“There have been a series of claims that babies’ brains or eyes develop better when their diets are supplemented with certain unsaturated oils, based on the idea that diets may be deficient in certain types of oil, Some experimenters claim that the supplements have improved the mental development of babies, but other researchers find that the supplemented babies have poorer mental development. But the oils that are added to the babies’ diets are derived from fish or algae, and contain a great variety of substances (such as vitamins) other than the unsaturated fatty acids, and the researchers consistently fail to control for the effects of such substances.
It has shown that it is probably impossible to experience a detectable deficiency of linoleic acid outside of the laboratory setting,[69] but the real issue is probably whether the amount in the normal diet is harmful to development. Until the research with animals has produced a better understanding of the effects of unsaturated oils, experimenting on human babies seems hard to justify.” -Ray Peat
Author
Cari