Is possibly what your Grandma used to give to you. It seems to have the reputation of being the most contaminated fish oil, Dr Sears thinks so at least, but apparently there are good quality sources around.1 Though cod liver oil does contain some EPA and DHA, it's not really what us Zoners are referring to when we talk about fish oil, instead they're the following oils taken from the muscles of certain dark fleshed fishes:
Is the commonest fish oil and typically contains 180mg of EPA and 120mg of DHA per 1 gram capsule. Some include a little vitamin E - enough to act as a preservative but not enough to be a supplement.
Is oil that has been through an extra cleansing process thus contains less impurities. It generally contains similar concentrations of EPA and DHA to health grade oil. "Molecularly distilled" or "undergoes distillation" should be somewhere on the label.
The Microgenics oil that I sell has been molecularly distilled.
Is oil concentrated and purified by an even more sophisticated distillation process and is the cleanest oil available. It typically contains at least 400mg of EPA and 200mg of DHA per 1 gram capsule. It's also available as a liquid.
It's more expensive than health grade oil, but as it's more concentrated we don't need as much. Both Dr Sears' OmegaRx oil and Blackmores' Omega Daily oil can be classed as pharmaceutical grade fish oils.
No procedure can remove 100% of the impurities from the oil extracted from fish flesh.2
All fish oil sold here in Australia must pass these guidelines set by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA):1
Whether those guidelines are strict enough I don't know? And of course risk increases with dosage.
The Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN) and the World Health Organization (WHO) set standards about 5 times stricter than our TGA.
Dr Sears has all his pharmaceutical grade oil tested by the Canadian company Nutrasource who have set up their own International Fish Oil Standards (IFOS) based on and improving on the CRN and WHO values, and their test results for each batch are available online here. If you want to know the batch number of the OmegaRx oil currently in stock at GZ please contact me.
Typical levels found in Dr Sears' oil are:
Blackmores' concentrated fish oils are sourced from the Norwegian company EPAX who also set themselves very high standards:
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