Do fats make you fat? It all depends.

This past decade, healthy fats have made a well-deserved comeback. During the 80’s and 90’s, this essential food group was falsely maligned. Natural health practitioners cringed, but no one seemed to notice, as fat-free took center stage. Big food producers jumped on the fat-free bandwagon and created hundreds of products loaded with extra sugar but without a single gram of fat. The slimming of American that was promised by this trend never came to be. Americans cut back on fat consumption, and all the while became fatter than ever.

The role of fat as an energy-storage substance is only one of its important functions. Fats are also required to transport other nutrients, such as vitamins A, D, E, and K, the fat-soluble vitamins. Fats are a critical component of each of your 100 trillion cell membranes. Internal fatty tissue protects the vital organs from trauma and temperature change and helps regulate body temperature.

When it comes to fat’s critical role in human health, quality far outweighs quantity. Too much of the wrong fat will indeed cause weight gain, while a moderate intake of healthy fats actually promotes weight loss and stabilization.

When buying oils and processed foods containing fat, organic and extra-virgin are good adjectives to look for. Types of fat to avoid include trans, hydrogenated and partially hydrogenated.

I’ll tell you why tomorrow.

Barb Jarmoska