Good Fats, Bad Fats
Everyone’s terrified of fat. But there’s good fats, bad fats, and REALLY bad fats, and you’d better know the difference unless YOU want to start being called “Fats”.
First off, let’s kill the rumor that all fats are bad, or that low fat diets are the way to fitting into your skinny jeans. That’s just not true. In fact, sugar and refined carbs are far worse for you than fat.
Good Fats
Your body NEEDS fat. There’s a group of fats called “Essential Fatty Acids” that, as the name implies, are essential to normal body functions. What sort of functions? Things like building blocks for hormones, building cell membranes… even the insulation that covers our nerves is made out of fat (well, a big part of it).
And yes, believe it or not, there was a time when even the caloric content of fat was considered good. Remember, for a very long period of human history, there weren’t grocery stores or freezers or Tupperware, so calories and the life-giving energy they supply were an unreliable resource. In those conditions, getting a windfall of energy from fat was a very good thing.
Nowadays, of course, we have more calories around then we know what to do with, which creates a bit of a problem since evolution in that harsh starvation environment has hard-wired us to really, really like the taste of fatty stuff. I’m getting a little off track here, though…. we were talking about good fats and which fats are good for you.
Basically, we’re talking about Omega-3 and Omega-6 fatty acids… “fatty acids” is just a fancy term for fats. Oh, there’s a few others, but really, those two kinds are the major essential fats of interest. Our body needs both of them, so in that sense, they’re both “good”.
However, the tricky part is, we need them in a balanced ratio… I’ll explain why in a second. Unfortuanately for us, we tend to gobble down tons and tons of Omega-6s (again, I’ll get to why that is in a second), and not a whole lot of Omega-3s, so our ratios tend to be skewed heavily toward Omega-6s.
How skewed? Some estimates go up to 20 or even 30 to 1!
You Need Balance, Grasshopper
So what’s the big deal? Why is balancing these fats so darn important to us? There’s two major reasons that we are aware of; hormones and cell membranes.
As I mentioned before, essential fats are necessary in the creation of both of those things. But having too much of one will lead to a corresponding skew in how your body makes those components. Let’s talk hormones.
The Omega-6 fatty acids are the building blocks for pro-inflammatory hormones, while Omega-3 fats are the basis for anti-inflammatory hormones. These two kinds of fats compete for the attention of your body; in other words, if there’s tons of Omega-6s floating around and not a lot of Omega-3s, they will push the Omega-3s out of the way and take over.
As the Omega-6s begin to dominate the body chemistry, the entire body becomes easier and easier to inflame, since Omega-6s form the basis for the chemical signals to start the inflammation process. It’s like instead of having one mousetrap in the room, you have eighty… the littlest movement is going to set SOMETHING off.
And so, your body becomes a hair-trigger for inflammation. And while some inflammation is necessary (it kick-starts the healing process), when you have CHRONIC inflammation, you start doing damage to the body. In fact, chronic inflammation is starting to look like the biochemical boogeyman of the 21st century… it’s cropping up in all kinds of diseases like heart disease, cancer, you name it.
By increasing the level of Omega-3s in the diet, you return that ratio back to normal and reduce how much of the pro-inflammatory chemicals are produced by the body. Going back to our metaphor, this takes a bunch of the mousetraps out of the room. Now, your body isn’t going to pop off into an inflammatory state every time the wind blows.
And, as a consequence, since you’ve reduced the amount of chronic inflammation, you reduce the damage that chronic inflammation causes. So it’s not so much that Omega-3s CURE something, it’s more that they return your body to a normal state, and stuff starts actually working right for a change.
Wild fish are a great source of Omega-3s (farm-raised fish eat lots of Omega-6s, and therefore become filled with Omega-6s), as are grass-fed beef and chicken, wild game, and eggs from grass-fed chickens. Fish oil capsules are a popular way to really amp up your Omega-3 good fats.
Bad Fats
Another important way to improve that Omega-3 to Omega-6 ratio is to reduce the amount of Omega-6s that you eat. Here’s the problem: we stuff tons and tons of Omega-6s into our diet. This is why our good fats to bad fats ratio stinks so horribly.
Why do we do it? Well, not on purpose; that is, it’s not like food manufacturers are evil archvillians who are implementing a dastardly plan to destroy us all with bad fats (at least, I don’t THINK they are…). It’s just that Omega-6s are economically a better choice than Omega-3s.
They’re cheap, in other words. Corn is a big part of this. America grows an absolutely ridiculous amount of corn, and we turn that into just about everything you can imagine. High fructose corn syrup, corn chips… we even feed it to our livestock, when our livestock should be eating mostly grasses (grasses are high in Omega-3s, which is why grass fed animals are full of Omega-3s).
Omega-6s are also more stable and have a longer shelf life than Omega-3s, which makes them cheaper to store. So we’ve made a trade-off; cheaper food for a really, really unhealthy ratio of bad fats to good fats.
The easiest way to avoid Omega-6s is to stick to a whole foods diet, which I constantly mention on this site. That means no processed foods; nothing out of a box or a can, basically. Lean, grass-fed meats and fish, eggs, fruits and vegetables, nuts… all in as close to a natural state as possible. If it’s processed, odds are somebody somewhere along the way stuck corn in it, or some other source of Omega-6s, or even worse, our final bad fats culprit… the trans fat.
Really, Really Ugly Fats
Trans fats are the heavyweight champion of bad fats. Trans fats are chemically altered fats; they’re man-made (actually, there are a tiny number of naturally occuring trans fats). They were developed in the early 1900s as a way to stabilize fats for storage… once again, making them a lot cheaper and more accessible.
At first, people thought trans fats like those found in margarine were actually a healthier alternative to the natural fats found in butter. Partially hydrogenated oils like vegetable oil have become a mainstay of cooking, especially in fried foods… again, because it’s cheap and lasts a super-long time.
Unfortunately, trans fats are horrible for you. We’re not sure of the exact biochemical reasons for this; it may have something to do with the human digestive system not really being able to break down trans fats very well. There’s also a link between trans fats and higher levels of C-reactive protein, which is a test for inflammation (remember inflammation?).
Whatever the physiological link, trans fats have been linked to heart disease, obesity, depression, Altzheimer’s disease, and cancer… and I have a feeling more stuff is going to be added to the list as we continue to look. The short answer is, you don’t want this crap in your body.
Trans fats are common in processed foods, fried foods, and cooking oils. Just like with Omega-3s and Omega-6s, the best way to keep these bad fats out of your body is to stick to a whole foods diet like I mentioned earlier.
The health implications for increasing the good fats and decreasing the bad fats in your body is huge. I haven’t even touched on cell membranes in this article (because it’s already getting REALLY long), but it should already be pretty obvious why keeping on the good fats side of the equation is going to play a big part in how long and how healthy you live.
Stick to the good fats and stay healthy!