The Thing With Fat - Healthy And Unhealthy Fats

Yes, you got it right, not all fats are unhealthy. In fact, fat is very important for our body and it would be dangerous to want to live fat-free.

• It is the nutrient which is highest in energy, and our body gets most of its energy from – fat.
• Fat is essential for the cell growth, especially of the nervous system.
• And there are some highly important vitamins that our body can only absorb in combination with fat.

Ever heard that carrots are good for your eyes? Yes, they are. But if you just eat them raw, they won’t do the trick because you can’t absorb that vitamin A without fat. If you want the carrots to be good for your eyes, you need to add a bit of oil to your carrot juice. Unfortunately, every gram of fat that we eat too much has a tendency of transforming into excess weight.

Our problem is that we eat way too much fat and also the wrong kinds of fat. But which ones are healthy, and in which foods are they hiding?

The different types of fat
First of all, you need to understand that there are different types of fat: animal fats (e.g. butter, milk products, eggs) and vegetable fats (e.g. vegetable margarine and vegetable oil).

Animal fats are mostly saturated fats. They are suspected to cause serious health problems (like high cholesterol and some types of cancer) when consumed in excess. Meat lovers often eat way too much animal fats. Vegetarians, in contrast, barely suffer from being overweight, although there are also saturated fats in certain veggies.

The vegetable fats are either mono- or polyunsaturated fats. Polyunsaturated fats (vegetable oils like sunflower and soy oil) lower the cholesterol level (both good and bad cholesterol), but in high amounts they can lead to cell destruction and arteriosclerosis. Monounsaturated fats (e.g. olive and rape-seed oil), in contrast, reduce the bad cholesterol level and increase the good one, meaning they protect you from heart diseases.

We don’t know yet why, but people who get most of their fat from olive oil are also less likely to get breast or colon cancer. Fat which contains essential fatty acids and is part of foods which also supply other nutrients (e.g. vegetable oils, nuts, avocados, grain) are healthier than the fat in cakes, fried stuff and chocolate.

Fat in our food
Usually, foods contain all types of fat in combination. Rather think of the total amount of fat in your food than worrying too much about how much of which fat it contains. The most important thing is not to eat too much fat because your body eagerly stores excess calories in form of fat as body fat (meaning you pick up weight), whereas excess calories in form of carbohydrates are used for energy. So, if you are overweight, rather reduce your fat intake instead of counting calories.

Our body doesn’t need much fat, and with our diet you are not very likely to suffer from a lack of fat. “But I don’t eat much fat”, you may say. Beware! You are eating more fat than you think. It’s not only butter and oil. Fat is also hiding in meat, polony, fish, milk products, cheese, nuts, and even in certain “healthy” foods like roasted muesli and avocados. That does not mean you cannot eat these. The secret is simply to eat them in moderation.

Let me give you an example: Fat reduced milk might have less fat, but full cream milk contains more of the vitamins that can only be absorbed in combination with fat. So, do you want less fat or more vitamins? Which milk is now healthier? I think it depends on your situation and whether you practice moderation or not. If you in general watch what you eat and you keep up a certain level of physical activity, then your cup of full cream milk in the morning is most certainly not going to make you fat. I can say that it does not make me fat.

So, eating fats healthily means in a nutshell

1. In general not such a lot of fat. Use low-fat spreads instead of butter on your bread and cook your food in a way that requires little or no fat.
2. Mainly vegetable fats, preferably the monounsaturated ones. Eat a lot of vegetables, olive and rape-seed oil, and only a moderate amount of milk, yoghurt, cheese, meat products, eggs, nuts and avocados, and little butter, cream, margarine and vegetable oils.
3. Prefer fat that is in foods which supply other nutrients, and eat less “plain” fat (in cakes, fried stuff etc.).

And: Don’t be a couch potato! The more active you are the more fat you turn into energy and the less likely you are to put on weight. Remember that somebody who is doing hard physical work or a lot of sports burns more fat than someone who is just sitting around the whole day. Children also need more fat than adults because they are still growing.

As a guideline, you can say that women and children need about 30-40g fat per day, men 40-60g, people who are very physically active about 70g and athletes and heavy duty workers 70-80g.

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