Dietary fat is one of the least understood macro nutrients but it’s also the one that many people are the most afraid of. Over the past 50 years researchers have learned a great deal about dietary fat but there are still just as many unanswered questions.
If you’ve done any casual health and fitness reading you’ve probably come to some of these conclusions:
Is bad or good?
Saturated fat is bad
Trans fats are REALLY bad
Monounsaturated fats are good
Poly unsaturated fats are REALLY good
From there you’ve likely heard about fish oils, “omega” fats, and even the difference between Omega 6 and Omega 3 fats…if you’re really advanced in your understand of the Omega 3 fats you’ll also understand that there are different forms of “omega” fats and that only specific forms provide the purported health benefits of lowering cholesterol, raising HDL, and lowering triglycerides and LDL. You might even know what the specific essential fatty acids are that provide the health benefit that are basis of Omega 3 claims namely DHA (Docospentanoic Acid) and EPA (Eicosapentanoic acid).
Even if you understand all of this information, the real question is how do you go about eating food on a daily basis and how do you choose where the fat will appear in your diet. Do you treat food as food and simply eat a sensible a varied mixed diet, or do you treat your food like a drug that needs to be dosed, and specifically dose your fat based on it’s chemical composition?
Many people do the latter. We search for food items that a a specific contest of poly unsaturated fatty acids. We’ll choose olive oil over other forms of oil, butter over margarine, margarine over butter…neither? Fish Oil tablets, salmon for its fatty acid content, flax seed oil because it has ‘omega 3’s’, coconut oil or milk because it’s supposed to have good fat.
Do all of these considerations actually amount to any real benefit of it’s it much ado about nothing?
Developing a grounded view of food as food (and potentially medicine) but NOT as a drug is the key component to understanding what to do about dietary fat.
In today’s uncensored podcast, we’ll discuss everything you need to know about dietary fat and how to have clear view of how much mind space and plate space it should take up in your life and your diet.
John
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