Fat has been flogged—and continue to be flogged—as dietary enemy No-1. The world wide paranoia has fueled a growth industry whose exertions sometimes border on the schizophrenic – fat free ice cream, egg-less mayonnaise.
Trapped in this mind set, it’s easy for us to forget that fat is an essential component in a healthy diet. What’s more, it’s found whether in big or small or trace amounts in virtually every natural food on earth, so that it would be well nigh impossible for anyone to sit down and compose a truly fat free diet.
Among the different function that fat performs in the body
· Fat is the most concentrated source of energy (calories). One gram of fat delivers 9 calories.
· Fat is necessary for your body to be able to absorb the fat soluble vitamins( A,D, E and K)
· Fat provides the essential fatty acids that we all need in small amounts.
· Finally, as everybody know, fat is what makes food taste good. It also brings aroma and texture.
Fat becomes troublesome only when we over indulge our Fat tooth, even more so when we over indulge in the so called “Bad Fats”- Saturated Fats- which are the ones that clog our arteries and put us at risk for heart disease. Here’s what you need to know about the various types of fat and how and why you must control your intake of them:
· Saturated Fatsare those that are solid at room temperature i.e. the main fats of meats, whole milk and dairy products and some vegetable oil such as coconut, palm and palm kernel oils. They are saturated with hydrogen- that is, they have a hydrogen atom at every binding site.
· Monounsaturated fats are those that have a single pair of hydrogen atoms missing- for instance the main fats in groundnut, olive and canola oils.
· Polyunsaturated fats have two or more pairs of hydrogen atoms missing for instance, the main fats in corn, sunflower, safflower and soyabean oils as well as in fish oils.
All fats are mixture of all three kinds of fatty acids- it’s just that one type predominates more than the others. Thus groundnut oil may be called monounsaturated oil, but it does not contain both saturated and polyunsaturated fat, too
What chiefly need to know about the difference between these fats is that saturated fats increase your risk of heart disease where as unsaturated fats(in controlled amounts) do not and in fact, have protective effect. Saturated fats raise your blood level of cholesterol which collects on artery walls, eventually constricting blood flow, especially to heart.
A fats that’ often lost sight of: the saturated fats in our foods have a greater adverse effect on blood cholesterol than does the cholesterol in our foods.
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