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Nutrition explanation Part I – Fats
Posted in Nutrition |
Tags: monounsaturated fats, Polyunsaturated fats, saturated fats
You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to understand how your body uses these macronutrients, we have explained the basics in a way that you can understand too.
Knowing how these macronutrients work is a definite must if you wonder “why” eating particular things is bad for your body and also in which food you can find particular macronutrients more. In this first part we will explain the use of fats.
Healthy Fats
All the cells in the body have some fat in them, in their cell membrane. Hormones are also made from fats. Basically: fats are really useful. If you would cut them from your diet, then your hormonal production will go down, which means you could less easily gain muscle mass. There’s plenty of other bad things that would happen if you were to cut fats out. As a reaction, your body will then start accumulating more body fat than usual so that it has enough fat to keep on functioning. Since testosterone production is halted, so is muscle building. Therefore, in order to have an efficient metabolism we need fat.
” Saturated, polyunsaturated, and monounsaturated” are the three types of fats. There are very big differences between each of them.
A) Saturated Fats:
Saturated fats are found in big proportions in products of animal origin. Usually, saturated fats are associated with high cholesterol levels, atherosclerosis and heart disease.
Foods that contain a high proportion of saturated fat are butter, ghee, suet, tallow, lard, coconut oil, cottonseed oil and palm kernel oil, dairy products (especially cream and cheese), meat as well as some prepared foods.
Dehydrogenation converts saturated fats to unsaturated fats. Hydrogenated oils are usually found in packaged foods.
B) Polyunsaturated Fats: These fats do not have any effect in cholesterol levels. A lot of fats in vegetable oils (eg. corn, soybean and sunflower oil) are polyunsaturated.
C) Monounsaturated Fats: These fats are usually high on the essential fatty acids. They have a positive effect on the good cholesterol levels.
Monounsaturated fats are found in natural foods like nuts and avocados, and are the main component of olive oil (oleic acid). They can also be found in grapeseed oil, ground nut oil, sesame oil and corn oil. Canola oil is 57%−60% monounsaturated fat and olive oil is about 75% monounsaturated fat.
Summary
Fats have an influence on your hormonal production. Twenty percent of your calories should come from good fats. Any less, and your hormonal production will go down. Any more than 20% and you will start accumulating plenty of fat.
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