Good Fats /Bad Fats

Fats are fantastic:

Not all fats are villains; in fact, we need fat for good health.

As strange as it sounds, eating fat can actually help you lose weight. Not only that, your memory and your immune system will benefit from eating fat. It is an extremely bad idea to eliminate fat completely from your diet. "Good" fats are absolutely essential. These good fats come from things like  canola oil, extra virgin olive oil, flax seed, almonds, walnuts and cold-water fish. Eating the right kind of fat and getting rid of the wrong kind is what is needed.

There is the example: a study that involved 1,000 rats and how they lost weight while actually eating more fat. The rats were fed a diet high in saturated fats, the kind in milk, cheese and red meat. Part way through, 500 of the rats had omega-3 fatty acids added to their diet. Not substituted, but added. "All of them lost weight and tumor growth and heart problems got better. "And they were eating double the fat." Which is why we need to recognize the value of fat and how Americans have got it all wrong. Fat is fabulous!

Fat for health

We need fats not only to keep our arteries healthy but also for prostaglandular activity. Prostaglandins are an important family of hormones that help control things like fertility, inflammation, immunity and communication between cells. That means, when you drastically cut fat out of your diet or eat the wrong fats, your body suffers.

The best fats are omega-3 fats, the ones that come from olive oil, cold-water fish, walnut oil, wheat germ oil and flax seed oil.

America took a wrong turn a few decades back, with popular diets extolling the benefits of eating fewer fats. The problem was that while many of the food products being hyped as healthy were lower in fat, they were made up of the worst kind of fats for our bodies: trans fats.

What more recent research is showing, according Harvard School of Public Health, is it isn’t low fat that is so important. Rather it is the type of fat in our diet that is key to good health.

If omega-3 fats are the good guys, then trans fats are the villains.

Recently, the Food and Drug Administration has moved to have these trans fats listed as part of nutrition labeling on foods.

The new labeling law still allows trans fats to be hidden so consumers have to do a little detective work. The easiest way to tell if a product has trans fat is to look for the words "hydrogenated oils" or "partially hydrogenated oils" on the label. Heating liquid vegetable oils in the presence of hydrogen produces hydrogenated oils. It makes fat more stable, which helps in the preparation of processed foods, but it’s not something our body particularly likes. Unfortunately, it is often an ingredient in things Americans like to eat — crackers, cookies, potato chips, French fries, stick margarine — and contributes to the heart disease and obesity that is sweeping the country.

The lowdown

One of the things trans fats does is to raise something called low-density lipoproteins or LDL. And even though the word "low" makes this sound enticing, low-density lipoproteins are not a good thing when it comes to the body. According to the Harvard School of Public Health, these low-density lipoproteins carry cholesterol from the liver to the rest of the body.

When there is too much LDL in the blood, it can be deposited on the walls of coronary arteries and lead to heart attacks. High-density lipoproteins are good. They carry cholesterol from the blood back to the liver, which processes it for elimination. You should know your levels of both HDL and LDL.

People look at cholesterol as a number, but really it is a ratio. If you increase the amount of HDL, it carries away a lot of the bad LDLs. Trans fats not only raise the LDLs (bad cholesterol) but also lower HDLs, the good cholesterol.

Moderation is key

In fact, for maximum health, 20 percent good fat, although Harvard studies say there is no good evidence for any optimal amount of fat. 20% is a good starting point. I have been advised by my registered dietician to allow as much as 30% calories from fats.

It has to be "good" fats. So who are the good guys of fat? These include Extra virgin olive oil, avocado, flax seed oil, almonds, walnuts, salmon and cold-water fish. While it is best to stop frying with oil, Grape seed oil is great for caramelizing food, because it has a higher smoke point than olive oil.

Saturated fats like those in cheese, beef and chicken and milk should play smaller roles in our diet. Meat fats, things like pork fat, lard and bacon, should be avoided, along with partially hydrogenated oils in things like margarines and snack foods. Old oils of any kind are also bad for you.

Fat has to get a new image in the minds of people across the country. "We relate fat in our food to fat on our body, and that’s just not true.

Fat can be fantastic!