Fats

Fat. Where do we begin. Fat has gotten both a bad rap and a good rap over the years, with only some it it deserved. Without fat your body wouldn't be able to transport fat soluble vitamins, and your organs wouldn't be as well protected from the jolts and jars from playing in your latest rugby match. With too much fat you're possibly at risk for a number of ailments, although at this point I don't think it's well enough understood. Let's look at the fat facts as we know them.

Types of Dietary Fats

Triglycerides
Saturated
Monounsaturated
Polyunsaturated
Trans
Omega 3
Omega 6

How Much Fat You Should Eat

This is really the million dollar question, isn't it? Here's a sampling of current recommendations:

• The Atkins diet (or similar ones) tell you that you should eat lots of it to help keep your appetite under control.
• Other, more conventional diets recommend as little as possible, sometimes as low as 10% of your total calories.
• Most 'mainstream' authorities and a lot of the more recent diet plans recommend something in the 25-30% range.

So who's right? Common sense check time. If you've ever tried to eat a diet at either the high or low extremes, then you know it's simply not sustainable. If it's not sustainable, then there's a reason for that. Your body simply wasn't made to consume those proportions. You'll find me, and most of the quality health related research, supporting the 25-30% range.

What Fats You Should Eat

First of all, avoid trans fat like the plague. Why? It's a man made, 'plasticized' fat. The 'trans' part of the name is a molecular way of saying it has unnatural bends in the molecule, and because they're unnatural your body doesn't use them properly.

Luckily for us, new labeling laws make it easier than ever to see how much trans fat is in a product, and also have forced manufacturers to find alternatives. UN-luckily for us, the laws make it possible for manufacturers to label a product as 0 grams of trans fat if there is less than .5 grams in a serving. Adjust the serving size down enough, and viola! Less than .5 grams of trans fat per serving. Pesky labelling problem solved.

So what can you do? Read the label further. Anything that says 'partially hydrogenated' in the ingredient list has trans fat. Then find an alternative product, or better yet cook your own.

The data on other fats is less clear, in my opinion. Most scientists have accepted the dogma that saturated fats are all bad, and should be avoided. But some scientists point out that before the turn of the century people ate much saturated fat and lived free of heart disease.