Fats and Cholesterol

What are Fats?

Fat is aslo a micronutrient . It is an essential part of our diet and is important for good health like protein and carbohydrates . Their is a myth about fats that they are not good for your health . But this is not true, fats are also important for our health. Their are good fat and bad fat . We need both of them but in limited quantity. Let's know what are good fats and what are bad fats :- 

Types of Fats:- 

1. Saturated Fats 
2. Unsaturated Fats  

Saturated Fats (Unhealthy Fats) :-

They are usually solid at room temperature . Now gets deeper into this , they are simply fat molecules i.e. no double bond between carbon molecule . In simple words these are unhealthy fats . But we still need saturated fat in our healthy diet . Here question arises that why we need saturated fat . The main purpose of adding saturated fat in our diet is that  they build hormones in our body .
Food that contents Saturated fat increases the level of bad cholesterol i.e. increases LDL ( Low density lipoprotein ) in blood and causes high risk 

Below are some Examples of food that contains Saturated Fat:-

• Whole chicken 
•  Whole milk 
• Oils ( not Olive oil and coconut oil)
• Ghee 
• Butter 
• Cheese

Unsaturated Fats ( healthy fats):-

They are usually liquid at room temperature but when they placed in cold temperature they starts to get solid . They are also called Healthy Fat . Unsaturated Fats are further divided into two categories :-

• Mono-unsaturated fats
• Poly-unsaturated fats

Mono-unsaturated fats :-

These fats have only one unsaturated carbon bond in molecule this is called double bond 

Poly-unsaturated fats:-

These Fats have more than one unsaturated carbon bond in molecule this is called double bond .

Food that contains Unsaturated fat :-

• Olive oil
• Chicken breasts
• Low fat milk 
• Coconut oil
• Low fat curd 

Daily intake of Fats:- 

According to the  American Heart Association(AHA) the daily requirement of Fat is 25 to 35 percent . That means if an individual takes 2000

calories a day then 25 percent of 2000 is come from fat only ,i.e. 500 calories a day from fat . 
As per rule , 1 gram of fat is equal to 9 calories ,i.e. 1g=9 calories
Then the daily requirement of Fat is 55g , in which both saturated and unsaturated fat are included
The daily requirement of Saturated fat is 7 percent of 2000 calories ,i.e. about 140 calories 
Then the daily requirement of Saturated Fat is 15g  and the remaining 40g is for unsaturated Fats 

What are Trans Fats?

Wherever we talk about Fats ,we always hear about  a term know as Trans Fats . Now what is this Trans Fats? It is healthy or unhealthy for our health ? Let's talk about this .
When Oil is heated up to 200 C° or oil is used several times for cooking then Trans Fats is produced in that oil  . Which is very harmful for our heart life . It raises our LDL (Low Density Lipoprotein) and lower the HDL (High Density Lipoprotein)

 

Cholesterol

It is a type of fat that found in our food as well as in blood also. These are also of two types Good and Bad cholesterol.

Cholesterol is also important for our healthy life . But we not want Bad cholesterol in our diet 

Good cholesterol helps to lower the LDL and increases the level of HDL