Not only that, flax and chia seeds are very high in Omega 6, thus promote dangerous levels of inflammation.
So, can a vegan please explain to me how your community has managed to solve this?
Also, vegans are healthier than the average population with lower rates of death in major categories like heart disease[1]. In other words, from the standard american diet to veganism, it's generally much healthier which I think is the better comparison to make.
That's not really a high bar...
I gotta run, but there's quite a few studies available online about this.
"Dietary supplementation with omega-3 fatty acids does not appear to affect the risk of death, cancer or heart disease. Furthermore, fish oil supplement studies have failed to support claims of preventing heart attacks or strokes."
OK, so even if we assume we need more Omega-3 than a normal vegan diet contains, most meat also does not contain a good balance of Omega-3 to Omega-6. Eggs are only a good source if they have been supplemented with flax or other good sources of Omega-3. Fish is often a mixed bag, when it comes to health; it may be better to get our nutrients from the same place they get it. Seaweed and other edible ocean plants are a pretty good source of Omega-3 and are healthy on other fronts, too.
Finally, there are many normal foods that have a good Omega-3 to Omega-6 balance. Walnuts and other nuts, most seeds, several kinds of fruit and vegetables (while it's a smallish amount, the balance is good and you really don't need mega-doses).
In short, if you're eating a diverse vegan or vegetarian diet, you almost certainly don't need to think about any specific nutrient (except B12 for vegans, which does need to be supplemented, or obtained via nutritional yeast that has B12). You're just as likely to have specific nutritional deficiencies on a meat-based diet; folic acid deficiency is a common problem of a meat-heavy diet that would not trouble a vegan or vegetarian, for example.
A balanced and diverse diet is the right answer to questions about food and nutrition. Laser-focus on any one particular nutrient is probably counter-productive, unless there's a specific reason to focus on it (some people have difficulty processing some nutrients, for example, but Omega-3 isn't one of them, to my knowledge).
In short: Omega-3 is the new fad nutrient. There will be another in a year or two, and the entire health nutrition industry will figure out ways to sell you books, and pills, and diet plans, and the food industry will figure out how to cram more of it into foods, and we'll find that, like most of the other supplements over the years, it doesn't really do anything. You need some to be healthy; you don't need gallons of it to be healthy.
See:
https://sentientist.org/2013/05/20/the-ethical-case-for-eati...
The article approves of oysters too, but note that oysters may contain oyster crabs:
Although eating animals that do not have a central nervous system is equivalent to eating plants, so it should be vegan.
I know a guy who will only eat windfall foods - plants that have died a natural death or fruit that have fallen from the tree (super hardcore fruitarian), and won't eat germplasm (I.e. Seeds - wheat, nuts, etc.) which seems to me, if the reason is ethical, to probably be the right place to draw the line.
Personally I'm an omnivore, but try to keep my meat consumption generally very low.
Baby cows can be traumatized by separation from their mother and scarred for life. Cows are also mourning the loss of their best friends for a long time. Many other animals that human use for agriculture clearly fit the description of sentient beings that have a "wish" to live.
One particular supplement I like is Green Foods True Vitality, which I think is the least expensive for vegan DHA supplementation: http://www.greenfoods.com/store/p/44-True-Vitality-Vanilla.a...
It isn't bad on its own, but I mix it with my usual soy drink which is NOW Foods soy milk powder (which is just powdered soybeans; sadly the only equivalent with rice is rediculously expensive), (vegan) cane sugar (because it is much less expensive than maple syrup :( ), a dash of ground whole stevia herb (to reduce the amount of sugar needed), and a little vanilla powder. Quite delicious :).
Edit: After reading SwellJoe's excellent reply again I would also like to emphasise that many fruits and vegetables have really excellent nutritional profiles and just eating more of them can solve most nutritional issues. Even with vegan diets it is quite easy to not do that, but it is almost certianly the healthiest option.
From the study: "Despite having significantly lower intakes of EPA and DHA (from fish or fish oil), blood levels of EPA and DHA in vegans and vegetarians were approximately the same as regular fish eaters.
The results indicate that the bodies of vegetarians and other non-fish-eaters can respond to a lack of dietary omega-3 EPA and DHA by increasing their ability to make them from omega-3 ALA.
And as they said, "The implications of this study are that, if conversion of plant-based sources of n-3 PUFAs were ... sufficient to maintain health, it could have significant consequences for public health ..."
To be safe, I occasionally take an omega-3 supplement from algae.
While this doesn't get you into the recommend blood levels of omega-3 oils (it's mostly suprising because it's been found at all, and consistently), I have not seen a non-drastic method for meeting the amounts of omega three that the science reccomends, vegan or not.
Omega fat science is quite out of whack with the dietary recomendations commonly made. If you do the math, in order to acheive the ratios that are described in most papers I've read, one would need to forgo all omega 6 sources (olive oil, tofu, many other things), or consume unrealistic amounts of omega-3 oil each day to offset them. (I once calculated it to be in the region of a pint of omega-3 rich oil a day)
I'm equally mystified, but about the whole thing.
Or simply get some supplements like this one here: http://www.nothingfishy.co/
Also don't forget your B12 and D3 vitamins.
http://www.foodprocessing.com/articles/2012/algae-dha-health...
GMO could easily solve the problem of omega-3 and B12. [2]
[1]: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9637947
[2]: http://www.gmo-compass.org/eng/database/plants/63.rapeseed.h...