THE IMPORTANCE OF FATS

No one knows better than I how wonderful it is to have a steak with baked potato, butter and sour cream, and a hot fudge sundae for desert. The reason it tastes so good is because of the fat, in that kind of food that's where the taste is. The truth is however that eating like that shortens our lives. My grandparents ate like that and were very heavy, they both died in their early sixties. What a waste!

I am not a fanatic about anything. I do think that the diet I develop for myself will allow occasional bad choices, but as a rule fats will be a determining factor in my diet.

When researchers first started to learn about cholesterol, they took in the total number, and didn't know about the LDL and the HDL. The same with fats. When people were first warned to watch their fat intake they were told to cut down the amount. Years passed, and they found that those who cut down did not get healthier or loose much weight. It wasn't until they separated the types of fat and told us which were good and which were bad that they discovered it's not the amount that matters, it's the type that matters. That in turn eating more bad fat will turn the cholesterol bad, and the right fats will turn it into good cholesterol when it enters the body.

Next post is your guide to fats.