Remember when the world promoted low-fat this and low-fat that?
And now everyone talks about “good” fat and “bad” fat. What’s the deal?
The deal is science happens. Media happens. Confusion prevails.
So, let’s talk about it. For simplicity’s sake, we will use the discovery of vitamins as the real starting point for modern nutritional knowledge. In 1913, the concept that there are vital nutrients for human health that exist, was established. It took 23 more years to discover and isolate the first vitamin, thiamine (B1). Which means that it’s been less than 100 years that humans have studied nutrition. We’ve been making cars and preforming brain surgery longer than that.
We are still discovering so much when it comes to nutrition. Science is founded on conflicting results, and it moves forward as studies are repeated, and repeated, and repeated hundreds (or thousands) of times. Nothing is ever definite in science, ideas can be changed. And this is exactly why people are confused.
Fats are often talked about it terms of “good” fats and “bad” fats. This references unsaturated fats (“good”), saturated fats and trans fats (“bad”). Unsaturated fats basically refer to their chemical structure that denotes they have less hydrogen and a kinked formation. Saturated fats are fully saturated with all the hydrogen they can carry. Trans fats are also an unsaturated fat, but their formation is more linear than kinked. Artificial trans fats are banned in many countries, and the small amount you find naturally in foods might not be worth the worry (it’s naturally found in dairy and meats).
It’s all so complicated. It’s no surprise that many people are confused! Only 41% of people surveyed knew that fats are an essential nutrient (yes, cholesterol too!), and 95% knew that vitamins were essential. This is interesting since four important vitamins (A, D, E, and K) require fat in order to be absorbed properly by the body.
Fats (aka lipids) are essential to life. Their ability to form cellular membranes makes our very existence possible. But, for many people, the word fat relates to weight. Yes, a portion of your weight is fat (adipose tissue) but it is also muscle, bone, and fluids and membranes (cholesterol, I’m looking at you!). Most of the lipids in your body (aside from being in adipose tissue) are in the brain. These brain lipids form the blood-brain barrier that protects again pathogens, they form the white matter that coordinates communication and affects learning, and they form myelin that helps pass signals in the nervous system. In the body, lipids are used for energy, hormone production, organ protection, temperature regulation, and certain lipids help regulate other lipids. We need fats!
To further complicate the issue, when we simplify lipids into unsaturated and saturated fats, we’re over looking the fact that each of these is not a single type of fat. There are many variations of fats within these categories. There are also conflicting functions of different fats within the same category. For example, palmitic acid and stearic acid are both saturated fats found in meat. Palmitic acid is considered harmful to human health and increases risk of atherosclerosis, whereas stearic acid is shown to have an opposite effect and decreases risk.
There are serious medical conditions (many are on the rise) that do depend on a change in food intake to receive the best outcome, however, the stress we cause ourselves over the food we eat is also harmful. Understanding that fat in our food can have different impacts on our body and that they are essential, is the first step in eating a balanced meal. Eating a variety of foods, removing the guilt labels of “good” and “bad”, eating foods you enjoy, and making eating a social event are all a part of overall wellbeing.
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References:
Britannica. Lipoproteins: Classification and formation; nd [cited 2020 Oct 17]. Available from: https://www.britannica.com/science/lipid/Classification-and-formation
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). LDL and HDL cholesterol: “Bad” and “good” cholesterol; 2020 [cited 2020 Oct 17]. Available from: https://www.cdc.gov/cholesterol/ldl_hdl.htm
Hayes. J, Gretchen. B. What the Latest Evidence Tells Us About Fat and Cardiovascular Health. (2016) https://www-ncbi-nlm-nih-gov.ezproxy.msvu.ca/pmc/articles/PMC5001225/
Health Canada. Canadian ban on trans fats comes into force today; 2018 [cited 2020 Oct 15]. Available from: https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/news/2018/09/canadian-ban-on-trans-fats-comes-into-force-today.html
Nature Communications. Dietary stearic acid regulates mitochondria in vivo in humans; 2018 [cited 2020 Dec 8]. Available from: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-05614-6
Lands B. Highly unsaturated fatty acids (HUFA) mediate and monitor food’s impact on health. Prostaglandins Other Lipid Mediat. 2017 Nov; 133: 4-10. DOI: 10.1016/j.prostaglandins.2017.05.002.
Liu AG, Ford NA, Hu FB, Zelman KM, Mozaffarian D, Kris-Etherton PM. A healthy approach to dietary fats: Understanding the science and taking action to reduce consumer confusion. Nutr J. 2017 Aug;16(1):53. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5577766/
Smolin, LA, Grosvenor, MB and Gurfinkle, D. Nutrition: Science and Applications. 2015. 2nd Canadian Edition. Wiley
Jill is the founder, writer, and photographer at Inside Nutrition. A nutrition website promoting factual nutrition knowledge and dispelling misinformation.
Empowering people to shift the focus away from how food(s) can alter your appearance to how they can alter your body functions and development. Diet culture does not live here.
~ The way you look is the least interesting thing about you ~
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