Choosing Healthy Fats

For years, nutritionists and doctors have preached that a low-fat diet is the key to losing weight, managing cholesterol, and preventing health problems. But more than just the amount of fat, it’s the types of fat you eat that really matter. Bad fats increase cholesterol and your risk of certain diseases, while good fats protect your heart and support overall health. In fact, good fats—such as omega-3 fats—are essential to physical and emotional health.
Making sense of dietary fat

A walk down the grocery aisle will confirm our obsession with low-fat foods. We’re bombarded with supposedly guilt-free options: baked potato chips, fat-free ice cream, low-fat candies, cookies, and cakes. But while our low-fat options have exploded, so have obesity rates. Clearly, low-fat foods and diets haven’t delivered on their trim, healthy promises.

Despite what you may have been told, fat isn’t always the bad guy in the waistline wars. Bad fats, such as trans fats and saturated fats, are guilty of the unhealthy things all fats have been blamed for—weight gain, clogged arteries, and so forth. But good fats such as the monounsaturated fats, polyunsaturated fats, and omega-3s have the opposite effect. In fact, healthy fats play a huge role in helping you manage your moods, stay on top of your mental game, fight fatigue, and even control your weight.

The answer isn’t cutting out the fat—it’s learning to make healthy choices and to replace bad fats with good ones that promote health and well-being.
Myths and facts about fats

Myth: All fats are equal—and equally bad for you.

Fact: Trans fats and saturated fats are bad for you because they raise your cholesterol and increase your risk for heart disease. But monounsaturated fats and polyunsaturated fats are good for you, lowering cholesterol and reducing your risk of heart disease.

Myth: Lowering the amount of fat you eat is what matters the most.

Fact: The mix of fats that you eat, rather than the total amount in your diet, is what matters most when it comes to your cholesterol and health. The key is to eat more good fats and less bad fats.

Myth: Fat-free means healthy.

Fact: A “fat-free” label doesn’t mean you can eat all you want without consequences to your waistline. Many fat-free foods are high in sugar, refined carbohydrates, and calories.

Myth: Eating a low-fat diet is the key to weight loss.

Fact: The obesity rates for Americans have doubled in the last 20 years, coinciding with the low-fat revolution. Cutting calories is the key to weight loss, and since fats are filling, they can help curb overeating.



Myth: All body fat is the same.

Fact: Where you carry your fat matters. The health risks are greater if you tend to carry your weight around your abdomen, as opposed to your hips and thighs. A lot of belly fat is stored deep below the skin surrounding the abdominal organs and liver, and is closely linked to insulin resistance and diabetes.
Types of dietary fat: Good fats vs. bad fats

To understand good and bad fats, you need to know the names of the players and some information about them. There are four major types of fats:

    monounsaturated fats (good fats)
    polyunsaturated fats (good fats)
    trans fats (bad fats)
    saturated fats (bad fats)

Monounsaturated fats and polyunsaturated fats are known as the “good fats” because they are good for your heart, your cholesterol, and your overall health.
GOOD FATS
Monounsaturated fat     Polyunsaturated fat

    Olive oil
    Canola oil
    Sunflower oil
    Peanut oil
    Sesame oil
    Avocados
    Olives
    Nuts (almonds, peanuts, macadamia nuts, hazelnuts, pecans, cashews)
    Peanut butter

   

    Soybean oil
    Corn oil
    Safflower oil
    Walnuts
    Sunflower, sesame, and pumpkin seeds
    Flaxseed
    Fatty fish (salmon, tuna, mackerel, herring, trout, sardines)
    Soymilk
    Tofu

Saturated fats and trans fats are known as the “bad fats” because they increase your risk of disease and elevate cholesterol.

Appearance-wise, saturated fats and trans fats tend to be solid at room temperature (think of butter or traditional stick margarine), while monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats tend to be liquid (think of olive or corn oil).
BAD FATS
Saturated fat     Trans fat

    High-fat cuts of meat (beef, lamb, pork)
    Chicken with the skin
    Whole-fat dairy products (milk and cream)
    Butter
    Cheese
    Ice cream
    Palm and coconut oil
    Lard

   Commercially-baked pastries, cookies, doughnuts, muffins, cakes, pizza dough
    Packaged snack foods (crackers, microwave popcorn, chips)
    Stick margarine
    Vegetable shortening
    Fried foods (French fries, fried chicken, chicken nuggets, breaded fish)
    Candy bars

The controversy surrounding saturated fat

For decades, doctors, nutritionists and health authorities have told us that a diet high in saturated fats raises blood cholesterol levels and increases the risk of heart disease and stroke. However, recent studies have made headlines by casting doubt on those claims, concluding that people who eat lots of saturated fat do not experience more cardiovascular disease than those who eat less.

So does that mean it’s OK to eat saturated fat now?

No. What these studies highlighted is that when cutting down on saturated fats in your diet, it’s important to replace them with the right foods. For example, swapping animal fats for vegetable oils—such as replacing butter with olive oil—can help to lower cholesterol and reduce your risk for disease. However, swapping animal fats for refined carbohydrates, such as replacing your breakfast bacon with a bagel or pastry, won’t have the same benefits. That’s because eating refined carbohydrates or sugary foods can also have a negative effect on cholesterol levels and your risk for heart disease.

In short, nothing has changed. Reducing your intake of saturated fats can still improve your cardiovascular health—as long as you take care to replace it with good fat rather than refined carbs. In other words, don’t go no fat, go good fat.