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What fats are bad and what are good?
Let’s see which fats are good for the body. Fat is one of the key ingredients in a healthy diet. Many people still mistakenly believe that fat is evil, because it is the most high-calorie, and cut it back in their diets. However, fats are different: harmful or healthy. And some of them are vital for us.
For example, without omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids, our existence is impossible, and fat-soluble vitamins will not be absorbed at all if you do not eat fatty foods.
Can I eat fats while losing weight?
In the past, the rationale behind the need to reduce fat intake in order to lose weight was that fat contains about twice the calories per gram of carbohydrates or proteins. In fact, foods like avocados, vegetable oils, nuts and seeds, and oily wild fish help the body absorb stored fat. They improve appetite, make you feel full and satisfied after a meal, and improve your mood.
Eating healthy fats while losing weight is not just healthy, but also a necessary measure. Healthy fats strengthen the immune and cardiovascular systems, improve metabolism and brain function, restore hormonal balance and reduce harmful inflammation in all body systems.
List of foods containing the most healthy fats
Gradually, studying a controversial topic and pondering which foods contain healthy fats, I formed a squeeze of recommendations for their correct choice:
1. Choose omega-3 fatty acids. Essential omega-3 fatty acids fight inflammation. The body is not able to produce them on its own, so you need to get them from the diet. Good sources are wild salmon, walnuts, and chia seeds. It is very important to store your omega-3 sources properly so that they do not oxidize and lose their beneficial properties. Read more about this here.
Prefer only cold-pressed olive oil. Oil refining or processing processes such as, for example, oil extraction with solvents, discoloration, deodorization (when oil is deodorized by distilling it with steam at temperatures above 230 degrees), hydrogenation (in which hydrogen saturated trans fats are widely used in cooking) make oil not only useless for health, but also often dangerous. Don’t be afraid that olive oil is fat. The fact is that olive oil is basically a monounsaturated fat that is essential for our health. It contains not harmful, but healthy fats.
2. Look for a rich taste. “Any real oil must taste, color and smell,” says Lisa Howard, author of The Big Book on Healthy Oils (The Big Book of Healthy Cooking ). The highly processed and “refined” oil is tasteless, almost odorless and has a transparent color.
3. Pay attention to the quality of animal fats. Butter from milk of cows fed with natural feed. Ghee from which milk solids with lactose and casein have been removed. These are all good sources of animal fat.
4. Look for variety. Olive oil, for example, will provide a healthy dose of oleocanthal, an antioxidant with proven anti-inflammatory properties. But there are other options for vegetable oils that can be used instead of olive oil: sunflower, sesame, linseed. By adding sliced avocado to a salad, you will help your body better absorb carotenoids from other foods in that salad and provide an extra dose of fiber and protein.
If you stick to the advice to eat healthy fats for weight loss, then you will most likely prepare salads. Remember the extravirginonly recommendation. Only cold-pressed olive oil retains its beneficial properties. Several studies show that olive oil can fight certain types of cancer, prevent diabetes, lower blood pressure, strengthen the immune system, improve skin health and slow down the aging process. But above all, we value olive oil for the fact that it significantly reduces the risk of strokes and heart attacks, protecting our cardiovascular system from atherosclerosis and “bad” cholesterol. It’s all about the high content of oleic acid, polyphenols and natural antioxidant vitamin E. Or cook on coconut.
5. Monitor the quality of the fat source. If stored improperly, oil releases chemicals that cause oxidative stress in human cells and can trigger degenerative diseases. It is also important to choose organic fats: toxins are often concentrated in fats and oils.
6. Avoid high temperatures while cooking. If oil is heated to the temperature at which it begins to smoke, free radicals and other toxic compounds are formed in it.
Thus, taking into account all the useful advice and choosing what is to your taste, that is, combining theory and practice, you can decide for yourself which fats are the most useful for the body.