Fat is Now a Drug

I’ve written about this before, and most people who care about healthy living are aware of this. It is a fairly recent phenomenon, but Doug has been promoting this line of thought for years. Obviously the caveat is that fat molecules are too complex to be grouped into a single category; they are grouped into “good” and “bad” categories. Good fats come from foods like olive oil, nuts, avocados and fish like salmon and are known as Omega 3. Bad fats come in the form of hydrogenated oils and trans-fats; you can usually find these in most deep-fried entrees.

As the public has gradually become more keen on the benefits of including good fats in their diet, a certain supplement has also taken center stage – fish oil. You’ve heard Doug talk about fish oil for a while, and there are a number of great sponsors of KTC that carry this amazing product. Fish oil is loaded with Omega 3’s. It has been shown to be anti-inflammatory, help with mild depression and help control high cholesterol. Most importantly however is that is comes with no side effects; look at any of the drugs used to treat the aforementioned ailments and see if their containers say the same thing.

I’m re-emphasizing all of this for this reason; the other day I noticed an ad for a drug, made by a drug company, called Lovaza. Lovaza is an FDA approved drug used to fight high cholesterol. (Be sure to check out Doug’s most recent article on the FDA) Guess what it is made from? If you guessed fish oil, you are correct, albeit fish oil that has been modified and concentrated. I’m not sure if there is a patent on this modified form of fish oil, but why else would a drug company even bother? Fish oil itself is non-patentable – it comes from a fish! You can’t trademark fish. There are a couple reasons that I think are important to note. First, fish oil works. It has been proven in a number of studies. Second, drug companies are coming around on the fact that people like supplements, probably because they provide some benefit. This is probably going to be a growing trend – a hybrid form of pharmaceutical supplements.

The question is, why would we want our supplements to require a prescription? Furthermore, do we really want pharmacists tinkering with the natural molecules in our supplements? I believe the answer for most of is no – we’ll take them how they are.