All fats have a role in health and fitness – focus on what actually matters (the food source and how it benefits you)
Your attitudes, knowledge and beliefs about food will obviously influence your food choices.
Approaching your food choices with an optimistic attitude, as opposed to one of stress, uncertainty and confusion, will help you make better choices and benefit your overall health and fitness.
You’re always seeing new diets, new ‘bad foods’, new scientific and government recommendations, different gurus creating fear around a specific nutrient or food group to push their narrative/bias/product and so on.
This creates more stress than necessary, makes the world of nutrition hard to navigate and lessens your confidence in your food decisions – a pessimistic approach to nutrition ensues.
Rather than demonising specific food groups and nutrients, let’s look at how different foods/nutrients can benefit your health and fitness so that you can approach your food choices with more optimism.
We need fats!
Some are essential (we need to get them through our diet, such as ‘polyunsaturated fats’ – think Omega-3 and Omega-6 fats).
Some are non-essential (our body can create them), but they still have a role in good health and fitness and can be used to your body’s advantage.
Fats provide energy, are necessary for the absorption of certain vitamins and minerals, they’re an essential part of hormones, they help with gastric emptying, digestion, and ‘feeling full enough’, and they also contribute to your brain/nervous system functioning/development and heart health. (1)
“Saturated and monounsaturated fatty acids are synthesized in the body for energetic, physiological, and structural functions, and they are present in many foods.”(2)
Polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) include essential fatty acids and have beneficial roles in human health. (Omega-3 and Omega-6 fats) (2)
For example, Oleic acid (a monounsaturated fat found in my favourite oil (olive oil)) has a role in modulating the immune system, treating and preventing different types of disorders/diseases (eg. cardiovascular disease and autoimmune conditions), metabolic issues, skin injury and cancer! (6)
And you’re probably well aware of all of the benefits associated with Omega-3 intake – found primarily in seafood (*you probably already get enough Omega-6). These polyunsaturated fats provide energy for many important bodily processes, and by increasing the levels of DHA and EPA in your body (Omega-3), they promote things like good heart health, reductions in inflammation, arthritis, depression etc. and can even assist with improved muscle growth and recovery, reduced soreness, reduced risk of illness and overall improved performance! (7) (8)
There have been a number of quality reviews that have concluded that there is no significant association between saturated fat intake and coronary artery disease or mortality. (3)
What’s actually important: The foods you’re getting your fats from.
Instead of focusing on ‘fats are bad’, you could be focusing on what kinds of foods you’re consuming your fats through and how they will benefit your health (an optimistic view).
The “Food Matrix” (the various parts of the food that make up the whole) will determine whether the high fat food is health-promoting or not.
For example, cheese and yoghurt are considered ‘fatty’, yet they’re inversely associated with cardiovascular disease risk. Same thing with full-fat dairy, yet it may be protective against type 2 diabetes! (3)
In case you missed my blog post “Why You Should Include Fermented Food: Superfood”, these dairy products in their fermented state have even more extremely impressive health and fitness benefits!
Another example: A quality piece of beef contains saturated fat, yet it also contains taurine (protects eyes, heart, muscles, and other tissues from damage/degeneration), carnosine (maintains neurological and muscular function), heme-iron, DHA (maintenance of brain function), various vitamins/minerals including Vit B12 (keeps blood and nerve cells healthy), creatine (see blog post “Creatine”), and CLA (may fight cancer, improves immune function, helps with weight loss).
So, there’s more to it than their specific fat content, they’re also full of health-promoting compounds and the food as a whole is more important than it’s constituents.
A meta-analysis by Zhu et al., (2019) showed that there was no relationship between total fat intake (polyunsaturated, monounsaturated, and saturated fatty acids) and cardiovascular disease risk; however, there was an association with trans fatty acid intake and CVD risk. (4)
It’s best to avoid ‘trans fatty acids’ (Trans Fats). These have many health risks associated with them (including CVD’s, cancers, diabetes, obesity etc.) (5)
Where do you get trans fatty acids from? Think the majority of processed, fried, and packaged foods (cakes, cookies, fried potatoes, chips, some cereals and lollies etc.).
But let’s not get pessimistic ...
These foods aren’t bad to have now and again – they have their place during various social occasions etc. where the social aspect of bonding over a dessert or sharing some chips while watching a movie may be just as important for your health!
But it’s probably a good idea to make sure they’re not your main source of fats.
The focus on fats and whether or not it negatively effects one’s health has lead people away from health-promoting and nutritionally dense foods!
For example, rather than reaching for the eggs or full-fat yoghurt for breakfast because you heard ‘fats are bad’, you reach for an alternative (such as some variation of a cereal that isn’t as nutritionally beneficial) – you have to replace the food with something – and it’s usually worse for you than the ‘fatty’ nutritionally dense, health-promoting food you’ve rejected.
So, knowing that natural fats are great for you and should play an important role in your diet, and that the food as a whole is more important than what it’s made up of, here are a few great ‘fatty’ foods to include:
Generally, unprocessed, whole food sources are the way to go. They have a synergy of different concentrations of the different fats, and also contain a bunch of other compounds that are health-promoting.
All fats have their role in great health and fitness. Knowing that there are many sources of health- and fitness-promoting fats and that they tend to come from foods that are nutrient dense and have a rich ‘food matrix’, you can now focus on what actually matters (your food choices) and approach them with greater optimism.
**A quick note: Everyone’s situation/body/context/health challenge is different. Depending on your individual circumstance, nutritionists and even psychologists can be very helpful. This is a very general view of approaching nutrition with optimism and making better food choices.
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