Fat Facts: What Everyone Should Know about Dietary Fat
Fat is essential for our health. Our bodies cannot survive without fat. Dietary fats provide our bodies with energy, promote cell growth, help the body absorb certain nutrients and promote hormone production. A certain amount of body fat is required to keep your body warm and to cushion the body’s organs. A no-fat diet or extremely low-fat diet is a prescription for health issues.
Here some intriguing facts pertaining to fat:
Not all fats are alike. There are four types of dietary fat: saturated fats, monounsaturated fats, polyunsaturated fats, and trans fats. These 4 fats are distinguished by their chemical and molecular composition, which impacts how they are broken down and processed in the body. The bad fats are the trans and saturated fats. They are distinctly solid at room temperature (meat fat, butter and lard are examples). The good fats are monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats, which are comparatively liquid at room temperature (olive oil, and the other vegetable oils). Learn more about good fats and bad fats.
Fat lubricates the body. Good fats are like oil in a car engine, providing needed lubrication to our joints, digestive system (flax seed is excellent for constipation) and skin. Some of our dermatological problems are caused by deficiencies of good fats in our diet.
Fats are rich in calories. Per gram, fat has 9 calories (this is true of any fat, regardless of its type). Compare this to carbohydrates and protein, which contain about 4 calories per gram. This points to the fact that high fat consumption increases the total calories in our diet. For this reason alone, it is imperative to limit fat intake if your are attempting to lose weight.
Certain fats can help lower chloresterol. The bad fats are bad largely because they elevate LDL chloresterol levels (also known as bad chloresterol). Good fats, the monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats, raise the HDL (good) cholesterol levels, which helps lower LDL chloresterol.
Fat can help us lose weight. The monounsaturated fat found in avocado, walnuts, almonds, canola oil, and olive oil have been found to promote weight loss, particularly body fat itself. Again, you don’t want to eat too many, but be sure to include small amounts of monounsaturated fat from these nuts and oils in your regular diet if you are on a weight loss program.
Fat energizes our body. Polyunsaturated fats (found in salmon and oily fish, corn oil, safflower oil, and sunflower oil) have a detoxifying effect on our cells, replacing toxic fats deposited there that clog up cell processes.
