Posts Tagged ‘compare fish oil’

You can buy fish oil capsules just about anywhere these days. There are plenty of brands available on the drugstore shelves and a number of brands available strictly online. However, not all brands are created equal. With regulation over the supplement industry being quite lax, the consumer has to do their own due diligence and research to compare fish oil supplements and discover which brands are the best ones.

With some things, price is a good indicator of quality but that is not totally the case when it comes to nutritional supplements. It is true that the lowest prices available are often low only because the manufacturers have used the lowest quality fish for their oil extraction as well as because they don’t use the best processes in the manufacture of their supplements. As a result, every fish oil supplement that we could find on the low end of the price range (less than $10) were not ones we can recommend in good conscience.

Every single low priced brand we could find had no information on what type of fish were used nor where the fish came from. Common sense tells you that if they were using only the best sources of fish or that they only came from less polluted waters, the manufacturer would be eager to share that information. After all, that would give them a marketing edge so why wouldn’t they use it? Be sure to remember this when you begin to compare fish oil brands for yourself.

How the oil is then rendered from the fish is another consideration. There are three main processes used to extract oil from the fish: cold pressing, centrifuge or solvent-based extraction. Solvent extraction is something you absolutely want to avoid as it means a toxic solvent is used to obtain the oil. Even if purified after the process, some of these toxins will remain in the resulting oil. The centrifuge process is much safer but doesn’t get all of the rich oils that it could, therefore results in more waste. The best process is the cold-pressed oil extraction as it is not only completely safe but also keep the oils fresher while not wasting large parts of the fish.

Purity certification is also something you should be paying attention to when you compare fish oil brands. Since the regulations are quite lax, fish oils supplements are actually allowed to have quite a bit of toxins remaining in the oils. The best manufacturers will have their own higher standards that they strive for, rather than the loosely held regulations. If the maker doesn’t provide that kind of information, you should avoid that brand.

When we compare fish oil capsules from three of the leading brands, we find that two brands are largely made up of oils from sardines and anchovies – two of the cheapest sources of fish oil available – but these two brands are $7 to $16 more expensive than the third.. The third, Xtend-Life, was the only one that was derived from only two fish: hoki fish oil and tuna. Yet the one with these oils was the least expensive of the three top brands. Xtend-Life Fish Oil Capsules also had the highest levels of purification, far above the government regulations that the other two met.

As you can see, when we begin to compare fish oil supplement brands, they are clearly not created equal. Xtend-Life was the only one that we could find that met the standards of using the highest quality fish oils and the highest level of purification. They were also the only company that had offered complete disclosure of all the factors involved in the manufacture of their supplements. Needless to say, we give it the “buy Xtend-Life” rating as it is the brand that we use and recommend to our readers.