Macronutrients in our diet:
Dietary Fats and Your Health
You probably know that reducing the fats in your diet can lessen the risk of several chronic diseases, including obesity, coronary heart disease, and some forms of cancer.
But not all types of fats have the same effects on your health. For one thing, fat helps you feel full, and gives you sustained energy over time, rather than just in a burst at the start as with carbohydrates, which then leaves you feeling drained and hungry again ( a sugar high). We don’t think it is any coincidence that as soon as Americans started to adopt a ‘fat-free’ diet, they began to get more obese than any previous generation.
In general, the fats you eat can be divided into two categories: “bad” fats (saturated and trans fats) and “good” fats (monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats).
No food contains just one type of fat. Instead, the fat in a particular food is classified as saturated or unsaturated based on the type of fat that predominates.
For example, olive oil is typically thought of as a monounsaturated fat, but it also contains some polyunsaturated and saturated fats. The same holds true for meat, which is considered high in saturated fat but also contains healthier fats.
Then there are trans fats, thought to be the most dangerous, yet the cornerstone of the fast food and snack industries.
So what does it all mean, and how can you tell the difference between a good fat and a bad one? We will discuss this in the next section.
