Truth and Myths about FAT

What is Fat ?

Fat is an essential part of our diet and nutrition. Our body requires small amount of good fats to function and help prevent disease. 

However too much fats, especially the wrong type of fat can cause serious health problems like heart disease, obesity, high blood pressure

Why we need Fat ?

- Fat is concentrated source of energy. The body can pull on its fat reserve during lean times of energy and converting it into glucose

- Fat provides cushion to help protect our vital organs

- Fats enables our body to process vitamins A,D,E, K 

- Fats contain essential Fatty Acids good for our heart and immune system and cognitive system in the brain

What happen if we have too much fat ?

- If we have too much fats from our diets more than what our body need, the unused calories will be stored as fat and will cause weight gain

- Even though fat cushion the vital organ, too much fat will make our heart and other organ work more

- Saturated fats are worse than unsaturated fats can increase the risk of heart disease and high cholesterol level

Good Fat Vs Bad Fat

Saturated and Unsaturated fat

Saturated Fat molecules form regular shapes that clump together easily therefore it's more likely to stick to the sides of arteries and allow other saturated fat molecules to build up and gradually can clog the arteries leading to high blood pressure and making the heart difficult to pump oxygen rich blood around the body.

Saturated Fat mostly found in the animal products (meats, egg, dairy products), many manufactured and processed food

Unsaturated fat molecules on the opposite form irregular shapes that cannot clump together so easily.

Unsaturated fat mostly found in the vegetable sources (olive, sun flower, soya oil) and oily fishes

Cholesterol

LDL and HDL

Cholesterol is a type of fat found in the blood and produced by the liver. It's vital in the body, it's a building block for other essential chemicals that the body produces.

Cholesterol is carried around the body in the bloodstream combined with proteins called lipoproteins.

There are two types : LDL (Low density Lipoprotein) and HDL (High density lipoprotein)

LDL is often called bad cholesterol while HDL is considered good one as it can remove extra bd cholesterol from bloodstream.

A common cause of high cholesterol levels is the consumption of too much saturated fat.

Truth and Myths

Myths 1 : Eating any amount of fats will make us gain weight

Fact : No doubt, if we eat a lot of high fat food all the time, it will increase our weight, but if we watch our fat intake, we should be fine

Myths 2 : Fat is bad for us

Fact :  Like carbs, there are high quality and low quality fats, we should aim for high quality fats like salmon, nuts, flax seeds

Myths 3 : Fat has no purpose

Fact : We need adequate amount of fats to support normal brain and body function well, our body needs fats also for hormone production and body temperature regulation