things out.

In Greenland in the 1960's it was realised that the Inuit, despite having a high fat diet, suffered far less from heart disease than people in most western countries. Research showed that their fish based diet was high in Omega-3 fats, and that this was likely to be the cause of their better health. This book follows the history of such research into Omega-3 fats, telling how they got their name, and why we are getting less than we should in our diets (Mainly because Omega-3 based foods tend to have a shorter shelf life than Omega-6 based foods). There is one chapter giving advice for your diet, and some readers might want a book with more advice and less history. I felt, however that the historical approach was useful in sorting out the confusion, and that Allport makes a persuasive case for giving a greater priority to getting the right level of Omega-3 in our diets.