Fat facts, for optimum health

HOW YOU CAN USE FATS AND OILS FOR OPTIMUM HEALTH

High-quality fats and oils are one of the most essential foods to consume every day. They are needed for your brain and nervous system, for energy production and for making most of the body�s vital hormones.

Fat for fitness

Fats and oils are composed of chains of molecules called fatty acids that are composed mainly of carbon atoms. They are high energy foods, providing about 9 calories per gram of fat. This is more than twice the energy content of sugars and starches. 

Because of this reason some of the nutritionists and diet planners think that fats will make you fat. However, it is not so when one knows how and when to choose them properly. The idea of avoiding all high-quality fats because they may make you fat, or that quality fats clog your arteries, is nonsense, one of the worst nutritional errors of our time.

In fact, children, in particular, absolutely require plenty of fats and oils, particularly EPA and DHA. These are two omega-3 essential fatty acids needed for development of the nervous system. Quality fats and oils are also essential for transporting all vitamins, minerals and hormones in your the body cells.

Also the right amount and types of high-quality fats and oils will not drive up your insulin level or will not create insulin resistance to make you fat, as do sugar and carbohydrates. 

Fats, also do not rob your body of minerals, as does eating sugars and many starches, Instead, fats and oils make our food taste good.

Some basic recommendations.

1. Fats should be eaten in the raw state whenever possible, or not overcooked. Most are quite damaged when cooked too long, and especially when overcooked, such as with deep frying, hard-boiling eggs, pasteurizing dairy products, cooking cheese and frying foods.

fats for health

2. The best fats are generally those derived from animal sources. These are the most yang, they contain the most essential omega-3 fatty acids in almost all cases, and include:

� Meats (tallow, chicken fat, goose fat, duck fat, or others).

� Raw dairy products (butter, cream, whole milk or full-fat cheese or yogurts).

� Sardines (some others such as salmon, tuna and others have some quality fats, but are too high in mercury to be healthful foods).

3. The next best, for general use, are olive oil, and perhaps a little raw and only very fresh flax seed and hemp seed oil. The problem with these is they are often not quite as good as the fish oils for omega-3 fatty acids, and they go rancid very quickly. They should be in capsules or pearls, ideally, to maintain freshness.

4. Vegetable oils - those derived from grains, beans and seeds - are not as good today, for many reasons. They are usually quite refined, heated, and extracted with toxic chemicals. Even the cold-pressed oils are not that good. In addition, they rarely contain any omega-3 fatty acids, while containing too many omega-6 and omega-9 fatty acids. They include:

� Grain oils: (corn oil)

� Legume oils: (peanut oil, or others). Soy oil is almost always a chemically-extracted product and not very healthful, though it is a good source of vitamin E, along with wheat germ oil and rice bran oil.

� Seed oils: (sesame, sunflower, flax, hemp, chia, borage, black current, primrose, canola, and others). These are also usually refined and chemically extracted, but they are nutritious. Hemp and flax oils are high in omega-3 fatty acids as well.

5. Oils from fruits and nuts like almond, coconut, palm, macadamia, hazelnut and perhaps others are not recommended for regular use, although a little now and then is fine. 

Coconut oil, along with coconut milk and coconut water, is highly praised today due to its high content of lauric acid, a natural infection fighter. It also contains MCT or medium chain triglygcerides. These appear to assist energy production in some diseases such as Alzheimer�s disease, and can help one gain weight easily if one is malnourished.

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