Healthy Oils Part 2

So I was talking about saturated fats on my previous post, this one is about unsaturated fats.

Unsaturated Fats

"Saturated" means it is saturated with hydrogen atoms. Unsaturated fats is a fat in which there are one or more double bonds in the fatty acid chain.

There are two types of unsaturated fats.

Mono-unsaturated and poly-unsaturated. Good source of mono-unsaturated fat is olive oil, avocado, nuts (macadamia, peanuts, almonds, pistachios).

Fats are generally good if they come from whole, natural and unprocessed foods. Fats become bad if they become damaged. Fats are damaged by heat, light and oxygen.

High heat and chemicals used by manufacturers to process oils damages fats. The most damaging process is partial hydrogenation (adding hydrogen). Hydrogenation is used to convert liquid vegetable oils to solid or semi-solid fats such as those present in margarine. This makes the oil last longer and is usually preferred for baking or deep frying as it acts as a preservative to food. Now you know why potato chips last a long time.

Hydrogenation turns unsaturated fat into Trans-fat which is really bad for you. Trans-fat is neither essential nor promotes good health. So eliminate this completely.

Trans-fat does not occur in nature and is a man-made fat. So the body has no coping mechanism for this and all it does is to increase one's risk for coronary heart disease.

Unsaturated fat in general is good for you, but the process of heating and other processes turns a good fat into bad fat. So keep oils with unsaturated fat in a dark, cool, dry place and avoid heating it. Flaxseed oil for example should never be heated at all.

Just as the mis-information that all saturated fat is bad and that all unsaturated fat is good, there is more to the story than meets the eye. Proper food handling and usage is the trick to eating healthy and staying healthy