From Your Health Journal…..”An excellent article I wanted to promote written by Dr. Brian Parr for the Aiken Standard entitled Know your nutrients: Fats. This is an excellent written article about the macro-nutrients, which include carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. This article focused primarily on fats, which does get a bad rap with many people looking to eat healthy. The truth is, there are good and bad fats. Some bad fats are hidden in many foods as they increase shelf life of the product, add texture, and add some great taste. But, there are many good fats that maintain and regulate body temperature, maintain hormonal levels, insulate the body, protect body organs, help with the absorption and distribution of vitamins A,D,E, & K, and strengthen our muscles, tendons, ligaments, bones, and joints. Please visit the Aiken Standard web site (link provided below) to read the complete article. It was well written and very educational.”

From the article…..

Since March is National Nutrition Month, I am writing about the major nutrients in our diets: carbohydrates, fats and protein. Last week I provided information about carbohydrates, the major energy source in our diets. This week I will write about fats, including saturated fats, unsaturated (monounsaturated, polyunsaturated and trans) fats, omega-3 fats and cholesterol.

Fats tend to get a bad reputation since they are higher in calories than carbohydrates and protein and are associated with obesity and heart disease when eaten in excess. While this is true and some dietary fats are detrimental to your health, others have health benefits. These benefits are linked to the effect of the fats on the LDL (“bad”) and HDL (“good”) cholesterol in your blood.

Cholesterol is only found in animals and is associated with an increased risk of heart disease. Saturated fats are primarily consumed in animals as well as tropical oils such as palm and coconut oil and tend to raise LDL (“bad”) cholesterol. In fact, saturated fat is more strongly linked to heart disease than is cholesterol.

Unsaturated fats are found in plant oils. Polyunsaturated fats tend to lower both LDL and HDL cholesterol. Monounsaturated fats are associated with lower LDL, but they do not lower HDL cholesterol – this is better. Oils high in polyunsaturated fats include corn and soybean oil while olive and canola oils are rich in monounsaturated fats.

To read the complete article…..Click here