Fancy some fats? (Road to healthy part 4)

Today we are all about those fats.

Picture from here.

So maybe I'm just weird, but fats seem like the most fascinating out of the three macronutrients, I don't know why, I just think their fun, don't judge.

Fats are very calorific, as most know, they give us 9 kcal per 1 gram, obviously we don't stuff our faces with pure fat, therefore none of the fatty foods have quite as much calories in them, but they do tend to give us a bit more energy than other types of food.

An average person should get roughly about 25%-35% of their daily energy from fats, but a lot of people do consume more than that or maybe it's just me, because I love chocolate. When I first started keeping an eye on my diet, I did notice that I was eating a lot more fat, than  I had thought that I did.

Fat can be quite a frightening word, I can imagine you looking down at your practicly non-exsisting belly fat roll and thinking that you don't like it, (Yeah, I'm talking to you Kai) but we do need fat on our body and in our food.

Fats give food the taste that we enjoy, often deepfried things or foods that contain a significant amount of fat are the ones people enjoy the most, like chocolate for example.

We can also find natural fats in fish, nuts, seeds, olives, avocados and so on, but some people find them less enjoyable, However, these fats are considered healthier, unlike saturated fats, which have been linked to many diseases.

There are also these fun things called trans fats, which definitely are not good for us, but in small quantities, it's ok to have them, just as with any type of food or nutrient. Trans fats aren't very common in our food nowadays, since food producers have tried to eliminate them to the best of their abilities.

Besides giving food good flavour, fats do have health benefits, they are a storage for energy, protect our internal organs in case of injury, they are the sources of fatty acids, which our body can only get from food, such as omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids (I'll probably make an entire post about them in the future, they're fun), we also need fats for vitamins, which disolve only in fats, so our body could get the most benefits of those vitamins and there are actually so many more benefits to them, but this post is long as it is.

Of course there are downsides to having too much fat, if we have more than we need, then our body will have to store the energy somewhere, often where we would rather not have it, and depending on the fats you're having, some of them have been known to cause different diseases, if not consumed within the recommended limits.

I'm in a really weird mood today, probably overtired, so it's better if I write no more for now. I hope this was interesting to read.

Kaiela :)

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