If you took a poll on the street and asked people what they should cut from their diet, most will say fats. What the people answering the question don't know is that the answer they gave is only partly accurate. Fat is needed in your diet to maintain your health. As you read on the Fats In Your Diet page, fats build cell membranes, make up the shealths that protect the nerves, are used as the raw material to make up hormones, and control blood clotting. Fats are necessary to your diet. What you should reduce are the bad fats.
Eating too many saturated or trans fat can be harmful to your heart health. From 1958 to 1970, researcher, Ancel Keys, wondered if he could find a link between heart disease and diet. The study was called the Seven Countries Study, and it showed a link between saturated fat and heart disease. Countries with higher saturated fat consumption also had more heart disease problems. Of course, there could be other factors, such as genetics, but saturated fat cannot be discounted as a contributor to the problem. Another study was performed in the 1950s and 1960s that showed that when saturated fats replaced carbohydrates in a diet, total blood cholesterol levels rose. When monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats were substituted for carbohydrates, total blood cholesterol levels dropped. This is also in accordance with recent research in the New England Journal of Medicine that showed that low-carbohydrate diets were more effective for weight loss than low-fat diets, and that the higher fat diets weren't bad for heart health when the fats eaten were monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats, such as olive oil and nuts. (Weight Loss with a Low-Carbohydrate, Mediterranean, or Low-Fat Diet)
High total blood cholesterol level is one of the risk factors associated with heart disease. In addition to total blood cholesterol, doctors look for a high level of LDL in the blood as another risk factor. That means that if your blood cholesterol is high, you stand a greater chance of developing heart disease than someone who doesn't. This does not mean that you have heart disease if you have high cholesterol, just that you are more likely to develop heart problems. Another risk factor for heart disease is having a low level of HDL in the blood. High levels of HDL in the blood help to lower LDL. Eating food items high in trans fat can decrease the level of HDL. Cutting total fats may not be good for you. Since monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats help lower LDL while possibly raising HDL, decreasing these fats in your diet can have the opposite effect and actually raise blood cholesterol levels.
LDL is the cholesterol in the blood that you want to reduce.
HDL is the cholesterol in the blood that you want to raise.
Doctors have proclaimed that limiting the fats in your diet is the cure-all for many diseases, including cancer. However, the Women's Health Initiative Dietary Modification Trial was inconclusive in finding a link between fat consumption and disease. The trial started in 1993 and studied 50,000 women from the ages of 50 to 79. These women reduced their dietary fat intake form 38% to 20%. After eight years, the researchers found that the incidence of heart disease (including stroke), cancer (breast and colon), and weight gain were not affected by the dietary changes. One thing that the researchers are considering is that the women associated with the study were between the ages of 50 to 79 and may not have been as responsive to changes in diet. A lifetime of poor eating habits may still affect your long term health, even if you make changes later in your life. The results may have also been influenced by a lack of distinction between good fats and bad fats. In another study, the Nurses' Health Study II, women who ate foods high in saturated fat were more likely to develop breast cancer than those who did not. (See Low Fat Diet Not a Cure-All)
The American Diabetes Association and the American Dietetic Association make distinctions about the type of diabetes a person has and the diet he or she should follow. People with Type 1 diabetes should limit the amount of carbohydrates or dietary sugars in the diet. Type 1 diabetics usually develop diabetes in childhood and get the disease because their pancreas doesn't produce enough insulin to control blood sugar. People with Type 2 Diabetes develop diabetes late in their life, and the disease is probably due to being overweight. Type 2 diabetics are supposed to lose weight by lowering their total calories and carbohydrates. They should increase the amount of good fats, especially monounsaturated fats, in their diets. Increasing good fats in your diet, lowering bad fats, and lowering total calories can help you lose weight and in turn help improve Type 2 Diabetes.
So is fat in your diet good or bad for your health? The distinction is in the type of fat. Eating the good fats is not bad for your health and may even be good for it. Eating too much of the bad fats, saturated fats and trans fat, may contribute to health problems. To be on the safe side, and minimize your changes of developing serious health problems, decrease the amounts of saturated and trans fats in your diet.
Page updated on August 27, 2009
©Fats Organization