What are fats, exactly? Fats often get a bad rap. No one wants to BE fat, and eating fatty foods has a very bad connotation. But, fats are like all the other food groups because there are "bad" fats and "good" fats, and I hope that a brief explanation of them will help you to make better use of this often misunderstood food group.
Fats are made up of long chains of smaller molecules called fatty acids. That's one reason (among many) why, when fats start to spoil or go "rancid" that you can sort of taste some of that acidity start to return in the break down products. In people, fats are made up from tri-glycerides (the form sugar takes when it's stored in your liver) and phospholipids (a major component of cell membranes). Lipid is another name for fat. Fats are stored is special cells, and historically have had very important consequences for energy storage during times when food was scarce, for keeping a body warm, and for protecting a body from the elements. Fat still plays a major role in metabolism, converting specific biochemicals important especially for the nervous and endocrine (hormone) systems.They transport vitamins A, D, E and K and are a primary building block for brain cells.
However, too much fat and your body starts to do just what we do when we have too much stuff. It starts to store it in all the wrong places. It lines the arteries (oxygen carrying blood vessels) and stuffs it between the organs of the body. It starts to interfere with how our metabolisms work, and can actually lead to death when it gets in the way; our internal organs sort of trip over it, fall down and die. It can lead to diabetes, heart attacks, breathing problems and hormone imbalances. Literally, too much of a good thing. On the other side, not enough fat and you lose your hair, your skin doesn't work properly, women lose their cycles, children don't develop properly, certain kinds of cancer and the list goes on. Not enough fat is a rare (but not unheard of) problem in North America.
There are also fats that are better for you than others. Fatty acids are classified as either saturated (all the hydrogen atoms they can hold) or unsaturated (room for more hydrogen atoms). The saturated fats, found in things like meat, cheese and cream, are the ones that tend to contribute to things like clogged arteries. Unsaturated fats, found in things that grow from the ground and seafood, are considered good for you because they lower the levels of other fats and cholesterol (which we'll discuss later) in the blood.
Part of fat's bad reputation comes from it's calorie content. Unlike carbohydrates and proteins, fats have 9 calories per gram whereas the other two only have 4 calories. So, it's easier to over-eat when consuming fatty foods because you get more than twice the calories for the same amount of food consumed. If you eat a lot of high fat foods, it's easy to put on the extra pounds.
Luckily for us, there is a way for us to burn that storage fat. Otherwise, it wouldn't have been such a benefit to be a bit on the heavy side when lean times hit. Your body has a built in mechanism for dealing with those storage units, but cutting out carbohydrates OR fat isn't the way to do it. Why, you ask?
First, there are such things as essential fatty acids or EFAs, so called because your body can't make them but needs them to make important biochemicals. The two most well known are omega-3 and omega-6 EFAs, which affect inflammation, mood and behavior. They both come from plants and -3 also comes from seafood, -6 can come from eggs but plants are a better and more abundant source. If you cut fats out of your diet, you cut these EFAs out as well and disease states will, eventually, follow.
Cut out carbs completely and, well, no sense in repeating the first three entries... review the Carbohydrates section, The Chain Gang in particular.
So, remembering that our bodies want balance and, in fact, it is essential for good health, you can meet your health goals without doing anything drastic. In fact, if you do, your body probably won't like you later.
I hope this sheds a little light on fats. If you have any questions, please comment and I'll address them in the next entry.
Always,
Dr. P
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