Fats - The Good, The Bad, and The What-The-Hell-Is-That-Even-Made-Of?

Fats are a very important part of our diet. Let me rephrase that slightly- The RIGHT fats are an important part of our diets. In fact, without a little good fat in our diets we would not live very long. Fats are crucial to many physiological functions, mainly acting as a source of energy and as a conduit for crucial fat-soluable vitamins such as vitamins A, D, E and K. Fats are also responsible for helping to maintain healthy skin and cell membrane structure! When selecting any food product, it is always helpful to know the difference between the 4 major groups of fats. Monounsaturated, Polyunsaturated, Saturated, and Trans fats.

Mono and Polyunsaturated fats are considered your 'good fats' while Saturated and Trans fats are really the fats you should be limiting and excluding respectively, as much as possible if you're trying to lose weight or maintain a healthy weight. The good fats can be found in foods like natural olive oils, avocados, nuts (almonds, peanuts, macadamia nuts, hazelnuts, pecans, cashews), and by extension natural nut butters, seeds such as sunflower, sesame, pumpkin and
flax, fatty fish (salmon, tuna, mackerel, herring, trout, sardines) and tofu. These good fats actually help boost a healthy metabolism and encourage your body to burn more calories as well as helping prevent heart disease and/or strokes, type-2 diabetes and boost your mental development and immune system!

The bad fats, found in most commercially prepared products, margarines, vegetable shortenings, packaged snack foods, are the fats that are proven to raise LDL levels (Low-Density Lipoprotein or bad cholesterol) and lower HDL (High-Density Lipoprotein or good cholesterol) leading to the very bad health conditions most people wish to avoid.
Always check your labels. Remember this, the good fats should make up about 20%-35% of your daily calories-from-fat intake while saturated fats should not exceed 10% of your daily calories-from-fat intake. If possible, avoid trans fats completely.

For an easy way to differentiate between the good and bad fats remember this- most unsaturated fats are liquid at room temperature while most saturated and trans fats are solid at room temperature.

Trans fats are made through a purely chemical process of 'partial hydrogenation.' This means that an actually healthy fats is packed full of hydrogen atoms and converted into a now unhealthy, solid fat. Think of it this way. Your probably not going to wash an entire pound of crisco down your kitchen sink. You know that drain will clog. But olive oil can go through the pipes with ease, causing no issue. The same goes for your arteries. The more solid the fat, the more likely it is your arteries can develop a clot!

Now that we know the difference... making wise decisions just got that much easier! So 'If at room-temperature it doesn't melt, be prepared to loosen your belt, but if at room-temperature it's in a liquid state, you'll be healthy and looking great!'

This statement bodes true for most saturated fats, however there is an exception as not all saturated fats are created equally. The operative word here being 'CREATED'. Coconut oil, is a very tasty NATURAL oil extracted from the 'meat' of mature coconuts harvested from the coconut palm. 1 tsp or about 4 g, can actually be up to 3.9g unsaturated fat or 19% of your daily saturated fat intake. This being said, the benefits of coconut oil make these numbers seem far less daunting. Firstly, close to 50% of the fat found in coconut oil, 'lauric acid' actually has many health-promoting properties.

Lauric acid is what's known as an MCFA or MCT (Medium-chain Fatty Acid or Medium-chain Triglyceride.) Most common vegetable and seed oils are made up of LCFA's or LCT's (Long-chain Fatty Acids or Long-Chain Triglycerides.) These LCT's are large molecules, which means they are harder for your body to process and break down and will usually just be stored in your body as fat. However, MCT's are a shorter chain fatty acid, thus a smaller molecule AND very easy for your body to break down. Your liver will be able to burn the fat immediately, converting it into energy - much like the process of carbohydrates but without the accompanying insulin spike! So while having a higher saturated fat content, the fat is easily converted into energy, not stored as fat in your body AND significantly helps boost your metabolism! Here's another plus.. When lauric acid is in your body, it is converted into the monoglyceride 'monolaurin.' The benefits of monolaurin are amazing. In your body, it exhibits non-toxic antifungal, antibacterial, antimicrobial and antiprotozoal properties. Basically, monolaurin disrupts the lipid membranes in micro-organisms such as bacteria, viruses and fungi essentially destroying them. Monolaurin compound can be an effective combatant for fungal diseases such as ringworm and athlete's foot, as well as a great way to fight 'candida albicans' better know as either oral or genital yeast infections!

On a slight aside, here's a tidbit of info on cooking with olive oil. Olive oil is best used in salad dressing and only for sauteing foods at low to medium heats. When you use olive oil at a high temperature of cooking you actually begin to change the chemical properties of the oil itself. Olive oil is a monounsaturated fat containing many forms of 'phenols.' These forms of carbolic acid are great for your body, however up to 80% of the dihydroxyphenols are lost when the oil is heated using high heats. The majority of the vitamin E also goes out the door with the heat application as well. Olive oil also has a much lower smoke-point than other cooking oils. This means that it will burn at a much lower temperature. When the oil begins to burn, chemical changes occur within the molecules. 'Oxygen radicals' begin to form quite rapidly. These radicals are known to have carcinogenic effects which have been linked to cancers of all sorts. Just breathing in the fumes from burning oil can be dangerous. So keep that olive oil handy for your homemade salad dressing or make sure you use low temperatures while cooking with it... Really.. try the coconut oil..

So the next time you need to buy cooking oil, and yes I have replaced ALL cooking oils with coconut oil, think on it for a minute. Will you buy a cheap, lower fat-content oil that will actually make your body STORE fat, or a slightly higher and SATURATED fat coconut oil that will boost your immune system, give you all the good preventative 'Anti-' benefits (that costly prescription drugs don't do half as effectively if you do need them), and OH, did I mention the benefits to your skin and hair!? I challenge you to try coconut oil. You can buy it at most Superstores (Loblaws), Sobeys, Bulk Barn (great if you only want to try a small bit) and any hippie health-food store
xoxo