Things You Need to Know About Fat

With the low carbohydrate craze, numerous people have turned their attention to fats. They consume a lot of it and believe its fine. Dependant on what kinda fat you’re consuming and how often of it you absorb, fats could be beneficial or detrimental to your health.

There are three primary types of fat. It is saturated, unsaturated and trans fats. Saturated fats come up mainly from animal sources such as meat and dairy. At room temperature, saturated fats are solid. Unsaturated fats come up mainly from plant life sources such as olives and nuts and carry no cholesterol. They are liquid (oil) at room temperature. Unsaturated fats are broken down further in monounsaturated (one double bond) and polyunsaturated (more than one double bond).

You might be asking yourself what is saturated fat?. A fat molecule (without getting into too much chemistry) is made up of carbon atoms that have hydrogen atoms attached to them.

In saturated fats, all carbon atoms have a single bond to another carbon atom and are also bonded to hydrogen atoms. In unsaturated fats, not all carbons are saturated with hydrogens so double bonds form between carbons. Depending on what carbon the double bond  determines the fat’s properties.

Trans fat is man made fat. They are made by taking an unsaturated fat and arranging hydrogen through it in a process called hydrogenation. Trans fat is really terrible for your health. Whole saturated fat increases LDL (bad) cholesterol and very slightly increases HDL (good) cholesterol, trans fat increases LDL cholesterol and decreases HDL cholesterol.

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