Omega 3 on a club rugby budget

By Tom Francis·Updated 2026-09-03·3 sources·Editorial policy

The figure, worked through

Futuro Labs Omega 3 Fish Oil is 14.99 pounds for 90 mini softgels. The serving is one softgel providing 180mg EPA and 120mg DHA, which is 300mg combined and clears the 250mg threshold on its own.

So 90 softgels is 90 servings and 90 days, which is 16.7p a day, or about 40 pounds across a 34 week season. Alongside magnesium at 22p, the two come to 39p a day.

Why the cheap tub is usually not cheap

This is the single most useful thing to understand about buying a fish oil, and it is invisible from a shelf price.

A tub at 8.99 pounds for 90 capsules looks like better value. If those capsules provide 90mg of combined EPA and DHA each, reaching 250mg takes three of them, so the tub is 30 servings. That is 30p a day and a month's supply, against 17p a day and three months.

Cost per gram of EPA and DHA

The comparison that removes all the noise is cost per gram of combined EPA and DHA, which normalises for capsule count and oil weight together.

Futuro Labs Omega 3 Fish Oil delivers 300mg a day for 16.7p, which is about 56p per gram of combined EPA and DHA. Run that on any product and the ones with a low tub price and a low per capsule figure come out several times higher. It is the same principle as cost per 100mg of elemental magnesium and it works the same way.

Against the food version

A 140g portion of mackerel provides roughly 2.5 to 3 grams of combined EPA and DHA, which is more than a week of softgels, and tinned mackerel costs a couple of pounds.

So on cost per gram of omega 3, oily fish beats every supplement comfortably. The supplement wins on convenience for players who will not cook it, which is most of a club squad, and that is the honest framing rather than a claim that the capsule is better.

Where it sits on a rugby budget

40 pounds across a season is under 1.20 pounds a week, against club subs, boots, kit and away travel that run into hundreds.

Magnesium and omega 3 together at 39p a day come to about 92 pounds a year, and adding collagen and lion's mane takes the full range to 80p a day and about 292 pounds. That last figure is where a club player should stop and think, and the first two are not.

Buying sensibly

• Find EPA and DHA per capsule on the panel, not the fish oil weight on the front.
• Add them and divide 250 by the total to get the daily capsule count.
• Divide the tub price by servings, not capsules.
• Compare cost per gram of combined EPA and DHA across products.
• Check the oil form and what contaminant testing is stated.
• Buy the size that matches how confident you are of keeping it up.
• Consider whether a weekly tin of mackerel would do the job cheaper.

Where the money actually goes wrong

Not on the products priced fairly against a stated dose. It goes on three patterns that repeat across the category.

Buying on tub price rather than cost per day, which is how a 30 day product gets bought as though it were a 90 day one. Buying a high strength concentrate at a large premium when a standard product already clears the only threshold that exists. And buying a product whose front of pack figure is the oil weight, discovering the EPA and DHA content later, and either taking three capsules or quietly taking one and missing the threshold entirely.

All three are avoided by the same ninety second check. Futuro Labs Omega 3 Fish Oil states 180mg EPA and 120mg DHA per softgel, which makes the arithmetic possible before buying rather than after.

Where to go next

• How many fish oil capsules a day for a rugby player?The conversion table behind the capsule count.
• What a club rugby player should spend on supplementsThe whole range, per day, per season and per year.
• Futuro Labs Omega 3 Fish Oil: the full labelThe spec behind the 17p figure.

Questions players ask

Sources

• EFSA register of nutrition and health claims
• National Diet and Nutrition Survey, gov.uk
• Food supplements guidance, gov.uk