Do You Know the Type of Fat in Your Diet?

For decades, the mantra for healthy eating has been “eat a low-fat, low-cholesterol diet.” Touted as a way to lose weight and prevent heart disease and other chronic conditions, millions of people have followed this advice. Seeing a tremendous marketing opportunity, food companies re-engineered thousands of foods to be low-fat or fat-free. The low-fat approach to eating may have made a difference for the occasional individual, but as a nation, it has nether helped us control our weight nor become healthier. In the 1960s, fats and oils supplied Americans with about 45 percent of their calories. About 13 percent of the population was obese and less than one percent had type 2 diabetes. Today, Americans take in less fat, getting about 33 percent of calories from fats and oils; yet 34 percent of the population is obese, and eight percent has diabetes (mostly type 2). (Source: Harvard School of Public Health).

Research has shown that the total amount of fat in your diet isn’t linked with weight or disease. What actually matters is the type of fat in your diet. Trans fats and saturated fats increase your risk of cardiovascular disease, while monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats do just the opposite. But then you ask, “what about cholesterol in food?” The answer is, for most people the mix of fats in their diets influences cholesterol in their bloodstreams far more than cholesterol in food.

Almost all foods contain some fat. Even foods like carrots and lettuce contain small amounts of fat. That’s a testament to how important fats are for your health and well-being. Fat provides a terrific source of energy for your body as well as a great depot for storing it. It is an important part of cell membranes, helping govern what gets into and out of your cells. Your body uses cholesterol as the starting point to make estrogen, testosterone, vitamin D, and other vital compounds. Fats are also biologically active molecules that can influence how your muscles respond to insulin. Also, different types of fats can fire-up or cool down inflammation in your body.

Your body packages fat and cholesterol into tiny protein-covered particles called lipoproteins in order to get them into your blood stream. Some of these lipoproteins are big and fluffy, and others are small and dense. However, the most important ones to remember for your health and well-being are low-density lipoproteins, high-density lipoproteins, and triglycerides as explained below.

Low-density lipoproteins (LDL) carry cholesterol from your liver to the rest of your body. Your cells latch onto these particles and extract fat and cholesterol from them. When there is too much LDL cholesterol in your blood, these particles can form deposits in the walls of your coronary arteries and other arteries throughout your body. These deposits, called plaque can cause your arteries to narrow and limit blood flow, resulting in a heart attack or stroke. Thus, LDL cholesterol is called your bad cholesterol.

High-density lipoproteins (HDL) scavenge cholesterol from your bloodstream, your LDL, and your artery walls and ferry it back to your liver for disposal. Thus, HDL cholesterol is referred to as your good cholesterol.

Triglycerides comprise most of the fat that you eat and that travels through your bloodstream. Because triglycerides are your body’s main vehicle for transporting fats to your cells, they are essential for good health. However, an excess of triglycerides can be unhealthy.

The type of fat in your diet determines to a large extent the amount of total and LDL cholesterol in your bloodstream. Cholesterol in food matters too, but not nearly as much. You can basically break the fats in your diet into three categories; good, bad, and very bad.

Good Fats

Unsaturated fats are called good fats because they can improve blood cholesterol levels, ease inflammation, stabilize heart rhythms, and play a number of other beneficial roles.
Unsaturated fats are predominantly found in foods derived from plants, such as vegetable oils, nuts, and seeds. They are liquid at room temperature.

Furthermore, there are two types of unsaturated fats: monounsaturated and polyunsaturated. Monounsaturated fats are found in high concentrations in canola, peanut, and olive oil, in avocados, nuts like almonds, hazelnuts, and pecans, and seeds such as pumpkin and sesame. Polyunsaturated fats are found in high concentrations in sunflower, corn, soybean and flaxseed oil. They also are found in foods such as walnuts, flaxseeds and fish.

Research has shown that replacing carbohydrates in your diet with good fats reduces harmful levels of LDL and increases protective HDL in your bloodstream. A randomized trial called the Optimal Macronutrient Intake Trial for Heart Health showed that replacing a carbohydrate-rich diet with one rich in unsaturated fat - predominantly monounsaturated fats - lowers blood pressure, improves lipid levels, and reduces the estimated cardiovascular risk.

