5 Things You Never Knew About Fat

Fat is often considered to be unhealthy. The first thing you will most probably think of when planning a diet is to cut down on fat. But to really do that effectively and eat fat healthily you need to know and understand a couple of things.

1. Not all fats are unhealthy.
You can’t say that fat is in general and always unhealthy. There are different types of fat, and some are just simply healthier than others. Fats that are part of foods which also supply other nutrients (e.g. vegetable oils, nuts, avocados, grain), for example, are healthier than the fat in cakes, fried stuff and chocolate.

2. Fat is very important for our body.
Living totally fat-free would be dangerous. Being the nutrient highest in energy, fat is the main source of energy for our body. It’s important for cell growth, especially in our nervous system, and some essential vitamins (e.g. vitamin A which is important for your eyes) our body can only absorb when they come in combination with fat.

3. Our body doesn’t need much fat.
There is absolutely no need to stress about how much fat our body needs. With our type of diet, it’s really unlikely that anyone would eat too little fat. The problem is rather that we usually eat way too much fat and especially too much of the unhealthier ones. Only a third of your daily needed calories you should get from fat. Everything we eat too much, our body eagerly stores as fat.

4. Vegetables also contain fat.
The good thing about veggies is that vegetable fat consists mainly in unsaturated fats which are healthier than the saturated fats predominating in meat and dairy products. That’s one of the reasons why vegetarians rarely have trouble with overweight.

5. Fat is in more foods than butter and oil.
The so-called hidden fats are lurking, for example, in meat, polony, milk products and cheese, even in nuts, roasted muesli and avocados. You need to eat these foods in moderation as well.
To put it in a nutshell, eating fat healthily means that you should reduce fat wherever you can. Also consider the hidden fats. Consume anything containing animal fats in moderation and focus instead rather on vegetable fats, especially the monounsaturated ones which are the healthiest. You find them for example in olive and rape-seed oil. Prefer fat that is part of foods which supply other nutrients as well, and leave the cakes and chocolates for every now and then.