Fish oil has had a reputation for decades as helping with itchy skin, dry skin, and allergies. Of course, this only works if your cat or dog is not allergic to fish, but that’s a different topic.
So, let’s talk about how to pick a good fish oil.
Anyone who has met with me in person or a virtual appointment, knows how I feel about the subject of supplements. Very often I look for human supplements, and how to use them for pets rather than pet specific supplements. This is because 90+ percent of the time pet supplements are inferior quality.
Pet supplement companies take some (usually) great active ingredients, advertise the heck out of the active ingredients, and then they make the product into some nasty chew tablet. In order to make it a chewable tablet that dogs and cats are going to eat, it’s made with crappy fillers. So, a company takes high-quality ingredients, and then throws in crappy fillers that make a previously potentially good supplement into an inflammatory product. It’s so incredibly frustrating.
You have to read the inactive ingredients. ALWAYS read below the line.
This is how you distinguish quality products from inferior products.
Also, supplement companies will make the exact same product for animals and charge more for the exact same product – just for adding the word “pet”.
The sneaky trick supplement companies do is dilute the product, which makes the pet price slightly less than the people price, and yet the pet product is 50% less concentrated than the human product. So people feel like they’re getting a great deal on their pet supplement, but what actually happened is they got scammed and they’re paying MORE per active ingredient.
And if that doesn’t make your head turn sideways, I’ve got more.
If an ingredient isn’t good enough to be sold for human products, of course, it goes to either pet food or pet products (nothing gets thrown out)!
OK, so right now I’m just harping on supplements in general. So let’s talk fish oil. Specifically.
Recently, I told a client just what I stated previously: That pet products cost more than human products. The client went online, found brand X fish oil. Then found brand X marketed for pets. The jars were the same volume. But the human product had twice the amount of milligrams per serving, or per bottle, than the pet product. That’s how she got scammed. So she thought she was saving money. But she ultimately got half of the number of servings for a dollar or two less than if she had bought the human product.
Here’s the other thing:
If you and I go by fish oil for ourselves, we have two choices. It’s either a shelf stable gelcap, or it’s a liquid that needs to be refrigerated after opening. People are buying liquid fish oils for pets all the time and leaving it on the counter -after all it has a pump- and expecting that bottle to last for months. Once that bottle is open, oxygen is introduced into that bottle, and that fish oil starts to turn rancid. Rancid oil is inflammatory oil.
Often, because it’s fish oil for pets, the oil is already rancid; it’s unacceptable for human consumption, but they can still sell it for pets.
So now people think that they’re helping their pet with itchy skin and dry skin and instead, they are feeding a rancid product that’s actually gonna make the skin way worse.
Just infuriating.
OK
Here’s the bottom line for fish oil:
- Most of the time you want to select a human quality product.
- If it’s a liquid, put it in the fridge as soon as you open it.
Are there some good pet products? A few. Not a lot.
How can you tell?
Actually… you should taste it! If you put fish oil in your mouth, on your tongue, it’s going to taste like, Well…Fish! It will probably very strongly taste like fish. But that’s the only taste you should get. If you start to get an acrid burning sensation that makes your mouth pucker – it’s rancid. Throw it out.
Make your life easy. Buy a high-quality human product.
Still seeing patients in Tampa, Clearwater, and Virtually.