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tl;dr: menhaden is an awesome fish the ecosystem depends on and it's about to go extinct because of stupid studies about fish oil.

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Flaxseed oil is not necessarily an alternative.

Fish oil contains EPA and DHA type omega-3 acids and flaxseed (and walnuts and hemp seed) contain ALA, which the body converts to EPA and DHA, but inefficiently.

Source: http://www.supplementquality.com/efficacy/fishoil_flaxoil.ht...

What the hell. Even if there isn't a viable alternative you shouldn't support fish oil if it's at the cost of the environment.

Everything humans do will somehow take a toll on the environment. So unless we all go kill ourselves, we're going to affect our environment one way or another. We can instead be responsible and make sure we don't strain a specific resource, and be educated consumers (it might just happen). So a solution would be to find alternative fishes and balance it out, cut out other fish oil uses.

That being said the article stated that fish oil is only one of the many things contributing to this. I think we could cut out lipstick before we cut out treating mental illnesses.

But there are plant sources of DHA and (some) EPA. Fish do not make it out of thin air, they get it from eating algae.

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