The End of the Line for Omega 3?

The website for the film “The End of the Line” asks you to imagine an ocean without fish. A very scary thought. The film, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival looks at the devastating affects of over-fishing. It has become big news, with chains such as Pret a Manger taking action by swapping their normal net caught tuna for pole and line caught tuna.

According to the Marine Conservation Society (MCS), 69 types of seafood available in the UK are being fished in an unsustainable way, meaning that if we don’t change our eating habits they could soon be extinct. Yet fish is good for us, we all know that – and one of the main reasons is because of its Omega 3 content.

Various studies have shown that omega-3 can decrease heart disease, help prevent arthritis and promote healthy brain functions. The government recommend having 2 portions of oily fish every week. The dilemma is that you want to get your Omega-3 but you don’t want to encourage reckless over-fishing and endanger almost 70 types of fish. There are options open to you, such as non fish based sources of Essential Fatty Acids (EFAs), and this is what has not been getting as much press attention as it should (in fact, an article in the Daily Mail completely ignored their own expert by editing out her advice about Omega-3 rich seed oils). Fish is a great source of EFAs, with DHA and EPA there is no question over that. The things is, other foods, such as hemp-seed oil, flaxseed oil and to a lesser extent rapeseed oil have Omega-3 too, and they all have ALA which the body can convert into DHA and EPA (hemp seed oil also has SDA which the body can covert more efficiently). The major difference is that a good hemp seed oil like Good Oil is completely sustainable.

If eating less fish is the way to make sure we don’t create an empty ocean, just make sure you get enough Omega-3 through other sources.

Houses made from Hemp

Hemp is great. We’ve thought so for ages. Finally, it looks as if it is other people are realising too – the first house made of hemp is here!

It is a renewable house, made partly from hemcrete – a mixture of hemp and lime. It was built thanks to a grant from the Department for Energy and Climate Change of £200,000

The National Non-Food Crops Centre (NNFCC), which built the home, said building it used half the energy that building a traditional brick home would use, plus claimed that energy bills for the home owners would be as low as £150 a year.

Thousands are planned – so here’s hoping that they start building soon!

Hemp is a great carbon sequester, the NNFCC estimates that 110kg (242.5lb) of carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere, the equivalent of a return flight from Plymouth to Manchester, for every square metre of wall.

Hemp is being grown more and more in the UK after being reintroduced about a decade ago. Traditionally every landowner in Britain had to grow hemp for rope for the Navy – but now it is used for much more interesting things! We grow it for the seeds (to make our lovely GOOD OIL), plus harvest the fibre as well to make into hemcrete (plus we sell some to BMW as they use it for their car door panels). Overall, hemp is great for the environment and wildlife whilst it grows – plus it is great for insulation when made into hemcrete. The seeds are a nutritional gem too, rich in Omega 3 & 6 plus with all 10 essential amino acids – so it really is a supercrop!