Health & Fitness Blog

TYPES OF FATS IN YOUR DIET: The good, bad, and the ugly

There are various types of Fats in your diet, let’s discuss them in detail:

Saturated Fats:

Everybody knows that the Saturated Fats are the “bad” fats and you should avoid them, right ?  Wrong !

Provided you eat  the recommended daily intake  of saturated fats of no more than 20 grams per day, and no more than one third of your total fat intake in a day, then saturated fats are actually good for you.

They help in the absorption of Omega 3 fatty acids, which are good for a number of things, including healthy lungs (smokers take particular note !).

Saturated fats also help in the absorption of calcium, and are therefore good for strong bones and for helping protect against osteoporosis as you get older (and this applies to men as well as women). Saturated fats will also help protect the cells in all parts of your body against invading infections and diseases.

However, like most good things, Saturated Fats are bad if you take them in excess. These are the fats that raise your blood cholesterol levels and clog your arteries.   These are the fats that cause heart disease.

Watch out for Saturated Fats in the diet.   Animal products (such as meat, poultry, seafood, eggs, dairy products, lard and butter), as well as coconut, palm and other tropical oils are all rich in saturated fats. Butter, and the fats in meat and dairy products, are all especially high in saturated fat.   And margarine, you know – the stuff that the ads on TV say is good for you – margarine is also a supplier of saturated fats in your diet.

So what should you do ?

Although it sounds like all bad news, by just making a few changes in your diet, you can make a huge difference in your health, and in your life, by avoiding an excess of saturated fats as a part of your healthy diet.

At breakfast, choose skim milk verses full cream milk for your cereal.   Throughout the day, switch to skim milk in your coffee and tea.

Cakes and muffins have a lot of saturated fats, it is good if you can avoid them in your regular daily diet.   Then allow yourself to have the occasional one as a special treat now and then, and you will enjoy it all the more !

And here’s an interesting calculation – if you change to low fat dairy products instead of full cream, in one year you will reduce your intake of Saturated Fat by around 4 kilos.

Wherever possible, choose margarine instead of butter. Study the labels on the containers in the supermarket, and select a good low fat margarine that is better than regular butter.

As a final tip, reduce your intake of refined and processed foods such as white bread etc, and go for wholemeal products instead.   Not only will this reduce your fat intake, but also the extra fibre in wholemeal products will actually help to absorb and flush fat out of your body.   The fibre in the wholemeal bread will counteract the fat in the margarine that you spread on it.

Unsaturated Fats:

Unsaturated Fats are good for you, right ?  Right !  So most of your fat intake should be from unsaturated fats.

There are two types of unsaturated fats: Monounsaturated and Polyunsaturated.

When you replace “bad” saturated fats with “good” unsaturated fats in your diet, they both (Mono-unsaturated and Polyunsaturated) help in lowering your cholesterol levels. Not only that – Monounsaturated Fats actually help in raising the amount of “good” cholesterol.

Polyunsaturated fats contain essential fatty acids that our body can not produce itself  –  Omega-6 and Omega-3.  Since the body needs these fats, but can’t manufacture them itself, we have to get these fatty acids from the food we eat.

So what should you do ?

Most cooking oils are unsaturated fats. Canola oil and olive oil are the best options for cooking, because of their ratio of monounsaturated to polyunsaturated fatty acids. But be aware – when you see a label on cooking oil that says “light”, this refers to the taste or the colour, and not the fat content. All oils are 100% fat, “oil” and “fat” is really just the same thing.

Mono- and Poly- unsaturated fats are found in most vegetable products and oils. Avocados, nuts and seeds, and olive oil, peanut oil, and canola oil,  these are excellent sources of the “good” unsaturated fats.

But don’t forget – “good” fats are still fats, and if you eat them in excess they will cause you the same problems as “bad’ fats in excess.   If you eat more than your body needs, then your body will still save them for you, adding them in handy layers around your nice slim waist, hips and thighs !

And Then There are Trans Fats

The more we hear about Trans Fatty Acids, the more we hear that they are the real fat villains.   But is this the true picture ?

Let’s discuss it in the next article! Come back soon