Blood fatty acid changes in healthy young Americans in response to a 10-week diet that increasedn-3 and reducedn-6 fatty acid consumption: a randomised controlled trial

Abstract

Military personnel generally under-consume n-3 fatty acids and overconsume n-6 fatty acids. In a placebo-controlled, double-blinded study, we investigated whether a diet suitable for implementation in military dining facilities and civilian cafeterias could benefit n-3/n-6 fatty acid status of consumers. Three volunteer groups were provided different diets for 10 weeks. Control (CON) participants consumed meals from the US Military's Standard Garrison Dining Facility Menu. Experimental, moderate (EXP-Mod) and experimental-high (EXP-High) participants consumed the same meals, but high n-6 fatty acid and low n-3 fatty acid containing chicken, egg, oils and food ingredients were replaced with products having less n-6 fatty acids and more n-3 fatty acids. The EXP-High participants also consumed smoothies containing 1000 mg n-3 fatty acids per serving, whereas other participants received placebo smoothies. Plasma and erythrocyte EPA and DHA in CON group remained unchanged throughout, whereas EPA, DHA and Omega-3 Index increased in EXP-Mod and EXP-High groups, and were higher than in CON group after 5 weeks. After 10 weeks, Omega-3 Index in EXP-High group had increased further. No participants exhibited changes in fasting plasma TAG, total cholesterol, LDL, HDL, mood or emotional reactivity. Replacing high linoleic acid (LA) containing foods in dining facility menus with similar high oleic acid/low LA and high n-3 fatty acid foods can improve n-6/n-3 blood fatty acid status after 5 weeks. The diets were well accepted and suitable for implementation in group feeding settings like military dining facilities and civilian cafeterias.

Dietary Assessment Methods in Military and Veteran Populations: A Scoping Review

“…There was one (1%) of each study design for longitudinal cohort [21], validation study [71], cohort study [88], and retrospective cross-sectional study [29]. Twenty-one of the studies were interventions including eight (9%) randomised control trials [7,36,39,51,53,89,94,103], four (4%) pre-…”

“…There was one (1%) of each study design for longitudinal cohort [21], validation study [71], cohort study [88], and retrospective cross-sectional study [29]. Twenty-one of the studies were interventions including eight (9%) randomised control trials [7,36,39,51,53,89,94,103], four (4%) pre-post design studies [21,48,49,62], three (3%) non-randomised control trials [40,84,86], two (2%) case-control trials [65,104], and two (2%) non-controlled trial [32,56]. There was one (1%) of each study design for retrospective case-control trial [38] and randomised trial [54].…”

“…The continent most frequently studying the dietary intake of their military and veterans was North America. All North American sudies were conducted in the USA, with almost two thirds (n = 57, 64%) of included studies originating from this country [6,7,20,24,25,29,30,32,[36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43]46,49,[51][52][53][54][55][58][59][60][62][63][64][65][66]68,74,[77][78][79][80]82,83,88,89,[91][92][93][94][95][97][98][99][100...…”

“…One study did not report on participant numbers [45]. Forty-five of the 89 studies included male personnel (51%) [ The military population most frequently studied, in descending order, was the army with n = 48 (54%) [2,6,7,[21][22][23][24][29][30][31][32]34,35,[37][38][39][40][43][44][45][46][47][48][50][51][52][53][56][57][58][59][60][61][62]66,[70][71][72][73]76,77,82,84,88,89], followed by veterans n = 18 (20%) [20,[90][91]…”

“…There were 15 (17%) [7,21,32,36,38,39,49,51,53,54,56,84,89,103] intervention studies of which five included a follow-up component [56,84,86,89,103] ranging from 10 weeks to one year. The population types that included intervention studies were army (n = 9) [7,21,32,38,51,53,56,84,89], air force (n = 3) [36,49,54], veterans (n = 1) [103], National Guard (n = 1) [86], and Navy Marines (n = 1) [39]. The most commonly studied type of military personnel in included studies were soldiers (n = 28, 31%) [6,7,22,24,29,32,35,37,38,45,46,48,50,51,...…”