Seems like not a day goes by when there isn't a new breaking study touting the health benefits of some tongue twisting molecular compound found in a difficult to find source but lucky for you Mr. Consumer a company has altruistically created a simple to consume supplement for you to buy. One great example of this is Omega-3 fatty acids. If Omega-3 fatty acid was a dot com startup, I bet it would have gone to IPO already and have a market cap that rivals Google and Facebook (sorry, web 2.0 humor). In the article, Food, glorious Food the Economist talks about the regulatory issues around how food agencies in the US and Europe have to deal company making claims on the health benefits of their products, it also does a great job of giving us a simple easy to understand framework on Omega-3 Fatty acids.

In summary:

If it comes from fish – that's good. You want the long chain fatty acids.

If it comes from vegetable substitutes like flax seed oil or maize (they are short chain), it competes with the better source that happens to come from fish

If your supplement has a combination of the two sources – you are wasting your money because they conflict with each other.

The good kind, helps reduce inflammation without suppressing the immune system (gets more important as we get older)

So watch your overall fat intake and eat more fish.

Here is the article Note to Self published Oct 29th 2009

"THE best ways to get enough “good” (ie, long-chain) omega-3 oils are either to eat lots of oily fish or to take, every day, supplements that contain at least 500mg of eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), or docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), or both (though some studies have suggested as much as 1,100mg a day is better). Products that contain short-chain omega-3s, such as alpha-linolenic acid from plant oils like flax-seed oil, have not been linked with the strong health benefits shown by fish oils.

Having got enough long-chain oils, though, it is important to let them do their work. That means reducing consumption of omega-6 oils—those found in maize, sunflower, olive and most other seed oils. Many people have turned to these seed oils as a way of reducing their intake of saturated fats, but omega-6 fatty acids compete in the body with omega-3s, since the two have similar chemical properties. The best dietary ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 is reckoned to be less than 4:1. In Western diets, it is typically more like 10:1. The message, then, is: eat less fat and get more of it from fish. And those who buy omega-3 supplements that also contain omega-6s are probably wasting their money."