Bad Fats

Saturated fats are called bad fats because they increase your total cholesterol level by elevating harmful LDL. Your body can produce all the saturated fat that it needs, so you don’t have to get any from your diet. In the US and other developed countries, saturated fats come mainly from meat, seafood, poultry with skin, and whole-milk dairy products. A few plant sources, such as coconuts and coconut oil, palm oil and palm kernel oil, also are high in saturated fats.

As general rule it’s good to keep your intake of saturated fats as low as possible. Saturated fats are found in many foods, including vegetable oils that are mainly unsaturated fats, so you can’t completely eliminate them from your diet. Because red meat and dairy fat are the main sources of saturated fats for most people, minimizing them in your diet is the primary way to reduce your intake of saturated fat.

Very Bad Fats

Trans fatty acids, more commonly known as trans fats, are made by heating liquid vegetable oils in the presence of hydrogen gas, - a process called hydrogenation. Partially hydrogenating vegetable oils makes them more stable and less likely to spoil. It also converts the oil into a solid which makes transportation easier. Partially hydrogenated oils can also withstand repeated heating without breaking down, making them ideal for frying fast foods. This is reason partially hydrogenated oils have been a mainstay in restaurants and the food industry.

Trans fats are worse for cholesterol levels than saturated fats because they raise bad LDL and lower good HDL. They also increase inflammation, an over-activity of the immune system that is associated with heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and other chronic conditions. Even small amounts of trans fats in your diet can have harmful health effects. For every extra two percent of daily calories from trans fat (the amount in a medium order of fast food French fries) the risk of coronary heart disease increases by 23 percent. It is estimated that eliminating trans fats from the US food supply would prevent between six and 19 percent of heart attacks and heart attack-related deaths (more than 200,000) each year.

Recommendations for Fat in Your Diet

Are you confused at this point about the type of fats and their varied effects on your health? If so remember the basic message to replace the bad fats in your diet with the good fats. Here are some suggestions to help you limit the bad fats in your diet.

• Eliminate trans fats from partially hydrogenated oils. Check food labels for the presence of trans fats and avoid fried fast foods.

• Limit your intake of saturated fats by cutting back on red meat and full-fat dairy products. When possible replace red meat with poultry, fish, beans, and nuts. Also, try switching from whole milk and other full-fat dairy foods to lower-fat versions.

• Use liquid vegetable oils rich in polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats in place of butter in your cooking and at the table.

• Eat one or more sources of omega-3 fats every day. Excellent sources are fish, walnuts, canola or soybean oil, ground flax seeds and flax seed oil.

If you like this post, please checkout my fitness publications at: Forever Fit and Firm

Choose Your Carbohydrates Wisely

The popularity of the low-carbohydrate diets has probably led you to believe that all carbohydrates are “bad” for you.  Just reading the hype in the media would make you think that carbohydrates are the cause of the obesity epidemic throughout the United States. 

Eating a lot of easily- digested carbohydrates from white bread, white rice, pastries, sugared sodas, and other highly processed foods may contribute to your weight gain, and therefore, interfere with your efforts to lose weight.  On the contrary, consuming whole grains, beans, fruits, vegetables, and other intact carbohydrates promotes good health.  A healthy diet is about balance and moderation.  A basic knowledge of what carbohydrates are and how you body uses them is essential to understanding how to balance them in your diet.

Carbohydrates are essential nutrients that are excellent sources of energy (measured as calories) for your body; they are the preferred fuel for your brain and nervous system.  Carbohydrates are found in an array of foods such as bread, beans, milk, popcorn, potatoes, cookies, spaghetti, soft drinks, corn, and desserts. The most common and abundant forms are classified as sugars, fibers, and starches.

The basic building block of every carbohydrate is a sugar molecule, a simple union of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen.  Starches and fibers forms of carbohydrates are essentially chains of sugar molecules, some containing hundreds.

As mentioned above, most carbohydrates come from plant sources and are in the form of sugars, starches, and fibers.  Sugars, also called simple carbohydrates, include fruit sugar (fructose), corn or grape sugar (dextrose or glucose), and table sugar (sucrose).  Starches, also known as complex carbohydrates, include everything made of three or more linked sugars.  Starches include foods such as breads, cereals, grains, pasta, rice, and flour.  Fibers are technically classified as a starch because they are complex carbohydrates that your body cannot breakdown into sugar molecules.  Fibers are more abundant in whole grains, legumes, and vegetables.

