Is Krill oil better than Fish oil? (You knew there was going to be a ‘but’… It’s all about Omega-3 absorption when you’re comparing Krill oil vs Fish Oil. The Omega-3 in Krill oil is better absorbed into your body than the Omega-3 from regular fish oil. There are several published scientific papers that prove it. Krill Oil is definitely better. NKO (Neptune) and Aker (Superba) Krill Oil have published clinical evidence of improved absorption and bioavailability. I was in the audience when the Chief Scientific Officer from NKO presented the data at a conference in Las Vegas in 2009. Well, NKO has a patent to GENTLY remove Omega-3 from krill. This gentle process protects the delicate bond between the Omega-3 and phospholipid. Just like in fish oil, it’s the Omega-3 we’re interested in. It’s the phospholipid bond that makes Krill Oil better than Fish Oil. You see, our cell membranes are also made of phospholipids. So Krill Oil takes to our cell membranes quickly and easily.
Fish oil makes it into our cell membranes too, but just not as well or easily. Well, NKO has a patent for gentle extraction. So if anyone claims to make it as gently as NKO, they are breaking the law or doing something funny. Either way, nobody knows because no one else has published their results. The reason why this gentle process is so important is that the phospholipid bond that makes Krill Oil superior is easily damaged by heat. Once the phospholipid bond is damaged, then Krill oil is no different than fish oil. Actually, it’d be worse than fish oil. Heat damaged Krill oil is just really expensive, red-colored oil. (The red bar is NKO Krill oil; green and yellow bars are fish oils) Source: Evaluation of Omega-3 Bioavailability & Steady State Assessment of Neptune Krill Oil Compared to Established Omega-3 Formulations. Presented at SSW 2009. The catch is the cost and the effective dosage. NKO’s science says you need 1 gram of Krill oil at a minimum and 3 grams is best.
MegaRed is the most popular brand of Krill oil. So we’ll use it as an example here. I know, MegaRed says you only need 1 little red pill a day. The published science says you need 3 to 4 pills a day. Scientists, by nature, are less likely to stretch the truth to make more money. Let’s say you take 4 pills a day. That’s 120 pills a month. Average price of a MegaRed pill is $0.45. So you will need to spend $54 a month on MegaRed Krill oil.But worth it if it works for you. You are ready for Krill Oil if… Let’s say you bought a battery for $1. And then you saw a better battery that lasts TWICE as long…How much would you pay for the better battery? If you said $8, then you are ready to buy Krill Oil. Let’s compare MegaRed to a Pharmaceutical Grade Fish Oil. MegaRed contains 90 mg of Omega-3 per pill. No, that was not a typo. It contains only 90 mg of Omega-3 per pill. And it’s the Omega-3 in the krill oil that gives you the actual health benefit.
There are a few good fish oil pills that provide 900 mg of Omega-3 in just one pill. Or 10X more Omega-3 per pill. Let’s compare it with GNC’s Triple Strength Fish Oil with 900 mg of Omega-3 per pill. It costs $26 for 60 pills. Or $0.43 per pill. Almost exactly the same as a MegaRed pill. But Krill oil is only 40% better absorbed. For the price, shouldn’t krill oil be 1000% better absorbed? Forget Triple Strength Fish Oil – how about cheap, old fish oil from Walmart? Even that has 300 mg Omega-3. Krill oil would have to be 300% better absorbed than REGULAR fish oil to equal the discount fish oil at Walmart, let alone Pharmaceutical grade fish oil! But it is only 40% better. Now what if I told you MegaRed used to have NKO Krill oil. But not any more. Now MegaRed uses another type of krill oil, with less published science. In 2009, MegaRed stopped using NKO Neptune Krill oil. They switched to Superba Krill oil. I flew to Quebec, Canada to meet with the NKO folks at their headquarters.
And last year, I also met with the Norwegian company that makes Superba krill oil. I know why MegaRed changed krill oils but I’ll spare you the sordid details. It means that MegaRed no longer uses krill oil with the most science behind it. Nobody has published a side-by-side absorption comparison between NKO and Superba oils. Forget NKO and Superba for a second. Because Krill oil is so popular, competition has come out of the woodwork. You can now buy container loads of “Krill oil” from China and the Middle East. There are krill oils from strange places that may not actually be krill oil – they could be regular old fish oil with red algae extract for color and some soy bean phospholipids added to fool the Quality Control labs. (The red bar is NKO Krill oil and the blue bar is a cheap store brand knock-off) There are a lot of inferior, mysterious krill oil-like products out there. Every drug store and grocery store has its own store brand version of Krill oil.
And my goodness, people are buying them! ‘Store Brand Krill Oil’ with unknown krill source is not quite as bad a scam as Bernie Madoff or Mortgage-backed Securities…but a LOT of uninformed consumers are being separated from their hard-earned money. published its regular review of fish oils. This time, they added a few krill oils to their test.This is what they said: “A krill oil supplement that failed for both spoilage and low omega-3 levels claimed to be quality assured under GMPs (good manufacturing practices). Another “krill oil” supplement contained more fish oil than krill oil.” Sure, astaxanthin in Krill is a good antioxidant. But so are Vitamins C and E and they are dirt cheap. Astaxanthin can prevent sunburns after a month of use – other than that, it is no more special than many of the other special antioxidants. Sure, there is no fishy smell. It smells like krill, not fish! The astaxanthin found in Krill oil can act as an anti-rancidity (antioxidant) agent, but only if it is present in very high quantities.
But the astaxanthin level is usually too low to protect krill oil from turning rancid. Krill oil is one of the most sensitive oils to rancidity. Many Krill companies send me samples of their oil to review. After receiving complaints from employees, I no longer open these bottles inside the office. I now open these sample bottles in the parking lot while wearing gloves. And I usually walk to the dumpster before I return to my office. Krill oil spoils MUCH faster than any fish oil I’ve worked with in the last 20 years. You can use 2 year old krill oil as stink bombs! Well, nothing wrong with just one pill a day. But if you want REAL health benefits, you need to take 3 to 4 pills. Well, MegaRed got in trouble with the Better Business Bureau’s National Advertising Review Council for saying that. The label has been changed now. So back to our multiple-choice about the battery that lasts twice as long. If you still buy Krill Oil, you are ready to pay $8 for a battery that lasts twice as long as a $1 battery.