Bottom-Line: One scientist is single-handily changing the way Morgan County, West Virginia eats.  His mission is to demonstrate that chronic diseases and their ensuing health costs can be significantly reduced, by lowering dietary omega-6 fats and eating enough omega-3 fats.

Background:  Bill Lands, PhD, is a one-man tipping point,with a mission and a motto: “Nix the Six and Eat the Three."  A concise slogan, from a scientist who can’t help but speak in polysyllabic terms when describing how heart disease and other chronic diseases could be prevented by balancing the dietary fats.  And so this pioneer scientist, who recently turned 80 years old, rallied his small community and used the Count County fair as the vehicle to get his message across.  (Disclosure: I was one of his recruits, called in for duty and this is my story.)

Dr. Lands is credited with discovering the beneficial effects of balancing excess omega-6 fats with dietary omega-3 fats [1, 2]. He has written two scholarly books, published hundreds of studies on this subject, and has received numerous awards for his research. He created a scientific formula that reliably predicts how much dietary omega-6 and omega-3, will actually end up in the cells of your body.  He went one step further, and developed a free software program (called KIM-2), which utilizes his formula, analyzes the dietary omega-6 and omega-3 fats, and ultimately, predicts your risk for heart disease [see Why Omega-6 Fats Matter to Your Health ].

For decades, he has been urging scientists and health policy makers to balance the dietary omega-6 and omega-3 fats. But no one seems to be listening.  Today, there is not a single health agency that recommends balancing the omega-6 fats. Quite the opposite (see Heart Association Advocates Omega-6 Fats ). Yet, Dr. Lands remains undeterred.

Method and Intervention: “You are not here by accident”, said Dr. Lands, who described his plan to improve the health of his community. Indeed, Dr. Lands recruited scientists, health professionals, one author (that would be me), and community volunteers, for events before and during the fair. The locale was Berkeley Springs,West Virginia—the site of the Morgan County Fair. 

To entice attendees to his exhibits, Dr. Lands strategically placed a newly chopped stump from an old oak tree, outside of his exhibit room.  Each annual ring on the oak, was flagged with historical events from both  American history and fatty acid research history.

Exhibits and events included:

•  Doug Bibus, PhD,  a top omega-3 expert who trained with the legendary omega-3 scientist Dr. Ralph Holman, demonstrated how to monitor omega-3 and omega-6 status, with a home blood testing kit (finger-tip assay).  
  

• Capt. Joseph Hibbeln, MD , acting chief of the Nutritional Neuroscience Section of the  National Institute of Health, spoke to local physicians about the important role of balanced omega-6 and omega-3s on health and the brain.  

• Physician: Matt Hahn, MD, co-authored, Morgan County Menus, a 40-page informational booklet with examples of menus with balanced omega fats and health tips.       

• Everyone likes pizza, right? That's why Dr. Lands recruited a local pizza parlor (Tony’s Pizza), to create (and deliver) Omega-3 pizzas, which were adorned with anchovies and included a stealth ingredient in the tomato sauce, flax meal.   
  

• Parent-advocate: Joel Klavercamp, founder of Fish for a Day, displayed foods high in omega-6, with healthier food substitutions.   The food that attracted the most attention, was Hellman’s olive oil mayonnaise, which lists soybean oil (high omega-6) as the second ingredient, after water, (see below, left).  At that point, Joel would show the chart, "Oils in the US Food Supply in the 20th Century"  (below, right), which shows the soaring soybean oil trajectory (red line), to which he'd  say, "This chart says it all."

  

Results: Dr. Lands doubled the enrollment of his nonprofit FastLearner, increased physician and community awareness, and received coverage by two local papers. Although the fair is over, Dr. Lands is not finished. Next on his agenda is to provide omega-6 and omega-3 blood testing to Morgan County public school employees and demonstrate how health insurance costs can be lowered by balancing the dietary omega-6 and omega-3 fats. And just last week, he purchased a domain name and plans to launch a website.

Commentary:   It is inspiring to see a scientist with so much passion, (it's hard to believe he is retired, yet alone 80 years old).  He is not trying to make money, or run for a political office--he just wants to make a difference in people's lives. 

I mentioned to Dr. Lands, that it was impressive to see so many physicians genuinely interested in balancing the omega fats for health--to which he replied, "That didn't happen overnight--it's taken about three years to get through to them."

In a future post, I'll tell you more about the home blood testing kit, which analyzes  omega-6 and omega-3 fats (one of the perks I received from attending the Morgan County Fair).

Resources

[1] The Work of William E. M. Lands

[2] The Journal of Biological Chemistry. 2009;284(20): e2. (free full text)

[3] Lim SY, Hoshiba J, Salem N Jr. An extraordinary degree of structural specificity is required in neural phospholipids for optimal brain function: n-6 docosapentaenoic acid substitution for docosahexaenoic acid leads to a loss in spatial task performance.J Neurochem. 2005 Nov;95(3):848-57.

http://www.fastlearner.org/

Copyright © 2010 by Evelyn Tribole, MS, RD  Published at http://www.EvelynTribole.com

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DISCLAIMER: The information is intended to inform readers and is not intended to replace specific advice from a health care professional.  Copyright 2010 Evelyn Tribole, MS, RD