 The revelation that fish oil appears useless in preventing heart disease, as I reviewed before, in either heart patients or for those trying to prevent heart disease in the first place, leads one to wonder how did this whole fishtail begin? Well, the common mythology is that in response to anecdotal reports of low prevalence of coronary heart disease among the Eskimo, Danish researchers Bang and Dyerberg went there and confirmed a very low incidence of heart attack. Now the absence of coronary heart disease would be strange in a meat-based diet, hardly any fruits and vegetables, violating all principles of heart-healthy nutrition. This paradox then was attributed to all the seal and whale blubber they were eating, which is extremely rich in omega-3 fish fat, and the rest is history. The problem is, it isn't true. The fact is they never examined the cardiovascular status of the Eskimo. They just accepted at face value this notion that coronary atherosclerosis is almost unknown among the Eskimo, a concept that has been disproven over and over-starting in the 30s. In fact, going back over a thousand years, we have frozen Eskimo mummies with atherosclerosis. Another from 500 years ago, women in their early 40s, atherosclerosis in her aorta and coronary arteries. But these aren't just isolated cases, the totality of evidence from actual clinical investigations, autopsies, imaging techniques, is that they have the same plague of coronary artery disease that non-Eskimo populations have, and actually twice the fatal stroke rate and don't live particularly long. Considering the dismal health status of Eskimos, it's remarkable that instead of labeling their diet as dangerous to health, they just accepted and echoed the myth, trying to come up with the reason to explain the false premise. Such dismal health that the westernization of their diets actually lowered their rates of ischemic heart disease. You know your diet's bad when the arrival of Twinkies improves your health. So why do so many researchers to this day unquestioningly parrot the myth? Publications still referring to Bang and Dyeburg's nutritional studies as proof that Eskimos have low prevalence of heart disease represent either misinterpretation of the original findings or an example of what's called confirmation bias, which is when people cherry pick or slant information to confirm their preconceived notions. They quote their great scientist Francis Bacon, we prefer to believe what we prefer to be true. And so we get literally thousands of articles on the alleged benefits of omega-3 fatty acids. We've got a billion dollar industry selling fish oil capsules, millions of Americans taking this stuff, all based on a hypothesis that was questionable from the beginning.