Healthy Eating Tip #2 – Choose the Right Fats

“Fats from nuts, seeds, grains, fish and liquid oils (including olive, canola, soybean, corn, sunflower, peanut, and other vegetable oils) are good for you, especially when you eat them in place of saturated and trans fat. The all-fat-is-bad message has started a huge national experiment, with us as the guinea pigs. As people cut back on fat, they usually eat more carbohydrates. In America today, that means more highly refined or easily digested foods like sugar, white bread, white rice, and potatoes. This switch usually fails to yield the hoped-for weight loss or lower cholesterol levels. Instead it often leads to weight gain and potentially dangerous changes in blood fats—lower high-density lipoprotein (HDL), the so-called good protective cholesterol, and higher triglycerides (a major type of blood fat). Substituting unsaturated fats for saturated fats, though, improves cholesterol levels across the board. It may also protect the heart against rhythm disturbances that can end in sudden death. The bottom line is this: It is perfectly fine to get more than 30% of your daily calories from fats as long as most of those fats are unsaturated. The Healthy Eating Pyramid (below) highlights the importance of keeping saturated and trans fats to a minimum by putting red meat, whole-milk dairy products, butter, and hydrogenated vegetable oils in the “Use Sparingly” section at the top.”

                                                          

                       Dr. Walter Willett

                       Professor of Nutrition, Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health

I will expand on this quote by discussing more on fats in my next blog later this week! Until then, here is Dr. Willett's Healthy Eating Pyramid, an improvement from the outdated USDA pyramid. 

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                                                                                             Shahir Masri, M.S.