The soothing power of oily fish

BECK ELEVEN

This week I explain how to put out fire with fish and nuts.

Yes, it sounds like I'm having a surreal breakdown, but it's to do with anger and hate.

Perhaps your mothers told you not to use the word ``hate''? Well, you can eliminate the word but the feeling cannot be suppressed.

At the behest of our editor, a colleague sets off on a huge walk to meet some of the locals that live outside Christchurch.

Why not do something different? It is, after all, a newspaper which by definition carries a wide variety of material in its estimated (by me, but let me know if you've ever counted) half a million words a week.

Of course you can choose not to read some of these words but a person with no sense of punctuation or spelling sent a missive calling him a ``poofta'' (sic), ``embarrassing'' and ``self-aggrandising''.

He also took the opportunity to call this column a depressingly, nauseating rant.

Which is kind of fair because I do have depression and have on several occasions over the past three years written about nausea. And ranted.

I understand that someone cancelled their subscription this week, citing my column as the reason.

I think that their being unable to ignore my 0.03 per cent opinion contribution (I don't do maths) says more about them than me.

Last year a reader aired her disgust at the word ``stuff'', which had been used by a principal and quoted in this paper.

How dare he use that word so freely when he is in charge of growing minds, she wrote.

Once we ran a story about a teenage boy whose passion was growing large pumpkins.

Another reader wrote to say she read the article with disappointdhment that turned into anger then fury as she calculated the resources contributing to the outsized vegetable.

I'm often amazed by the level of understanding people have of certain issues, but getting so angry at minor points like these leaves me confused.

I'm sure we've all written angry letters in our heads but when the minutiae of a particular article has got your goat or you start thinking a teenager growing a giant pumpkin is more offensive than one who smashes into a party full of people and kills two girls, just take a breath.

Is it worth mulling the thought over in your head, let alone writing down that thought and then sending it? There's probably a decent argument that would say my column is pretty much a weekly letter.

But at least I get paid for it and it's usually about something as common as a fart, rather than how I've bashed an old lady or rorted a system.

Here comes the fire, fish and nuts theory.

Christchurch psychologist Jonathan Black says we live in a ``stroppy society''. ``Anger is like fire, it requires certain ingredients; energy, a target and some kind of satisfaction before it goes out''.

Aside from those with measured views, there are many who, he says, write letters and call talkback radio to use those forums as ``Valium to get over stuff''.

Oops, sorry someone, there goes the word stuff again.

``Who knows?'' Black says. ``Venting might minimise the chance of them going postal.

There are very few genuinely nasty, hateful people, it's just that sometimes they flip out and usually, there are personal issues feeding this anger.''

This anger can be rubbed out with fish and nuts.

Public Health Nutritionist Bronwen King says many experts believe we are angrier, more aggressive and more depressed than ever because we do not eat enough omega 3 fats, carried in oily fish such as sardines, salmon, tuna and walnuts.

``These fats are an essential component of the grey matter in our brains, so it stands to reason that if we do not get enough of them, the brain will be adversely affected.''

She suggests eating at least one fish-based meal a day, but fish and chips sprinkled with walnuts does not count.

- © Fairfax NZ News