Text: Brigitte Müller
There’s nothing to be done:  For a child that loves hot dogs and doesn’t even want to look at the fish?  As healthy as the fish is…

Perhaps soon this will no longer be a problem.  The first litter of genetically manipulated pigs has just been born in an American laboratory.  The pigs produce the polyunsaturated fatty acid Omega-3, that is mainly found in fish and is presumed to be good for the heart and the circulation.  For this reason, cardiologists and nutrition specialists recommend eating fish at least twice per week.  

According to the electronic edition of Nature Biotechnology, the pigs were inserted with the fat-1 gene, through which the undesired fatty acids Omega-6 are transformed into Omega-3.  However, that isn’t why the pork is less fatty.  The genetically manipulated animals produce, measured in the amount of total fat, a total of 8.6% of Omega-3 fatty acids, whereas in the case of normal pigs it’s only 2.2%. The laboratory pigs have 1.7% of Omega-6, whereas the normal ones have 8.5%. The effects on the flavor are still not known, although the scientists do not expect the genetically manipulated pigs to taste different.  But it will be a few more years before we can try it, if we ever reach that point.  At the moment, there are already milk and eggs enriched with Omega-3, but in this case of food from animal products, only what comes from the sea is rich in Omega-3 fatty acids.  

Nonetheless, in the American laboratory there are grand plans:  "we are working to also increase the amount of Omega-3 fatty acids in hens and calves, although so far we have not obtained any results", writes Jing Kang in the Spanish newspaper the Vanguard, coauthor of the study and a scientist from the Harvard Faculty of Medicine.

Only a day later, an article in another prestigious scientific publication, the British Medical Journal, questioned the positive effects of the Omega-3 fatty acids on the cardiovascular system.  British scientists reviewed 89 studies (among them 41 clinical studies) and did not find a causal relationship between a diet rich in Omega-3 and better cardiovascular function, that reduces mortality.  Although a positive effect cannot be ruled out, neither has it been demonstrated with certainty.  

So then, were the pigs genetically manipulated for nothing?  Or are these unsaturated fatty acids from fish really healthier than pork?  Or maybe it still holds, as always, that the best diet is a balanced one, with a little of everything and nothing excluded?