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Fish Oil | Benefits and Side Effects from Answer Fitness

Hooked on The Idea of Taking Fish Oil Supplements? Before You Start, Learn About the Benefits and Potential Side Effects.

Fish oil is on a roll.

It’s difficult to open up a health or fitness magazine, browse the Internet or turn on the TV without seeing yet another piece on this “wonder” supplement. The health claims made in the media and online are often as amazing as the idea that we can distill down the oil of hundreds of fish into a single capsule: Reduce heart disease! Prevent cancer! Stave off depression! Stop arthritis! Improve your mood!

Not since Linus Pauling published his work on the benefits of Vitamin C (which has come under increased scrutiny by scientists in the past few decades), has there been so much buzz around a single supplement.

So before we dig into some of the possible benefits (and the potential side effects) of fish oil, let’s take a look at how we got here in the first place.

A Brief History of Fish Oil

The whole fish oil story started with a simple observation: People who had diets high in certain types of fatty, cold-water fish appeared to have lower rates of heart disease than other populations who ate less fish. The traditional Japanese diet, for example, contains large amounts of fish, as do certain Norwegian and arctic populations (like the Inuit.)

Scientists were intrigued enough with this correlation that they started to conduct studies to see if whether including more cold-water fish in the diets of people who don’t normally eat fish, could produce a similar benefit. Their results, while not conclusive, did find a strong correlation between the consumption of certain fats contained in fish, and decreased risk for certain form of heart disease. 

So what’s so great about fish?

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Wolfgang Puck All-Natural No-Stick Cooking Spray | Healthy Food of the Day

Love the flavor of butter, but not the saturated fat and calories that come along with it? Try these butter-flavored non-stick cooking sprays.

The next time you’re in the baking isle at the grocery store, check out Wolfgang Puck’s Butter-flavored All-Natural No-Stick Cooking Spray.

I always keep at least one can of this around (usually right on top of my range) for those times when I need to add a little butter flavor to a dish or need some healthy fat to make the perfect omelette or frittata.

Why butter-flavored canola oil?

First, canola oil contains heart-healthy Omega 3s, is high in healthy unsaturated fats (93 percent), is free of cholesterol and trans fat, and has the lowest saturated fat (7 percent) of any common cooking oil.

Also, because the oil is in a spray form, you tend to use less of it than when it’s liquid. So a 1/3 second spray (0.25 grams) of non-stick cooking oil, for all practical purposes, has zero calories and zero fat.

Obviously, the longer you spray it, the more calories you add, but even if you sprayed it for 6 seconds (which is quite a bit of time), you’d still only be adding around 46 calories and 4 grams of fat to your dish.

The oil also tastes great and contains natural butter flavor (no artificial flavorings which you may find in other “butter” flavored sprays), so it adds a nice richness to your food.

But you don’t need to limit your use of non-stick cooking sprays to coating your pan when making egg-white omelettes. There are dozens of other interesting uses, including:

• sauteing, stir frying and grilling (spray it right on steaks and salmon filets for a little butter flavor and GREAT grilll marks)
• basting and browning meats, poultry and fish
• use it as a finishing oil on veggies (spray it on just before serving.)
• toast, english muffins, whole-grain bagels and high-fiber muffins (give ‘em a quick spray for tasty butter flavor and add a sprinkling of sea or kosher salt to amp things up)
• eggs - a great finish to “canola” fried eggs
• Popcorn — my personal favorite.  Coat microwave or air-popped popped corn with a couple quick sprays of non-stick cooking spray and salt and pepper – or even better, a little seasoned salt. This makes amazing, tasty, and buttery,  popcorn without the usual fat and calories.

If your grocer doesn’t carry Wolfgang’s no-stick cooking spray, don’t fret. There are a number  of other natural non-stick cooking spray options, including, Mazola Pure Cooking Spray and  All-Natural PAM® Butter Flavored non-stick spray, as well as organic options like Spectrum Naturals Non-Stick Organic Olive Oil Spray.

So the next time your tempted to reach for the butter, consider instead reaching for the butter-flavored non-stick spray. Your waist-line will thank you … and so will your heart.

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