Week 3 Understand Your Fats and Fiber Sci/241

Week 3 Understand Your Fats and Fiber

SCI/241

May 23, 2013

Understand Your Fats and Fiber

Good fats, bad fats, saturated, unsaturated, it all can become a little confusing as we go to eat our next meal or grab a quick snack. Understanding what is healthy to eat and what is not good for us, is important to understanding our bodies and achieving better health. Any way you look at it these good fats and bad fats are otherwise known as lipids, and staying away from the bad ones can be easy if you know what you are looking for. Good lipids are unsaturated, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats. “Saturated fats, or bad fats, have a chemical makeup in which the carbon atoms are saturated with hydrogen atoms and are typically solid at room temperature” (American Heart Association, 2013). “Unsaturated fats are the opposite because they are fats that have either one or more than one double bonded carbon in the molecule” (American Heart Association, 2013). Therefore, unsaturated fats are good lipids that are found in fish, nuts, seeds, and oils from plants or naturally grown vegetables. Monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats are “fats that have one double-bonded (unsaturated) carbon in the molecule” (web-MD, 2013). These unsaturated fats are usually liquid at room temperature, however as the get cold in the refrigerator they to turn solid. A good example of oil that contains monounsaturated fat is olive oil. Many vegetable oils contain polyunsaturated fat and are good for the body because they help lower blood cholesterol levels, help with digestion, and help the absorption of nutrients into the body. They are good for the body because they help lower LDL cholesterol levels and increase HDL cholesterol levels. Managing foods to minimize saturated and trans-fat intake can help the body to become healthy. The key is the understanding of bad lipids as well as what trans-fats are and what they do to our bodies.

Trans-fatty acids are otherwise known as partially...