Welcome to the third and final part of my nutritional educational article series, you have read about proteins and carbohydrates now it’s time to talk fats.

If you’ve missed the other two articles click below to catch up:

Carbs, Carbs, Carbs

Protein – What You Need To Know

So back to fats, the villain of the piece surely?

The clues in the name right? Eat fats, get fat ….

Not quite!

Fats get a real bad rap, I feel like their misunderstood. When you hear about fats you automatically think ‘uh oh, I’ll stay away from them’

It is true that there are more calories in a gram of fat compared to proteins and carbs, 5 extra grams in fact.

But we need fats. With a lot of the nutritional assessments I do with my clients I often encourage them to eat more fats.

Why do most people think all fat is bad?

It’s true, it seems like loads of food companies are delighted to announce 0% fat or low fat on their products, this will automatically make it a healthy food choice to most people. If Birdseye made a 0% fat beef burger then I guarantee loads of people would be buying it and would eat it if they were on a diet. They think ‘if it’s low fat it’s okay’. This is where the clever food companies make billions of pounds at the expense of people trying to be healthy.

So by removing fat from their products what do you think they replace it with to keep its flavour? Yeah nothing good, things a lot worse than fats probably, loads of sugar and loads of high toxin ingredients.

A balanced diet is made up of proteins, fats and carbohydrates. They all serve a big purpose and we need to have an adequate proportion of all three.

Yep it can be easy to over consume on fats and due to their great taste and high calorie content it can lead to fat gain, but it isn’t solely responsible. I would definitely say that people are fatter due to eating bad carbs like crisps, chips, bread etc. than from eating fats.

Fats are a great source of energy for the body and they help to insulate and protect the body’s vital organs. They also improve brain functioning, boost our immune system and stop harmful disease.

Where do we get fat from?

• Meat
• Dairy
• Oils
• Nuts
• Fish
• Poultry
• Seafood
• Butter/margerine
• Mayonnaise
• Ice cream

When we look at the state of our health as a whole, it’s bad, obesity levels are crazy. Obesity is caused mainly by inactivity and too many calories, fats are most dense in calories (over double fats and carbs per gram) so government guidelines suggest reducing fat levels as it is maybe the easiest way to cut down on calories, I think that’s true but it isn’t the main problem.

All fats are a mixture of saturated and unsaturated fats, they differ depending on the fatty acids they contain. Unsaturated fats are also divided into mono unsaturated and polyunsaturated fats.

Most saturated fats are found in foods from an animal origin and unsaturated are normally from plant based products.

Saturated fats and more so trans-fats are labelled the ‘bad guys’ and the mono unsaturated and the polyunsaturated fats are the ‘good guys’.

There is a reason why trans-fats have been banned by certain countries around the world, they are no good. Saturated fats have been demonised and portrayed to cause heart disease a relationship which is being further investigated all the time, although saturated fats are contained in foods such as steak, eggs and other oils we should still eat them as they are good for us.

Did you know your brain is made up of 60% fat?

Also a low fat diet will throw your hormones all over the place making you feel rubbish.

So what fats should we eat?

The main fats you should be eating regularly include nuts (not the salted or honey roasted type), extra virgin olive oil, avocados, fish, seeds and coconut oil.

You should also try to include good quality red meat and eggs in your diet for some more healthy fats.

If you don’t eat fish it is a good idea to buy a fish oil supplement. The one I use and is considered as one of the best can be found by clicking this link.

The great things about fats are they are super filling which will help to prevent you from overeating other things.

So hopefully this article has shed some more light on the fat debate and has expanded your knowledge.

I told you fats weren’t as bad as what people think.

Similar to carbs if you eat good carbs and fats your health will improve if you eat bad carbs and bad fats your healthy will plummet.

So ditch the take away foods and processed meals and stick to healthy more natural fats and you will do just fine.

Thanks for reading and I hoped these last 3 articles have really improved your Nutritional IQ.

Any questions let me know and please feel free to share this on social media using the buttons below.

Jamie Stedman