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 fats can be good for you? The trick is to know which fats are best for our health. If we deprive our bodies of fats, we will actually crave them and end up eating the wrong fats.

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

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

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.