If you want to reduce your risk of heart disease, it's best to reduce your overall fat intake and swap saturated fats for unsaturated fats. There's good evidence that replacing saturated fats with some unsaturated fats can help to lower your cholesterol level. Mostly found in oils from plants and fish, unsaturated fats can be either monounsaturated or polyunsaturated. Monounsaturated fats help protect your heart by maintaining levels of "good" HDL cholesterol while reducing levels of "bad" LDL cholesterol in your blood.
Polyunsaturated fats can also help lower the level of "bad" LDL cholesterol in your blood. Some types of omega-3 and omega-6 fats cannot be made by your body, which means it's essential to include small amounts of them in your diet.
Most people get enough omega-6 in their diet, but it's recommended to have more omega-3 by eating at least 2 portions of fish each week, with 1 portion being an oily fish. Vegetable sources of omega-3 fats are not thought to have the same benefits on heart health as those found in fish. Find out more about healthy eating as a vegetarian. The nutrition labels on food packaging can help you cut down on total fat and saturated fat also listed as "saturates", or "sat fat". Nutrition information can be presented in different ways on the front and back of packaging.
But if the type of food in question is usually high in fat, the lower fat version may still be a high-fat food Also, foods that are lower in fat are not necessarily lower in calories. Sometimes the fat is replaced with sugar and the food may end up having a similar energy content to the regular version. To be sure of the fat and energy content, remember to check the nutrition label on the packet. Find out more about what food labelling terms mean , and how to get a balanced nutritious diet using the Eatwell Guide.
Use the Change4Life Food Scanner app app to find healthier food choices when you're shopping. Two other major studies narrowed the prescription slightly, concluding that replacing saturated fat with polyunsaturated fats like vegetable oils or high-fiber carbohydrates is the best bet for reducing the risk of heart disease, but replacing saturated fat with highly processed carbohydrates could do the opposite. Good fats come mainly from vegetables, nuts, seeds, and fish.
They differ from saturated fats by having fewer hydrogen atoms bonded to their carbon chains. Healthy fats are liquid at room temperature, not solid. There are two broad categories of beneficial fats: monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats. Monounsaturated fats. When you dip your bread in olive oil at an Italian restaurant, you're getting mostly monounsaturated fat. Monounsaturated fats have a single carbon-to-carbon double bond. The result is that it has two fewer hydrogen atoms than a saturated fat and a bend at the double bond.
This structure keeps monounsaturated fats liquid at room temperature. Good sources of monounsaturated fats are olive oil, peanut oil, canola oil, avocados, and most nuts, as well as high-oleic safflower and sunflower oils. The discovery that monounsaturated fat could be healthful came from the Seven Countries Study during the s.
It revealed that people in Greece and other parts of the Mediterranean region enjoyed a low rate of heart disease despite a high-fat diet. The main fat in their diet, though, was not the saturated animal fat common in countries with higher rates of heart disease. It was olive oil, which contains mainly monounsaturated fat. This finding produced a surge of interest in olive oil and the "Mediterranean diet," a style of eating regarded as a healthful choice today.
Although there's no recommended daily intake of monounsaturated fats, the Institute of Medicine recommends using them as much as possible along with polyunsaturated fats to replace saturated and trans fats. Polyunsaturated fats. When you pour liquid cooking oil into a pan, there's a good chance you're using polyunsaturated fat. Corn oil, sunflower oil, and safflower oil are common examples. Polyunsaturated fats are essential fats.
That means they're required for normal body functions but your body can't make them. So, you must get them from food. Polyunsaturated fats are used to build cell membranes and the covering of nerves. They are needed for blood clotting, muscle movement, and inflammation.
A polyunsaturated fat has two or more double bonds in its carbon chain. There are two main types of polyunsaturated fats: omega-3 fatty acids and omega-6 fatty acids. The numbers refer to the distance between the beginning of the carbon chain and the first double bond.
Both types offer health benefits. Eating polyunsaturated fats in place of saturated fats or highly refined carbohydrates reduces harmful LDL cholesterol and improves the cholesterol profile. It also lowers triglycerides. Good sources of omega-3 fatty acids include fatty fish such as salmon, mackerel, and sardines, flaxseeds, walnuts, canola oil, and unhydrogenated soybean oil.
Omega-3 fatty acids may help prevent and even treat heart disease and stroke. In addition to reducing blood pressure, raising HDL, and lowering triglycerides, polyunsaturated fats may help prevent lethal heart rhythms from arising.
Unsaturated fats, which are liquid at room temperature, are considered beneficial fats because they can improve blood cholesterol levels, ease inflammation, stabilize heart rhythms, and play a number of other beneficial roles. Unsaturated fats are predominantly found in foods from plants, such as vegetable oils, nuts, and seeds. Omega-3 fats are an important type of polyunsaturated fat. The American Heart Association suggests that percent of daily calories should come from polyunsaturated fats, and there is evidence that eating more polyunsaturated fat—up to 15 percent of daily calories—in place of saturated fat can lower heart disease risk.
Finding Foods with Healthy Fats is a handy visual guide to help you determine which fats are beneficial, and which are harmful. All foods containing fat have a mix of specific types of fats. Even healthy foods like chicken and nuts have small amounts of saturated fat, though much less than the amounts found in beef, cheese, and ice cream. Saturated fat is mainly found in animal foods, but a few plant foods are also high in saturated fats, such as coconut, coconut oil , palm oil, and palm kernel oil.
In the United States, the biggest sources of saturated fat 12 in the diet are. Though decades of dietary advice 13 , 14 suggested saturated fat was harmful, in recent years that idea has begun to evolve.
Several studies suggest that eating diets high in saturated fat do not raise the risk of heart disease, with one report analyzing the findings of 21 studies that followed , people for up to 23 years.
The overarching message is that cutting back on saturated fat can be good for health if people replace saturated fat with good fats , especially, polyunsaturated fats.
Eating good fats in place of saturated fat can also help prevent insulin resistance, a precursor to diabetes. Trans fatty acids, more commonly called trans fats, are made by heating liquid vegetable oils in the presence of hydrogen gas and a catalyst, a process called hydrogenation. Partially hydrogenated oil is not the only source of trans fats in our diets. Trans fats are also naturally found in beef fat and dairy fat in small amounts.
Trans fats are the worst type of fat for the heart, blood vessels, and rest of the body because they:. Mozaffarian, D. Micha, and S. Wallace, Effects on coronary heart disease of increasing polyunsaturated fat in place of saturated fat: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials.
PLoS Med , Mensink, R. Am J Clin Nutr ,
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