Good Fats For Great Health

Good fats have so many positive health benefits which I am sure you will find really interesting. Did you know that fat can be good for you? The trick is to know which ones are best for our health. If we deprive our bodies, we will actually crave them and end up eating the wrong ones.

The perfect diet should not have more than 20% fat in it, but we need to know what kinds we should eat and which ones to avoid.

There are 2 kinds of fat: saturated (hard) and unsaturated. It is not essential for us to eat saturated fat and eating too much can be harmful to our health. Unsaturated is the good fat.

There are 2 kinds of unsaturated fats:

• Polyunsaturated fat which is always liquid, is an essential fat. They are the omega 3 and omega 6 fats – also known as essential fatty acids and are found in fish and nut and seed oils. Essential fats which are omega 3 fatty acids and omega 6 fatty acids help reduce the risk of cancer, fatigue, heart disease, allergies, eczema, Alzheimer’s disease, PMS and more.
• Monounsaturated fat is not essential, so it’s best to eat foods with a high polyunsaturated fat content. Omega 9 is a monounsaturated fat - not essential, but not harmful – only in excess. Olive oil is a good source. Olive oil is great because it is mostly unrefined which is better for you than refined oils such as sunflower oil

So you see, good fats are important in so many ways – really contributing to our overall good health. I know for me it was wonderful to discover that I could enjoy foods which contain these fats knowing that they are so good for me. I just have to remember to eat them in moderation to help maintain a healthy body weight.

Cooking tip:

If you fry, sauté or bake foods, it is best to use a saturated fat (coconut butter or coconut oil is best) or a monounsaturated fat (olive oil is best).The reason for this is that polyunsaturated fats are easily damaged with high-temperature cooking and generate oxidising free radicals….which are not good for your health.