Choosing Healthy Fats , Good Fats, Bad Fats

Source : helpguide.org

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

Dietary fats are found in food from plants and animals. The four major types are:

• monounsaturated fats
• polyunsaturated fats (including omega-3s)
• trans fats
• saturated fats

Despite what you may have been told, not all fats are bad guys in the waistline wars. While dietary fats all contain 9 calories per gram, they can have very different effects on your health as well as your weight. “Bad” fats, such as trans 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 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 for a healthy diet isn’t to cut out the fat—it’s to replace bad fats with the good ones that promote health and well-being.

Unsaturated fats and oils

Unsaturated fats are considered “good” fats and are encouraged as part of a healthy diet. Eating foods rich in monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fat can improve blood cholesterol levels and lower your risk of heart disease. These fats may also benefit insulin levels and controlling blood sugar, which can be especially helpful if you have type 2 diabetes. These good fats include:

Good Fats

Monounsaturated fat

Avocados Olives Nuts (almonds, peanuts, macadamia nuts, hazelnuts, pecans, cashews) Natural peanut butter (containing just peanuts and salt)

Polyunsaturated fat

Walnuts Sunflower, sesame, and pumpkin seeds Flaxseed Fatty fish (salmon, tuna, mackerel, herring, trout, sardines) Non-GMO sources of soymilk and tofu

Unsaturated oils

We’ve long been told that the simplest way to prevent heart disease is to swap saturated fats for their healthier, unsaturated counterparts. That means swapping butter for margarine and cooking in unsaturated vegetable oils instead of lard. However, new research suggests that things aren’t that simple.
There are basically two types of unsaturated vegetable oils: Firstly, traditional, cold-pressed oils such as extra virgin olive oil, peanut oil, and sesame oil (widely used in Asian cooking) that are rich in monounsaturated fats and have been used for hundreds of years. Cold-pressed oils are made without the use of chemicals or heat to extract the oil from seeds or nuts.
Secondly, there are the more recently developed processed oils such as soybean oil, sunflower oil, corn oil, canola oil, cottonseed oil, and safflower oil. These oils are industrially manufactured—usually from genetically modified crops in the U.S.—using high heat and toxic solvents to extract the oil from the seeds.
Some nutritionists feel that these manufactured vegetable oils shouldn’t be included as “good” fats because the industrial processing can damage the oil and transform the fatty acids into dangerous trans fat. Their high omega-6 content can also unbalance the ratio of omega-6s to omega-3s that are crucial to good health.

Damaged fat: When good fats go bad

A good fat can become bad if heat, light, or oxygen damages it. Oils that are high in polyunsaturated fats (such as flaxseed oil) must be refrigerated and kept in an opaque container. Never use oils, seeds, or nuts after they begin to smell or taste rank or bitter. Cooking at high heat with some monounsaturated or polyunsaturated oils can also damage the fat.