Fat Is Your Friend (?)

Fat is your friend, or at least it was for many eons, when day to day life was just that, day to day, and man lived either in feast or famine.

When considering the evolution of man, our bodies compensated for the unpredictability and uncertainty of the hunter/gatherer lifestyle by learning to store kcal energy in the fat of our bodies. 

cal (small calorie) = the amount of energy required to raise the temperature of one gram of water by one degree Celsius at a pressure of one atmosphere.

Cal (large calorie) = 1000 cal

Cal = kcal and is referred to as the food calorie, since the cal is too small of a measurement to use in our daily lives when it comes to the typical concept of burning "calories"

Essentially, fat is where we store energy. And certainly, we wouldn't have survived on this earth for 200,000 years if we didn't have that feat of evolution to help us out. 

The average man, weighing 75 kg (165 lbs), typically carries 100,000 kcal stored in the form of fat. Consider the fact that if this energy was stored via carbohydrates, which is in the form of glycogen, we'd actually be adding an additional 45 -60 kg to our weight. That might slow a hunter down, to say the least!

Fast forward to the developed countries in the modern world, particularly North America, where things got nice and comfy in the past and 50 or 60 years. 

Humans here have no real worries about any  kind of 'famine', but they still have the craving for that food that appeals to the fat storing systems that our bodies have developed over millenia. Our bodies have not evolved from this process of storing energy in the form of fat and as a result, obesity is becoming far too common.

But what is fat exactly?

Fats are macronutrients, nutrients we consume in great quantity and from which we get energy. A fat molecule consists of one glycerol molecule and three fatty acids that contain Fdouble bonds based on the saturation.

There are 4 main types of fats in our foods, each with different chemical and physical properties: 

• Polyunsaturated fats have two or more Fdouble bonds and are considered 'good', having been shown to lower blood cholesteral. They include the essential fatty acids Omega -3 and Omega -6, which are essential to brain function and cell growth, and do not occur naturally within our bodies.

• Monounsaturated fat have one Fdouble bond and are also considered good fats. They are found in things like avocados, nuts and olive oils. 

• Saturated fat has no Fdouble bonds and is generally considered 'bad' fat, though the hypothesis for this theory was largely based on a flawed assumption and has since been proven to be inaccurate. 

• Trans fats is the bad boy of all fats. It tastes good and because it is easy and inexpensive to produce, and lasts a long time, it became very popular in the commercial food industry. It is known to lower good cholesterol levels (High Density Lipids) and increase bad ones ( Low Density Lipids)

Conclusion...we should regulate our intake of Saturated Fats by keeping our consumption to approximately 5 -6 % of total calories, and eliminate Trans fats entirely.

6 ways to reduce your consumption of Saturated and trans fats....

• Eat more fruits, vegetables, whole grains, low-fat dairy products, poultry, fish and nuts and limit red meat as well as sugary foods and beverages.
• Use naturally occurring, unhydrogenated vegetable oils such as canola, safflower, sunflower or olive oil.
• Look for processed foods made with unhydrogenated oil rather than partially hydrogenated or hydrogenated vegetable oils or saturated fat.
• Use soft margarine as a substitute for butter, and choose soft margarines (liquid or tub varieties) over harder stick forms. Look for “0 g trans fat” on the Nutrition Facts label and no hydrogenated oils in the ingredients list.
• Limit or eliminate consumption of things like doughnuts, cookies, crackers, muffins, pies and cakes, as many of these foods contain trans fat. 
• Be discretionary with commercially fried foods and baked goods made with shortening or partially hydrogenated vegetable oils, which are high in fat, and likely trans fat.