When it comes to living a healthy life, dietary fats are important for maintaining overall good health. This is the most important as you age. Therefore, you need to understand that your body needs a regular intake of fats.
Getting adequate amounts of fats in your diet is important, as they provide calories for your body to use for energy, support cell growth, and protect and keep your organs warm.
Your body also needs fat in order to effectively absorb fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K, as well as to produce important hormones. Eating the right kind and in the right amount also helps keep your blood pressure under control.
However, it is also important to realize that what you eat can affect your LDL (bad) cholesterol. It is essential to know what types of fats can increase LDL cholesterol and which ones cannot. This knowledge can significantly help reduce your risk of heart disease and stroke.
Some fats are also good sources of two essential fatty acids: linoleic acid and alpha-linolenic acid.
Therefore, it is important to understand that trying to eliminate all fat could deprive your body of one of its most essential nutrients.
Different types of fats
Fat is a complicated topic that inspires much debate among scientists and nutrition experts. The fact is that there is no single “fat” but there are different types of fats.
The role fat plays in a healthy diet is worth understanding. Therefore, it is good to take a closer look at the four different types of fat: saturated fat, monounsaturated fat, polyunsaturated fat, and trans fat.
You can find dietary fats in both animal and plant foods. The fact is that all dietary fats are made up of a mixture of polyunsaturated, monounsaturated and saturated fatty acids, in various proportions. Also, oils are generally unsaturated fatty acids, although they do have small amounts of saturated fatty acids.
All four types have difficult chemical structures and physical properties. The reality is that some of these fats are good, some are good or bad, depending on certain factors, while some are downright bad.
Bad fats, saturated and trans fats, are generally solid at room temperature. On the other hand, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats tend to be more liquid.
Regardless of its type, each gram of fat has nine (9) calories. Fats are naturally more calorie dense than carbohydrates and proteins which have four (4) calories each per gram.
Saturated fat
Saturated fats are generally considered the “bad” fats. Their chemical composition is such that they do not have double bonds between carbon molecules because they are saturated with hydrogen molecules.
They are found naturally in many foods and are obtained mainly from meat and dairy products. These meat sources include beef, lamb, pork, and poultry (with skin on). Dairy sources of saturated fat include high-fat dairy products like butter, margarine, cream, and cheese.
Plant sources of saturated fat include coconut, coconut oil, and cocoa butter. Others are palm oil and palm kernel oil, which are generally called tropical oils. However, tropical oils generally do not contain cholesterol.
Additionally, sources of saturated fat include many fast, processed, and baked foods such as pizza, desserts, hamburgers, cookies, and cakes.
Monounsaturated fats
Chemically, monounsaturated fats are simply fat molecules that have an unsaturated carbon bond in the molecule. They are usually liquid at room temperature, but begin to solidify when cooled. A typical example of monounsaturated fat is olive oil.
Oils rich in monounsaturated fats also contain vitamin E, an antioxidant. Foods that have high amounts of monounsaturated fats are liquid plant-based oils such as canola oil, olive oil, peanut oil, safflower oil, and sesame oil.
Other good sources of monounsaturated fats include avocados and nuts like almonds, cashews, hazelnuts, and walnuts. Monounsaturated fats are also found in seeds like pumpkin, sesame, and sunflower.
Polyunsaturated fats
Polyunsaturated fats have more than one (“poly” for many) unsaturated carbon bonds. Like monounsaturated fats, they are also liquid at room temperature and turn solid when cooled.
They are found in greater amounts in sunflower, corn, soybean, and cottonseed oils. Other good sources include flax seeds, pine nuts, pumpkin, sesame, sunflower, and walnut.
However, animal fats contain only small amounts of polyunsaturated fats. Shellfish such as herring, mackerel, salmon, trout, and tuna contain high amounts of a type of polyunsaturated fat called omega-3 fatty acids.
Trans fat
Trans fatty acids are mainly found in oils created through an industrial process that adds hydrogen to liquid vegetable oils to make them more solid. Trans fats are structurally different from unsaturated fatty acids and differ in their health effects.
Trans fats are found primarily in processed foods, such as fried foods, cakes, pizza dough, pie crust, and other baked goods. Some others are processed foods like cookies, muffins, crackers, and even some brands of microwave popcorn.
Types of dietary fats to eat
The main health problem about the consumption of fats in the diet is the impact they have on blood cholesterol levels. There are also serious concerns about the increased risk of inflammation that consuming saturated and trans fats can cause in the body.
Saturated and trans fats in food cause a much higher increase in LDL cholesterol. However, eating healthy fats from monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats can help balance cholesterol by lowering LDL and increasing good cholesterol (HDL).
Eating foods that contain fat is definitely part of a healthy diet. The idea should be to choose foods that provide healthy fats while trying to maintain a caloric balance between the number of calories you eat from food and the number of calories you burn.