On the shelf, two bottles say the same thing on the front: 1000 mg Omega-3<\/b>. One costs 40 lei, the other 180. The difference is not necessarily marketing. Often they are simply two different products, and the answer is on the back, in small print.<\/p>\n
Below are seven things to check, in the order that actually matters.<\/p>\n
This is the most common confusion, and it is easy to see why. \u201c1000 mg fish oil\u201d means there is a gram of oil in the capsule. It does not mean you get a gram of Omega-3, and even less a gram of DHA or EPA.<\/p>\n
An ordinary, unconcentrated fish oil is somewhere around 30% Omega-3 fatty acids<\/b>. That is, of the 1000 mg of oil, roughly 300 mg are EPA plus DHA. The rest are other fatty acids.<\/p>\n
The numbers you are looking for are EPA<\/b> and DHA<\/b>, stated separately, in milligrams. If the label does not declare them separately, you already have an answer about the product.<\/p>\n2. The \u201cof which\u201d line in the nutrition table<\/h3>\n
Turn the bottle around and look for the table. It should look roughly like this:<\/p>\n
This structure, with \u201cof which\u201d, is how the contents of the oil are correctly declared. When it is missing, or when only a vague \u201cOmega-3\u201d total appears without a breakdown, you have no way of comparing two products.<\/p>\n
This is where most people get lost. A product may proudly display 600 mg DHA<\/b>, but with an asterisk: for three<\/i> capsules. Another displays 300 mg for one.<\/p>\n
To compare honestly, bring everything to the same unit: how much DHA you get per day<\/b>, at the dose the product recommends. And then ask yourself how many capsules you are willing to take daily, because the difference between two and six is felt after a month.<\/p>\n4. What it actually costs you per milligram<\/h3>\n
The price per bottle tells you nothing if the bottles do not have the same concentration and the same number of days. The useful sum is simple:<\/p>\n
the price of the bottle divided by the number of days<\/b> it covers at the recommended dose. That gives you the cost per day, the only comparable figure.<\/p>\n
A 33-lei bottle delivering 50 mg DHA a day and a 199-lei bottle delivering 600 mg are not in the same category, even if they sit on the same shelf.<\/p>\n
All three arrive at EPA and DHA, but by different routes.<\/p>\n
One point that is often confused: flaxseed, chia or walnut oil is not the same thing<\/b>. They contain ALA, which the body converts into EPA and DHA very inefficiently. If the label says only ALA, you are not buying DHA.<\/p>\n6. Freshness, the part almost nobody talks about<\/h3>\n
Omega-3 oxidises easily with heat, light and oxygen. An oxidised oil loses its value and develops an unpleasant taste and smell. The industry tracks three values: peroxide (PV)<\/b>, anisidine (AV)<\/b> and TOTOX<\/b>, which combines them.<\/p>\n
You rarely see them printed on the label. What you can see, though, are signs that the manufacturer thought about the problem: natural antioxidants in the list (tocopherol-rich extract, rosemary extract), opaque packaging, and storage instructions that say something concrete, not just \u201cin a cool, dry place\u201d.<\/p>\n
The at-home test is just as useful: if it smells strongly of stale fish when you open the bottle, the oil is no longer fresh.<\/p>\n
In the European Union, a supplement cannot say just anything. For EPA and DHA, exactly three claims are authorised, by Regulation (EU) 432\/2012:<\/p>\n
That is all. Anything else \u2014 focus, memory, immunity, inflammation, weight loss, mood \u2014 is not an authorised claim. When you see one on a package or in an advert, it does not automatically mean the product is bad, but it does mean the company has stepped over a rule. That is information about the company.<\/p>\n
Notice the threshold too: the claims are valid from 250 mg a day<\/b>. A product delivering 50 mg at its recommended dose does not get there, whatever the front of the pack says.<\/p>\n Seven questions, two minutes in front of the shelf. That is about all it takes to stop buying by the number on the front.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Two bottles can both say \u201c1000 mg Omega-3\u201d and be completely different products. Seven things to check on the back of the bottle, in the order that matters.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":186,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ghid"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dha-core.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dha-core.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dha-core.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dha-core.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dha-core.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dha-core.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":123,"href":"https:\/\/dha-core.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120\/revisions\/123"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dha-core.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dha-core.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dha-core.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dha-core.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}The short list, to keep in your pocket<\/h3>\n
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