Not necessarily. For example, even if they lack trans fats, baked goods may be high in added sugars and low in nutrients. Read the Nutrition Facts , if available, or the ingredient list to understand the big picture.
Eating foods with fat is definitely part of a healthy diet. To choose healthier fats, use liquid non-tropical plant oils; low-fat or nonfat instead of full-fat dairy; and, if you eat meat, lean meat or poultry. And remember to balance the amount of calories you eat from all foods with the amount of calories you use through physical activity. A healthy diet can include the foods you love. Balance your portions and choices to emphasize a healthy overall way of eating.
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Most fats and oils contain both saturated and unsaturated fats in different proportions. As part of a healthy diet, you should try to cut down on foods and drinks that are high in saturated fats and trans fats and replace some of them with unsaturated fats.
Most of them come from animal sources, including meat and dairy products, as well as some plant foods, such as palm oil and coconut oil. Cholesterol is a fatty substance that's mostly made by the body in the liver. Eating too much saturated fats in your diet can raise "bad" LDL cholesterol in your blood , which can increase the risk of heart disease and stroke. Trans fats are found naturally at low levels in some foods, such as meat and dairy products.
They can also be found in partially hydrogenated vegetable oil. Hydrogenated vegetable oil must be declared on a food's ingredients list if it's been included. Like saturated fats, trans fats can raise cholesterol levels in the blood. But most people in the UK do not eat a lot of trans fats. On average, we eat about half the recommended maximum. Most of the supermarkets in the UK have removed partially hydrogenated vegetable oil from all their own-brand products.
People in the UK tend to eat a lot more saturated fats than trans fats. Our ancestors faced extended periods of deprivation when a hunt or a staple food crop failed, during harsh winters, or when venturing out across an ocean.
The key to their survival was body fat. If we go for more than a few hours without eating, the body must rely on stored fuels for energy, and these come in three basic types, familiar to anyone who reads a nutrition label: carbohydrate, protein, and fat. The body stores accessible carbohydrate in the liver and protein in muscle, but these are in dilute forms, surrounded by lots of water.
In contrast, stored fat is highly concentrated, since fat tissue contains very little water. In addition, pure carbohydrate and protein have less than half the calories of pure fat, making them relatively weak sources of energy. For these reasons, liver and muscle contain only a small fraction of the calories in fat tissue less than compared to about 3, per pound. In the absence of body fat, even a muscular man would waste away in days without eating, whereas all but the leanest adults have enough body fat to survive many weeks.
Fat tissue also responds to and emits a multitude of chemical signals and neural messages, helping fine-tune our metabolism and immune system. But when fat cells malfunction, big problems ensue. We generally think that weight gain is the unavoidable consequence of consuming too many calories, with fat cells being the passive recipients of that excess. But fat cells do nothing of consequence without specific instructions—certainly not calorie storage and release, their most critical functions.
Many substances produced in the body or contained in our diet directly affect fat cell behavior, chief among them the hormone insulin.
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