|
One of the most avoided foods in the average American diet is fat. It is not safe to group all types of fat into one pot and say it's all bad. Not all fats make you gain weight, in fact, some may help you lose it. A study showed that essential fatty acids, the ones your body doesn't produce on its own, were missing in over 60% of Americans. So let's break fats down into two basic types. There are saturated and unsaturated fats. Saturating the fat means adding more hydrogen to the carbon chain. With each additional hydrogen added, another carbon to carbon bond becomes single, instead of a double bond. So saturation can refer to either the abundance of hydrogen attached or lack of double bonds. If there is such a thing as a good fat, and a bad fat, saturated fats would be the bad fats. Jordan S. Rubin, the author of The Maker's Diet argues that some saturated fats are actually good for you, and this may be true, but the majority of the scientific community refers negatively to saturated fats. Have you ever heard of hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated food? It's in so many of our foods today. Hydrogenation refers to the process of refining the fats in food to add hydrogen to them. Adding hydrogen makes for a better consistency and shelf life than other fats that are healthier. Stay away from hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated fats since these fats have been linked to a myriad of negative health effects including cancer. Another thing to avoid on the food labels are trans fatty acids. Trans refers to the structural arrangement of the molecule. Trans fatty acids are technically unsaturated, but they mimic many of the properties of saturated fatty acids. For some reason the body prefers the cis-configuration of a fatty acid instead of the trans-configuration. It is well accepted that unsaturated fats have positive health benefits, but what some people don't agree on is whether polyunsaturated or monounsaturated fats are better. Fatty acids with one double bond of carbon are monounsaturated, while those with many double bounds of carbon are polyunsaturated. I would be committing a major disservice if I didn't mention one of the most beneficial, researched unsaturated oils known--flax seed oil. Flax seed has been shown successful in improving or completely alleviating heart disease, stroke, diabetes, high blood pressure, auto-immune
|
|
