Fish oil tablets

Having had clinical experience on the benefits of providing young children with daily fish oil tablets, I decided that this was the appropriate course for our son when he was about 3 years old.

What I did not factor in was the enormous resistance from my wife, Ms B.

According to Ms B, fish oil tablets were artificial and could damage our child's health.

Well, I went to the trouble of providing Ms B with relevant clinical studies to get her to understand the neurological benefits to a growing child of supplementation with fish oil tablets, but to no avail.

As it turned out a week or so later, Ms B was talking to one of her Chinese friends, and mentioned our disagreement over fish oil tablets. This friend has a child in school in year 6, who had apparently just topped the year academically. This friend commented that she had been supplementing her child with fish oil since the child was two.

Well, not long after I get a frantic call from Ms B while I was at work in my clinic, asking me to purchase fish oil tablets for our son that evening. 

I did so and when I got home, the first thing Ms B did was check that I had purchased the tablets. When she looked at what I had purchased, she lamented that I had purchased the WRONG brand!

Her friend apparently buys label A, whereas I purchased label B. They are both however identical in terms of quantity and quality, but this was not good enough for Ms B.

She said: "My friend told me that label A has the best fish oil tablets. They won many awards around the world. I only want my son to take the best fish oil tablets."

I responded by saying:

"Which awards did they win? Please let me"

Ms B couldn't answer me but was insisting that label A were award winning tablets.

I proceeded by saying:

"Both labels are effecetivelly identical. There is NO difference amongst these two labels."

But this meant very little to Ms B. She was told by an authority, being her friend, that label A was the best fish oil in the world, and that was that.

I had to go back to the pharmacy and replace my purchase with the other label.

Well, I thought that at least our son would now be getting fish oil supplementation in his diet, which at the end of the day is all that mattered.