If you want your child to live longer, be happier, be smarter have fewer health problems like asthma, diabetes, heart disease; or have fewer behavioral problems, have lower risk of mental health disorders, and do better in school, then you have some clear-cut choices:

• Cut back everything your child eats with vegetable oils like soybean, cottonseed, corn, canola, sunflower, and safflower oils containing omega-6. Olive oil is not one of these oils. If the food is manufactured or purchased, chances are it contains omega-6 like soybean oil.
• Switch to range or grass fed meats. Presently, most chicken and beef are fed grain, which increases the omega-6. Take off the chicken skin, as it contains most of the omega-6.
• Increase your child’s consumption of fresh fish. Fresh trout, salmon, tuna and other similar fish are high in omega-3.
• Consider giving fish-oil supplements. 1-2 grams a day of fish oil supplements are clearly shown to benefit health and behavior among adults and children. Consumer Reports has rated such supplements, which cost as little as about $10 per year per child. The less omega-6 your child consumes, the less omega-3 he or she needs.1 Flavored and highly distilled omega-3 (fish oil) are available for fussy children. Flaxseed oil is not a substitute.
• Take out the TV in a child’s bedroom. In 1990, only 5% of middle-class homes had TV’s in children’s bedrooms; that number hovers around 80% today. No studies show any benefit of a TV in a child’s bedroom; and most show harm in terms of behavior, IQ, physical health, mental health, teen sex, alcohol and drug use, and academics. A large portion of the TV programs watched by children and teens advertise products high in omega-6, which are harming the health and safety of our kids.

Is there a worry about mercury in the fish? Well, that mercury does not come from fish originally. It comes from coal-power electric plants in the U.S. and overseas like China. The giant study in The Lancet shows there is more risk of NOT eating fish than eating fish. Remember, Japanese kids eat lots of fish, and they do very well academically, behaviorally and in health.