Healthy Eating & Fats

Video Transcript

All right, good fats, bad fats; what's the skinny on fats. Well, it's a little more complicated than some people may think, but let's talk about it a little bit. You know, there's some fats that we need just like vitamins every day. Those are called essential fats, and one is linoleic acid. The other one is called linolenic acid. Linoleic belongs to a family called omega 6. Linolenic belongs to a family called omega-3. Most people get a pretty fair amount of the omega-6. It's the omega-3 these days that nutritionists are recommending for good heart health. That's the one that seems to be lacking in the diet. So what do, why do we need fats? Well, we need fats for hormone production, in the body, fats cushion the organs, the brain is sixty percent fat; it's primarily the omega-3 fats, so we need it for good heart health. Some people feel that the the problems we're having these days with heart disease and Alzheimer's disease has to do with the fact that we're not getting the omega-3's that we need, so as a result, our brains are literally drying up from too much of the bad fats; not enough of the good omega-3 fats. Inflammation is out of control; our blood is too thick. So that's why it's important to emphasize these good fats, and I want you to get some healthy fats with each meal. Fats come from seeds and nuts; those would be the vegetarian sources, good oils; like olive oil, also fatty meats, which we should try and hold down the diet. Those hard fats, you know, we make cholesterol from that, so if we want to keep our cholesterol down, you know, we need to go with the low fat proteins in the diet, lean protein, and emphasize the liquid fats; the essential fats. The essential fats; we can get from seeds and nuts and fish would be good sources, and olive oil of course. Olive oil is par primarily what we call omega-9, which is not an essential fat, but nevertheless, it's a healthy fat, and this can even be used for light saut?ing. The flax oil is not to be used for cooking. You add it to your foods at the table, and flax is the omega-3 fat. It's important for heart health and brain health. You can even get eggs that are omega-3 enriched, and what they do is they feed the chickens the flax seed meal, so the eggs are higher in those heart healthy omega-3 fats. It's okay to use some butter in your cooking; modest amounts of butter. It's all a question of balance. Even coconut oil which is a saturated fat, but it is a healthy oil; healthy fat, and this helps us to make more of the healthy cholesterol; the HDL’s. Remember, we want a higher proportion of those HDL, the healthy cholesterol. So the bad fats that we need to avoid; we can't really recommend frying for health, although, as I say, some light saut?ing on occasion is fine. We certainly want to avoid the fatty meats; bacon, sausage, ham, those type of things; certainly deep fried foods. And as I say, get a little healthy fats with each meal. Could be some olives or some olive oil, or a few nuts; a handful of nuts, and do like the Mediterranean’s do; instead of putting butter on your bread, have a little dish of olive oil, with maybe some garlic and herbs in there. Dip your bread or your vegetables in the olive oil. And use some salad, healthy, make your own salad dressing. That's another way to get fats with each meal.

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