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In a recent post, we talked about balancing your omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acid intake on a vegan keto diet, primarily using nut and seed sources. This makes sense, as these foods are highest in fat, and therefore have the largest impact on your daily intake of these essential fatty acids.
While researching that article, I noticed that there were a lot of random foods that happened to have a good amount of omega-3 fatty acids, in a pretty highly favorable ratio with omega-6 fatty acids. Now, these foods likely won’t influence your omega 3 intake in any huge way, but it’s certainly interesting to note.
The values are g of ALA and LA per 100g of the food. This is obviously a more reasonable serving of broccoli than it for mustard, but I love mustard, and so it stays.
| Food | ALA (g) | LA (g) | Omega 3/6 |
| broccoli | 0.12 | 0.05 | 2.40 |
| Brussels sprouts | 0.21 | 0.09 | 2.33 |
| cauliflower | 0.15 | 0.07 | 2.14 |
| zucchini | 0.1 | 0.05 | 2.00 |
| kidney beans | 0.48 | 0.31 | 1.55 |
| cabbage | 0.12 | 0.09 | 1.33 |
| arugula | 0.17 | 0.13 | 1.31 |
| cucumber | 0.17 | 0.13 | 1.31 |
| mustard | 0.37 | 0.36 | 1.03 |
| black beans | 0.2 | 0.24 | 0.83 |
| strawberries | 0.06 | 0.08 | 0.75 |
| blueberries | 0.16 | 0.24 | 0.67 |
| raspberries | 0.06 | 0.12 | 0.50 |
The ratio at the end is the grams of omega-3 fatty acids, divided by omega-6 in any one of these vegan omega-3 sources. The idea is to get a ratio of around 3:1, which would be represented as .33 on the chart above. All thirteen of these omega-3 fatty acid sources have a more favorable ratio than 3:1, which is pretty cool.
Realistically, you’ll likely only eat 200-300g of any of these foods in a given day (mostly thinking cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, arugula, cucumber and zucchini for my low carb and keto friends), but it’s pretty cool to note that doing so could get you around another .5g of ALA, or about 50% of the World Health Organization’s daily recommended intake for this nutrient.
Of course, if you’re trying to get all of your omega-3 fatty acids from vegan foods, you’ll want to consume closer to 3.7g of ALA every day (read more about that here), but this is a great start!
What’s your go-to source for omega-3 fatty acids? Let me know in the comments!
To read more about balancing omega-3 fatty acid intake, check out my previous post.
