There have been a lot of questions on Facebook as well as through the contact form on the difference between fish oil and cod liver oil. The main difference is that cod liver oil comes from the liver of the codfish, and therefore contains a healthy amount of fat-soluble vitamins not present in plant foods — namely, vitamins A, D3, and K2. “Wait!” some people say. “Isn’t vitamin A in carrots and vitamin K in leafy greens?” The answer is that carrots are rich in beta-carotene, which might be converted in small amounts to vitamin A by your body, but some people are less efficient at producing vitamin A from carotenes and we don’t really have a good way of knowing if you’re a good converter or a poor converter. My guess is that if you ate plenty of carrots as a child, like I did, and you still developed severe nearsightedness, you can’t make your own vitamin A from beta carotene very efficiently. Vitamin K1 is present in green leafy vegetables, and it helps your blood to clot properly. Vitamin K2 is a different vitamin, and it is only present in a few rare foods, such as cod liver oil, grass-fed butter, nattokinase, and hard aged cheeses. Vitamin K2 prevents calcium from leeching from your bones and ending up in your arteries and joints, thereby preventing heart disease, arthritis, and osteoporosis.
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