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Comment by hawthornio | Hacker News Reader

Why not just be vegan and take algae-based Omega-3 supplements??? If find the News' obsession with the Mediterranean diet very strange.

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Why even bother with tablets? A tablespoon of flaxseed covers your Omega 3 and lots of fiber.

I was under the impression that flax just gives you ALA not EPA/DHA, so you won’t get all the benefits of fish/krill oil with flax. The latter two are the ones that give the biggest benefits.

Eg https://www.nordicnaturals.com/healthy-science/is-eating-chi...

Only ~10% of plant based omega 3s is "useful" - https://www.health.harvard.edu/heart-health/why-not-flaxseed...

This is an honest question and I would prefer not to start a flame war, but would you replace all the food you eat with nutritional supplements? Or, if not all, then as many as possible? If this is not possible today, is it something that you would want to do in the future?

Not OP, but no? Are you implying that commiting to a Vegan diet means no delicious food? Because you couldn't be further from the truth.

Once you actually go out of your way to eat a balanced plant based diet, you'll discover super tasty recipes that are on par or better with the dishes you are used to.

Indeed there are and I grew up in a culture where most food is what would be called vegetarian or vegan, and delicious, and I cook that kind of food for myself.

However, cooking delicious food with raw materials is not compatible, in my mind, with factory-produced nutritional supplements, because all of a person's nutritional needs can be covered by ordinary food. Does this perhaps make my point more clear? I don't understand the need for supplements, when one can cook nutritious and delicious food on their own.

Why are you assuming that the primary health benefits in the mediterranean diet come from omega-3 fatty acids? They could just as well come from oleuropin in olives / olive oil.

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