Are You “Fat” Healthy?

June 24, 2008 by GiGi

Welcome back!

If you remember back in my post about The 2008 Food & Health Survey, we discovered that most Americans don’t know the difference between a healthy fat and an unhealthy fat and didn’t know where to find them in their diet.

I’m not going into a long dissertation on the difference between Omega 3s, Omega 6s and Omega 9s, because I found a great article that discusses all that already: Your Guide To Anti Aging Fats. However, they do make some interesting points:

Omega 6 fats are too high in the American diet – these consist of vegetable oils such as corn, soy, safflower, and sesame.
Omega 3 fats are considered anti aging, such as canola oil, walnuts, avocados and flax seed oil.
Omega 9 fats are also good – olive oil and other nuts
Stay away from saturated and trans fats (but we already knew that, didn’t we?)

Here’s an interesting fact:

You only need 70 grams of fat to release a hormone in the brain that decreases the desire for food. It takes about 25-30 minutes after eating the fat on an empty stomach to work.

So a good technique is to have a little avocado on a celery stick ( or 6 walnuts), a glass of water and then take a 30 minute walk before dinner.

Sounds cool – let’s hear it for healthy fats!