Fats: The Misunderstood Macronutrient

The last of the three macros that I would like to talk about is fat, which has gotten a bad reputation over the years and from my experience is highly misunderstood by most of the population. I remember when I was growing up, there was a huge push for fat-free or reduced-fat food products in order to help people lose weight and live a healthier lifestyle. It has recently come to light that researchers in the field of nutrition were paid off to say that fat was the enemy of obesity, when all along they knew the real culprit was sugar! It is a very bad idea to restrict your daily fat intake below certain levels, and despite what you might have heard, all fat is not evil. I will explain the differences between good and bad fat, and why you need certain amounts when planning your nutrition plan.

Why Do We Need Fat?

So why do we need fat? Fat is required by our body for several important processes, including but not limited to:

• It is a major source of energy.

• It helps you absorb vitamins and minerals.

• It is needed to build cell membranes and the sheath surrounding nerves.

• It is essential for blood clotting, muscle movement, and inflammation.

• Are needed for the production of some hormones.

• Helps control how the body responds to insulin.

So, as you can see, totally cutting out fat from our diets would impact all these crucial functions that we rely on to stay healthy. However, just like carbohydrates, all fats are not equal and can also affect us negatively. We are going to cover the bad types of fat, and the health problems they can cause, and then go into the beneficial fat we need incorporate into our diet.

Fat and Weight Gain: Clearing the Myths

Throughout the years, the most repeated myth that I have heard is that fat turns to fat. The belief is that the more fat you eat, the more body fat you are going to accumulate. Research has shown that the total amount of fat in the diet is not linked with weight or disease. It is the type of fat and the total calories in the diet that really matter. The reason that high fat diets cause most people to gain weight is because of the dense calorie content. One gram of fat has 9 calories, compared to 4 calories for both carbohydrates and protein! So, with over double the calorie content, your daily calories add up very quickly, the more fat your diet contains. The main attraction for most people when it comes to eating fat is the taste; fat gives great flavor to many of the foods we enjoy eating. Hopefully, I can show you a healthy alternative to eating bad fat, and you can find foods that still taste great but have the important fat that we need.

The Bad Fats

Trans Fats

The first “bad” fat that I am going to talk about is trans fats. This is the worst type of fat we can ingest and was banned by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2018. It was linked to increases in LDL cholesterol (bad), and a reduction in the amount of HDL cholesterol (good) in the bloodstream. It was shown to cause inflammation, which is linked to heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and other chronic conditions. The reason I mention this type of fat is because even though it is banned, as recently as 2022 some foods contain trace amounts of trans fat depending on the processing methods used.

Saturated Fat

The second type of fat that is considered negative is saturated fat. This is quite common in the American diet and comes from red meat, dairy foods such as cheese and milk, coconut oil and many other baked goods. This type of fat is solid at room temperature, and I am sure you’ve seen it when something you’ve eaten has cooled down and you get that white-colored solid substance that forms that used to be liquid when you ate it, and it was warmed up. The word “saturated” refers to the number of hydrogen atoms, but there is no reason to get that technical when learning about nutrition. A diet high in saturated fat can drive up cholesterol, tipping the balance more towards LDL, which is the type that can clog up arteries and cause heart disease. Once again you are going to have to resort to reading the nutrition label to find the total amount of saturated fat in whatever you are eating if you are trying to really stay healthy. The recommended amount by nutritionist is less than 10% of your total calories a day coming from saturated fat. I personally do not track the exact types of fat in my total fat for the day. I just pick items that contain healthy fats (which we will cover later) and hit total fat macros for the day. If you are diagnosed with any type of cardiovascular issues, or high cholesterol, it might be beneficial for you to pay close attention to the types of fat you are getting within your total fat amount for the day.

The Good Fats

Monounsaturated Fat

Now we are going to move onto the good fats that you should try to include in your diet if possible. The first one is monounsaturated fat. I am only going to cover this because these provide a healthy alternative when cooking with oil. Olive oil, peanut oil, canola oil and avocados all contain this type of fat. The Mediterranean diet contains a high amount of these fats, and studies have concluded that they have lower rates of heart disease even with a high-fat diet. You can try to include these in your diet instead of other types of oil that have saturated fat.

Essential vs Non-Essential Fatty Acids

There are two types of fatty acids: essential and non-essential. The body can create nonessential fatty acids by converting amino acids in the foods a person eats. However, the body cannot create essential fatty acids. It can only get them directly from food sources. Essential fatty acids include linoleic acid (LA), an omega-6 fatty acid, and alpha-linolenic acid (ALA), an omega-3 fatty acid. All the fats we have covered so far are non-essential.

Polyunsaturated Fat: The Most Important

The final type of fat, and most important for nutrition, is Polyunsaturated fat. Polyunsaturated fat is responsible for most of the positive benefits I listed in the first part of this section. There are two main types of Polyunsaturated fat: Omega-3 and Omega-6 fatty acids. These fats have also been shown to lower LDL cholesterol as well as triglycerides. Foods rich in Omega-3 fatty acids include fatty fish such as salmon (one of my favorites, and almost a daily habit), mackerel and sardines, flaxseeds, walnuts, and soybean oil. Foods rich in Omega-6 fatty acids include vegetable oils such as safflower, soybean sunflower and corn oils as well as almonds. I also take an Omega supplement every day in the form of fish oil-pills, that aren’t very expensive. One fact that I was not aware of until recently, was that Omega fatty acids improve insulin sensitivity, which we talked about in the carbohydrate section. This is just another example of how the processes in the body are all related and highly dependent on our nutrition plan!