Written by Eliza Freney (The Rugby Dietitian)
It's January 2023, there's 6 months until the Rugby World Cup, and the Head Coach of the Australian Rugby team tells you to leave no stone unturned in the nutrition management of Australia's best rugby union players.
This led to testing the omega-3 status of all the athletes I was working with. Despite having above average quality diets and access to great food sources, I was surprised to find how few athletes fell within the optimum range (Peoples et al, 2025). These are elite athletes, with bespoke menus tailored to their specific nutritional needs. That got me thinking about the broader population and what this means for their omega-3 status.
Naturally I wanted to solve this by increasing the sources of omega-3 foods in the diets of players, but unfortunately the Western diet has limited sources of this special nutrient, with salmon being the typical food recommended. That's discounting herring and sardines because try as I might, they are a harder sell to the young Aussie male. If you look up most generic omega-3 food sources, tuna doesn't typically flag as a good source of the nutrient, but that doesn't tell the full story.
Different types of tuna have different amounts of omega-3. The most common kind you find on your shelves is yellowfin and skipjack. Both offer little omega-3 — so little that UK dietary guidelines don't even count tuna as an oily fish (NHS, n.d.). But that overlooks albacore, which has more than three times the omega-3 of skipjack and yellowfin (USDA, 2019). This takes us full circle, back to the strategy of increasing the omega-3 status of the athletes I work with through food. In my research I came across East Coast Tuna Co and, to my delight, they had an albacore tinned and jarred product I could confidently recommend as not just a good source of omega-3, but a great source of protein. I've been able to cut down on the number of omega-3 supplements to provide a balance of food forward sources of omega-3 alongside supplementation.
Stay tuned for the next blog where we dive into the myriad of benefits of omega-3 and why East Coast Tuna can be a valuable addition to your diet.
References:
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National Health Service. (n.d.). Fish and shellfish. Retrieved 25 June 2026, from https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/eat-well/food-types/fish-and-shellfish-nutrition/
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Peoples, G., Anthony, R., Freney, E., Jaffrey, N., Cronin, S., & Macartney, M. (2025). A cross-sectional assessment of the Omega-3 Index in an Australian cohort of elite rugby football athletes: Opportunities to address nutritional omega-3 intake. The Journal of Sport and Exercise Science, 9, 12–20. https://doi.org/10.36905/jses.2025.01.02
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U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service (USDA). (2019). FoodData Central: Fish, tuna, white, canned in water, drained solids; Fish, tuna, light, canned in water, drained solids. https://fdc.nal.usda.gov
