Healthy Food Chart

Q. Is there any upper limit as far as how many grams of omega 3 you can take? I'm aiming for an omega-6 to omega-3 ratio of 4:1.  As an example, if I ate 10g of omega 3 and 40g of omega 6, that's still in the 4:1 ratio but is 10g of omega-3 too much? What would be the upper limit?

A. There is no UL (tolerable upper limit) for omega-3 or omega-6 fatty acids (PUFAs).  The USDA feels it has "insufficient evidence" to set one. Instead, you might want to consider how much total fat you're going to eat and how you want to divide that up. For example, consuming large amounts of PUFAs might either cause you to miss out on the benefits of other fats, such as monounsaturated fats, or lead you to eat too much total fat.

Many experts recommend that PUFAs should make up 5-10% of your dietary calories and that seems reasonable to me.  The rest of your fat calories would come from monounsaturated fats like those found in olives and avocados and/or saturated fats from meat, dairy, and tropical oils.  Trans fats from hydrogenated oils and fried foods should ideally be kept to an absolute minimum.

In your example, you'd be eating 50g of PUFAs, for a total of 450 calories. Unless you're eating 4500 calories a day, that might be a little out of balance.  Without knowing the particulars of your situation, sounds as if you
might want to think about ratcheting your intake of BOTH kinds of PUFAs
back a bit.

Building your dietary fat "profile"

Here's how a healthy distribution of fats might look for a typical person eating 2500 calories a day:

30% of calories as fat = 83 g 

Of that:

    15% of calories from monounsaturated fat = 40g

    7% of calories from saturated fat = 20g

    7% of calories from polyunsaturated fats = 20g

To maintain a 4:1 ratio of omega-6 to omega-3, that would be 16g omega of omega 6 and 4g of omega 3.

Fish or flax?

As far as the dangers of taking too much omega-3, it depends whether you're talking about 10g of flax oil, which provides alpha-linolenic acid (ALA), or 10g of fish oil, which contains the much more biologically active forms of omega 3 (EPA and DHA). 

Ten grams of fish oil could potentially create some issues, such as interfering with blood-coagulation and immune function (not to mention digestive distress). Whether or not these might be concerns for you is a question for a licensed nutrition professional who knows the details of your situation.