Leroy Quinlan
When Leroy Quinlan was a young lad on the south shore of Nova Scotia, he remembers his grandfather putting fish in a barrel during the summer months. As the summer turned into winter, the pure oil would be drawn off and given to members of the family.
“We never had a cold,” the 80-year old recalls.
The health benefits of that fish oil stayed with him and as he grew to be a man and had his own fish processing companies, he realized that there was some wisdom in the way his grandfather used a cold extraction process to make fish oil.
But, as anyone who has been at the receiving end of a spoon full of cod liver oil knows, it leaves a nasty taste in your mouth.
That’s something Quinlan also overcame, naturally. He discovered that high quality lemons from the Mediterranean were ideal.
“When you put these lemons in the fish oil, they kill any bacteria present and preserve the good, much in the same way that penicillin works on an infection.”
He’s spent a lot of years researching the properties of fish oil and correlating them to human growth and development.
Quinlan says the developing baby requires one of the two essential fatty acids found in Omega gold – EPA - during its initial period of gestation in order to build the structures of the human body – bones, skin, and tissue. Then, at 26 weeks, the baby requires the other essential fatty acid – DHA – to develop the brain, heart, and eyes. Then, after birth, mother’s milk is one of the best sources for the baby of these compounds.
He’s also looked at the role these two compounds play as the child
grows and develops and begins to learn.
DHA is especially important for a child’s brain to develop as it makes up between 15 and 20 per cent of the cerebral cortex along with between 30 and 60 per cent of the retina and, as it has been said through history, “the eyes are the window of the soul”.
When he looks at the benefits of adding Omega 3 oils to the diet – improved memory, reduction in arthritis pain, reduction in blood pressure and cholesterol, and improvement in children with Attention Deficit Disorder, he likens Omega 3 oils to ‘the foundation of a building’ – without it the building cannot stand.