What is fat?

what are fats

Fats are macro nutrients along with carbohydrates & proteins. Fats breaks down into our body in form of fatty acids. Fats are all hydrocarbon molecules. These are categorized into two categories.

· Saturated fats

· Unsaturated fats

Simply saturated fats are bad types of fats & unsaturated fats are good types of fats.

Saturated fats contains one sort which is

· Trans fats

Whereas unsaturated fats having two types

· Mono-unsaturated fats
· Poly-unsaturated fats

First of all why our body needs both types of fats saturated & unsaturated. Saturated fats are bad fats as I mentioned above but our body needs them too to repair & maintenance of tissues & skin cells. It also helps to boost testosterone level.

While our body needs unsaturated fats or good fats too for our brain & heart.

Now you might have heard about omega-6, omega-3, & omega-9. These three omega fatty acids are categorized into unsaturated fats. The omega-3 & omega-6 are types of poly-unsaturated fats while omega-9 is sort of mono-unsaturated fat.

Now you might be thinking what sort of body fat stored in our belly or around. So that is adipose tissue under the skin which is energy storage molecule. & made up of overdose of carbohydrates & becomes triglycerides with glycerin. Triglycerides are also a type of fat.

We will discuss deeply about omegas, triglycerides & cholesterol in our next blog.

But the over dose of saturated or unsaturated fats can leads many health issues. Especially excess amount of saturated fat can leads to major cardiovascular disease could be cardiac arrest or stroke. When you eat excess saturated fat rich foods then your body produces more cholesterol. Clearly I’d like to say excess amount of saturated fats is the major reason of heart attack. Cholesterol & triglycerides are even cause of cardiovascular disease. According to American heart association (AHA) the daily recommended unit of both fats are

Saturated fat 15-20 g/day

Unsaturated fats 40-50 g/day.

Let’s check out the macro of both fats.

1 tsp = 5 g, 1 tbsp = 15 g (tsp = tea spoon, tbsp = table spoon) it is standard size of spoons. Spoon that we generally used at our home to eat anything that is tbsp.

1 tbsp (15 g) of oils that we used at home (desi ghee, vegetable oil, refined oil, coconut oil, etc.) = 13 g Saturated fat (bad fat), & 2 g unsaturated fat

1 tbsp of olive oil = 13 g unsaturated fat (good fat), 2 g saturated fat.

That is why olive oil is extremely recommended everywhere.

All cheap quality oils are high in saturated fat, even cream over milk. So be aware if you consuming excess amount of saturated fats. You gotta face cardiac problems down the line. If you are adding 2-3 spoons of vegetable oil, desi ghee, etc. while cooking one time. Then you need to worry about.

Foods rich in saturated fat - egg yolk, milk cream, butter, oils, desi ghee, dairy. Packed & fried food, burger, pie, fritters, ice etc.

crap fats

Foods rich in unsaturated fats – olive oil, nuts (cashew nuts, almonds, Brazil nuts, peanuts, pistachio nuts etc.), chia seeds, hemp seeds, flax seeds, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds etc.

So eventually try to understand the limitations of both fats. If exceeds limits you gotta face health problems. So start to switch good fats or unsaturated fats rich foods more instead crap food like pizza, burger, fritters, etc. go in your kitchen & checkout nutrition level of oil bottle or container & let me know in comments amount of saturated fat per serving. Your body needs more unsaturated fat specially omega 3. But you are doing opposite.

Hope you got the fact behind fats.

Stay healthy stay fit

Prince vashiist