Cod Liver Oil

By Cara, on March 10th, 2010

This is the cod liver oil that we take- Salty Fermented. Salty because both it was on clearance sale, and because it’s GAPS friendly. We also ordered the gummy fish, though those aren’t GAPS friendly (rice syrup, sugar) they are good!

My kids are kind of silly, I’m not sure if it’s because I give them their cod liver oil in the syringe (pictured) so it’s different, or if they actually like the strong fish taste, but they LOVE taking their cod liver oil, and they get the salty fermented stuff.

Why would we take cod liver oil? And why fermented?

The Weston A Price Foundation calls Cod Liver Oil the #1 Superfood!

Growing up I thought that taking codliver oil was an outdated joke- something people used to do ‘before they knew that it didn’t do anything’. Now I’m giving it to my own children. In Nourishing Traditions Sally Fallon talks about the benefits of both liver and fish. In Real Food for Mother and Baby Nina Planck encourages eating fish all throughout childbearing- from pre-conception to during breastfeeding. Weston A Price, in Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, is continually noting that (very healthy) unindustrialized populations go to great length to include sea food in their diet, even if they don’t live near the sea.

Since I’ve been learning about more traditional food, I’m hearing about cod liver oil everywhere. From an eye doctor, “They’re just discovering that cod liver oil is really helpful for eyesight” and she clarified, “It’s not just fish oil, it’s cod liver oil”. A mainstream nutritionist, “It’s important to supplement vitamin D, even in your breastfed baby” (nursing mom taking cod liver oil takes care of this- I don’t give supplements to my exclusively breastfeeding babies). It’s interesting to see all these ‘new discoveries’ about foods that have been known superfoods for thousands of years.

We chose to take fermented cod liver oil after reading in Nourishing Traditions and other traditional food books about how many nutrients are ‘unlocked’ by the fermentation process. The fermented cod liver oil even stings a little bit going down (“like vodka,” my husband said ~eyeroll~), an indication that it has been fermented. I was giving my kids the recommended 2ml, but my son was smelling like fish and we were going through the bottle pretty quickly. So I backed it down to 1ml for my daughter and 1/2 ml for my son keeps him from smelling like fish. I take 1 ml myself, to stretch the budget but still getting the nutrients.

We take cod liver oil that is molecularly distilled, so there is no trace of the toxins found in fish, and the CLO we take is from wild-caught fish as well. Now we take Green Pasture’s, which I talked about above, but before we took fruit punch flavored kid’s cod liver oil, which I got from our health food store. I didn’t mind the taste, and neither did my kids (we took this one from a spoon).

This is a part of Real Food Wednesday at Cheeseslave’s blog this week!

More:
Supplements we do take (there’s not a lot)
Food Renegade has a post about cod liver oil with lots of good information regarding vitamin D and pregnancy
Fish is good! See how we’re trying to get more fish in our diet

Giveaway! Giveaway is CLOSED now, thanks for entering!
The totals were 60 for the salty cod, 50 for the gummies, and 43 for the ghee. I love that ya’all were so interested in trying cod liver oil! Alexandra won the salty cod, Tamara the gummies, and Amy the ghee Congratulations!