Sep 18, 2010 0
A List of Bad Fats
This article from Harvard School of Public Health breaks bad fat into two categories: Bad and Very Bad.
The message is clear: choose good fats over bad whenever possible. Â You’ll live longer, be healthier and have a much lower chance of seeing a specialist like me.
excerpts from the article:
Most people don’t get enough of these healthful unsaturated fats each day. No strict guidelines have been published regarding their intake. Prudent targets are 10 to 25 percent of calories from monounsaturated fats and 8 to 10 percent of calories from polyunsaturated fats. Since no one eats by percentage of daily calories, a good rule of thumb is to choose unsaturated fats over saturated whenever possible.
Bad Fats: Saturated Fats
Our bodies can make all the saturated fat we need, so we don’t need to eat any of it. That’s why saturated fat can be in the bad category—because we don’t need to eat any of it, and it has undesirable effects in cardiovascular disease. In the United States and other developed countries, saturated fats come mainly from meat, seafood, poultry with skin, and whole-milk dairy products (cheese, milk, and ice cream). A few plant foods are also high in saturated fats, including coconut and coconut oil, palm oil, and palm kernel oil. Saturated fats boost total cholesterol by elevating harmful LDL. Like all dietary fat, saturated fat also raises the protective HDL. Unsaturated fat is much preferable since it lowers the bad cholesterol and raises the good.
As a general rule, it’s a good idea to keep your intake of saturated fats as low as possible. Saturated fats are part of many foods, including vegetable oils that are mainly unsaturated fats, so we can’t eliminate them from our diets. Seven percent of total calories or lower is a good target. Red meat and dairy fats are the main sources of saturated fat in our diets, so keeping these low is the primary way to reduce intake of saturated fat.
Very Bad Fats: Trans Fats
Trans fatty acids, more commonly called trans fats, are made by heating liquid vegetable oils in the presence of hydrogen gas, a process called hydrogenation. Partially hydrogenating vegetable oils makes them more stable and less likely to spoil. It also converts the oil into a solid, which makes transportation easier. Partially hydrogenated oils can also withstand repeated heating without breaking down, making them ideal for frying fast foods. (Fully hydrogenating a vegetable oil creates a fat that acts like a saturated fat.) It’s no wonder that partially hydrogenated oils have been a mainstay in restaurants and the food industry.
Most of the trans fats in the American diet come from commercially prepared baked goods, margarines, snack foods, and processed foods, along with French fries and other fried foods prepared in restaurants and fast food franchises.
Trans fats are worse for cholesterol levels than saturated fats because they raise bad LDL and lower good HDL. They also fire inflammation, (12) an overactivity of the immune system that has been implicated in heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and other chronic conditions. Even small amounts of trans fat in the diet can have harmful health effects. For every extra 2 percent of calories from trans fat daily—about the amount in a medium order of fast-food French fries—the risk of coronary heart disease increases by 23 percent. Eliminating trans fats from the U.S. food supply could prevent between 6 and 19 percent of heart attacks and related deaths, or more than 200,000 each year. (13)
The average American eats about six grams of trans fats a day. Ideally that should be under two grams a day, or zero if possible. A new labeling law that forces food companies to list trans fats on the label should help curb the consumption of these harmful fats. Not only can consumers now see which products contain trans fats—something that wasn’t easily done in the past—but many food makers are now trying to claim the high ground by using trans-free oils and fats in their products.
As trans fat intake dwindles in developed countries, it is on the rise in developing nations. Inexpensive partially hydrogenated soybean oil has become a staple not only for the food industry but for home use. This shift away from traditional cooking oils and toward trans-rich partially hydrogenated oils is contributing to the slowly growing epidemic of cardiovascular disease in developing nations around the world.
Read more about how to spot trans fat on food labels.
6.) Organic, extra virgin olive oil
Flaky dermatitis on the legs can be caused by many different problems.  I frequently see this associated with varicose veins. This leads to venous hypertension and poor oxygenation of the tissue and skin, resulting in discoloration and dermatitis. Diagnosis is easy with examination and simple ultrasound, both done in my Frisco, TX office.



… Cardiovascular disease was rare at the beginning of the 20th century, and has skyrocketed, along with other devastating diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, diabetes type II, obesity, since mass produced hydrogenated vegetable oils containing trans fats were introduced into our diets and replaced these other natural fats. Sadly, the incidences of cardiovascular and other serious diseases are becoming more and more common among people in other areas of the world who have changed over from their indigenous foods to the ‘western’ diet.”
Frankly,
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