The Queen of Fats

I first met Susan Allport a few years ago in Maine. I was visiting her mother, a truly Gatsbyesque character who each summer took a large, rambling house on the bay in Blue Hill, Maine and shared the beauty of that perfect spot on the Maine coast with her friends and family. We went canoeing together that first morning and I found Susan to be a fun-loving, vital and very curious woman. We stopped on a small rocky island in the bay, not much larger than a suburban back yard, and Susan proceeded to point out and collect a variety of edible plants one of which, a delectable lamb’s quarter, I will never forget. The green face of the plant was soft like a baby’s cheek and was dusted with windblown salt from the surrounding water so that it was perfectly seasoned just as it lay there in the cool rocky soil. At that time Susan had recently completed “The Primal Feast: Food, Sex and Love” – a book I thoroughly enjoyed and which changed the way I look at not only the food I eat but at the relationship of man with his fellow species.

I’ve just completed Susan’s latest book, "The Queen of Fats: Why Omega-3’s were removed from the western diet and what we can do to replace them" and it’s terrific! The title really says it all and the book reads like a thriller – I couldn’t put it down. Be warned, there is a good bit of scientific-speak in this book but the subject matter is so compelling that it’s a bit like reading sexy passages of a naughty novel in the foreign language you nearly learned in high school. It’s well worth the time and this is important stuff for our health – I just had my first taste of flaxseed oil … Enjoy!



“The Queen of Fats: Why Omega-3’s were removed from the western diet and what we can do to replace them”
© 2006 Susan Allport
Published by University of California Press