The Budwig Protocol & Increasing Your Omega-3 Fatty Acids

Johanna Budwig was a German scientist whose cutting-edge research into nutritional fats may have put her in line for a Nobel Prize in the 1930’s if she was a man. She compared the fatty acid profiles of sick people with healthy people and argued that highly heated and chemically modified fats found in substances like margarine were unhealthy and dangerous.

In the 1950’s, she came up with the Budwig Protocol focused on modifying the intake of dietary fats.  She did this by combining flaxseed oil with quark, which is closely related to cottage cheese. Flaxseed oil is high in the omega-3 fatty acid called alpha-linolenic acid. Budwig blended the flaxseed oil with the cottage cheese in order to make the flaxseed oil more bioavailable. 

I take 1.5 tablespoons of Barlean’s Flaxseed Oil (with lignans) and use a hand blender to combine it with 2-3 tablespoons of cottage cheese. I get the low-fat, organic cottage cheese which allows for the oil to more easily bind.

The 1.5 tablespoons of flaxseed oil has about 10 grams of omega-3s. So, if you’re taking fish oil too, be careful, as these oils are blood thinners. The first day that I did the Budwig Protocol, I had also already taken 9 grams of cod liver oil. So, my total omega-3 fatty acid consumption that day was about 20 grams. The next day, I noticed that my excrement was an unusually light color, which is a sign that my body couldn’t process all that fat (my apologies for this graphic but important detail).  Given that, I’ve started taking either cod liver oil or flaxseed oil, but not both in the same day, and keeping my daily omega-3 fatty acid intake at around 9-10 grams.

The Budwig blend is an acquired taste. When I made it for Mara, she didn’t like it. We doctored it with stevia, fruits, and cacao powder. But, if you try it, add what you’d like!