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"The Skinny on Fats: A Guide to Help You Understand How Fats Help & Hurt Our Health"

By Max Hoyt

There's a lot of information to absorb out there regarding fats: What's good fat? What's bad fat? How much? What kind?

It can be a long process to learn everything you need to know in order to make informed choices in your diet. We hear so much about fat. It's on the news, in the magazines, and often we get conflicting information so it can be frustrating to navigate the Fat maze.

I am going to give you a crash course on fat. We'll go through the different fats, what they do in your body, where they come from and which ones you should watch out for. The information on Fats I give you will help you be an informed consumer and once you know what to look for you, can start eating healthier.

The first type of fat we'll be looking at is Unsaturated fats. Unsaturated Fats come from non-animal sources such as vegetables and nuts/legumes. It is a liquid at room temperature. Vegetable oils are unsaturated fats. Unsaturated fats come in two types: Polyunsaturated fats, and Monounsaturated fats.

They include most nuts, olives, avocados, and fatty fish, like salmon. Polyunsaturated fats are found in greatest amounts in corn, soybean, and safflower oils, and many types of nuts. They have the same number of calories as other types of fat, and may still contribute to weight gain if eaten in excess.

Monounsaturated fat is found in canola oil, olives and olive oil, nuts, seeds, and avocados. Eating food that has more monounsaturated fat instead of saturated fat may help lower cholesterol and reduce heart disease risk. However, it has the same number of calories as other types of fat, and may still contribute to weight gain if eaten in excess.

What does all this mean? It means that in your diet there is a recommended daily allowance (RDA) for fats. However, most of your fat should come from these two sources, You may have heard these fats referred to as "heart healthy" fats. What is meant by that is the link between diets high in these "veggie fats" and lower LDL cholesterol levels in the people that adhere to this.

Also, these fats do not clog your arteries the way that saturated fats do, but we'll get to that in just a second. The important thing to remember is that you are still eating fat so it's very important not to eat too much.

Now we'll look at Saturated Fat. Usually solid at room temperature, saturated fat is commonly found in animal products, such as meat, poultry, egg yolks, and dairy products. It is also found in some vegetable products, such as coconut and cocoa. Too much saturated fat will clog your heart's arteries by raising your blood cholesterol level.

Your body does use saturated fats (and unsaturated fats) for energy, hormone production, maintaining cellular membranes and for organ padding so in small amounts it is okay. But our western diet tends to give us way more saturated fat than our body needs to perform these functions. According to the American Heart Association, you want to keep your daily saturated fat intake to just 7-10% of your total fat intake. It won't take much to reach that limit so you have to be really vigilant.

Trans Fat is the only fat that does not have any use in our bodies. It does not occur in nature and there is no RDA for it. You want to limit your exposure to this as much as you can. Trans Fatty Acids (TFA's) are the result of a process called Hydrogenation.

This process adds a hydrogen atom to the chemical structure of unsaturated fat in order to achieve a solid state at room temperature instead of a liquid. This effectively turns an unsaturated fat into a saturated fat. This vastly improves shelf life for the many products that use this method and it keeps transport costs down so food manufacturers jumped all over this many years ago.

Now however, we know that these fats are the worst of the worse. Not only do they raise your LDL (bad) cholesterol, but they actually lower your HDL (bad) cholesterol! As of 2006, the FDA requires food manufacturers to list Trans Fat if it has more than 1 gram per serving. Some products will say "trans fat - 0g" on their nutrition label, but if you look to the ingredients you will see Partially hydrogenated soybean and/or cottonseed oil.

That's your indicator that it does contain Trans fat. It may be less than a gram but remember, you want all of this out of your diet. Trans fats are in many things you probably eat. Cakes, cookies, chips, crackers, pie, even some breads, margarine, fried potatoes, popcorn and some shortenings have Trans Fats in them. There are more and more healthy alternatives so if you search, you will find them.

About the Author:

Max Hoyt is an IFPA certified Personal Trainer training in Orlando. He is a regular contributor to Ch.13 Health & Fitness TV segments. his website is www.orlandofitcamp.com