House Call: Right fats hold keys to healthy living

As a continuation of my previous column on fiber, I’d like to have a look at fat in your diet this time around. Unlike fiber, the advice on fat has changed many times over the years as we have learned more about the different types of fat out there and their effects on the body.

Fat is a very compact way for the body to get a lot of calories in short order. That’s good in some situations, like at the beginning of winter when we know food will be in short supply by the time spring rolls around. Fortunately these are situations that most of us will never find ourselves in.

Fat is important to health. Without it, your body could not use vitamins A, D, E, and K. Monounsaturated fats like fish, olive, and nut oils are needed for your body to produce inflammation-reducing types of prostaglandins. Animal fats mostly make prostaglandins that promote inflammation.

So, while you do not want too much fat in your diet, you do want some and you should be discriminating about what kinds of fat you are eating. I am convinced that the low fat craze that started in the ’80s has contributed to our obesity epidemic, as we stripped fats from our diets and replaced them with “non-fat” foods high in starch and sugar which are less able to quench our hunger, and actually make us hungrier.

Avoid foods with trans fats in them. Anything that reads “partially hydrogenated” is a trans fats. This is easier these days as most manufacturers have stopped using trans fats in their products. Trans fats were great in that they really extended the shelf life of products, but it turns out that they were bad for our health.

Also limit your intake of saturated fats. A way to identify saturated fat is to ask yourself if it is solid at room temperature. If it is, it is probably a saturated fat. That covers butter, margarine, shortening, coconut oil, and most animal fats. Coconut oil is all the rage right now, but I have not seen studies linking it to better health. I never eat margarine and when I use butter, it’s only in small amounts. More often I dip my bread in olive oil.

Besides cutting back on or eating smaller portions of foods that contain saturated fats, another good way to reduce how much of it you eat is to make changes in how you cook.

Whenever you can, use monounsaturated fats in your recipes. These kinds of fats tend to be liquids at room temperature, and this means cooking in oil instead of butter. I keep olive, canola, and sesame oils in the pantry. They all have differing flavors and complement different foods and styles of cooking. When you cook with healthy fats like olive and canola oil, don’t get them so hot that they smoke. Under some circumstances, the heat can break those unsaturated bonds, which then re-connect as a trans fat, converting your healthy fat into nasty trans fats.

Include healthy fats in your diet. I try to eat a handful or two of tree nuts every day, and use mostly non-virgin olive oil for cooking. Avocados and nut oils have health benefits, as do oily fish like salmon and sardines. While fish oil supplements have not proven to be as good for us as experts once thought, eating fish a few times a week has proven to reduce heart disease. You need fat in your diet. Just lean toward the healthier fats. They are rich, satisfying, and make foods that are good and good for you.

Dr. Bob Riggs is a family medicine physician practicing at Group Health’s Riverfront Medical Center.