Why should I eat fewer omega-6 fatty acids?

Why should I eat fewer omega-6 fatty acids?

Susan Silberstein & Marilyn Joyce (Health and Nutrition Educator & Heath Counselor) gives expert video advice on: How do fats become nutritionally unsafe?; What foods have the most omega-3 fatty acids? and more...

It is important for us to eat foods that are quite low in omega-6 fats. Omega-6 fatty acids play important roles for our health but we have to have a crucial balance between turning on our immune system and turning off our immune system. The ideal ratio between the omega-3 fatty acids that enhance immune function, and the omega-6 fatty acids that suppress immune function, is a ratio of about one to one. We don't want an immune system turned on all the time. We don't want it turned off all the time. The typical American diet has an omega-6 fatty acid to omega-3 fatty acid ratio of about twenty five to one, possibly thirty to one. Now, that is thirty to one against our immune system. Foods that are high in omega-6 fatty acids are generally the oils; the expressed concentrated oils that we used to think were the heart healthy oils. In fact, they are not, and they include soybean oil, safflower oil, sunflower oil, corn oil, and cottonseed oil.