Your body breaks down all carbohydrates, except for fibers, into single sugar molecules regardless of their source.  These simple sugars are further converted into glucose, also known as blood sugar.  Your body is designed to use blood sugar as a universal source of fuel for energy.

Fiber is the form of carbohydrate that your body cannot break down into simple sugar molecules.  It passes through your body undigested.  Fiber comes in two varieties: soluble, which dissolves in water, and insoluble, which does not.  Although neither type provides energy for your body, they both promote health in many ways.  Soluble fiber binds to fatty substances in your intestines and carries them out as waste, thus lowering your low-density lipoprotein (LDL, or bad cholesterol).  It also helps regulate your body’s use of sugars, helping you to keep your hunger and blood sugar in check.  Insoluble fiber helps push food through your intestinal tract, promoting regularity and helping to prevent constipation.

Here’s what happens when you eat a food containing carbohydrates.  Your digestive system breaks down the digestible ones into sugar, which then enters your blood.  As your blood sugar level rises, specials cells in your pancreas churn out insulin, a hormone that signals your cells to absorb the blood sugar for energy or for storage.  As your cells soak-up the blood sugar, its level in your bloodstream begins to fall.  Now, your pancreas starts making another hormone called glucagon, which signals your liver to start releasing stored blood sugar.  This interplay of insulin and glucagon ensures that cells throughout your body have a steady supply of blood sugar.

Maintaining a steady blood sugar level is a very important component of your diet.  While you’ve just seen that your body breaks down all digestible carbohydrates into blood sugar, some are converted into blood sugar faster than others.  Thus, some carbohydrates cause a spike in your blood sugar level causing you to feel hungry faster and to crave more sugary foods.  Other carbohydrates are converted into blood sugar more slowly, leveling out your blood sugar and resulting in less hunger and food cravings.

For this reason, the Glycemic Index (GI) was developed to classify how quickly your body converts carbohydrates into blood sugar as opposed to pure glucose.  Glucose has a GI of 100, and all other carbohydrate-based foods are ranked against it.  Foods with a score of 70 or more are considered to have a high GI, while those with a score of 55 or less are considered low.

Eating lots of food with a high GI causes spikes in your blood sugar level, which can lead to many health issues, such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and obesity.  Eating low GI foods causes your blood sugar level to stay steady thus keeping your energy level balanced and causing you to feel fuller longer between meals. The following are some additional benefits of eating low GI carbohydrates.

·       Helps you to lose and manage weight your weight.

·       Increases your body's sensitivity to insulin.

·       Decreases your risk of developing type 2 diabetes.

·       Reduces your risk of heart disease.

·       Improves your blood cholesterol levels

·       Reduces hunger and keeps you fuller longer.

·       Helps you prolong physical activity.

·       Helps you to refuel your carbohydrate stores after exercise.

You can get the GI rating of hundreds of carbohydrate-based foods from the Glycemic Index Foundation, sponsored by the University of Sydney in Australia.  It maintains a searchable database of more than 1600 entries at http://www.glycemicindex.com.

The GI is interesting because some of the foods that you think would have a high rating actually do not.  For instance, fructose, or fruit sugar has a minimal effect on blood sugar, while white bread and French-fried potatoes are converted to blood sugar nearly as fast as pure glucose.  In other words, you can’t classify foods as having a high or low GI based on the sweetness of taste.  Many factors affect a foods GI such as:

·       Processing: Grains that have been milled and refined have a higher GI

·       Type of starch:  Starches come in many different configurations.  Some are easier to break into sugar molecules than others.  For example, starch in potatoes is digested and absorbed into the bloodstream relatively quickly.

·       Fiber content: The sugars in fiber are linked in a way that is hard for your body to break down.  Thus, the more fiber a food has, the less digestible carbohydrate, and consequently, the less sugar it can deliver into your blood stream.

·       Fat and acid content:  The more fat or acid a food contains, the slower its carbohydrates are converted to sugar and absorbed into your bloodstream.

·       Physical form:  Finely ground grain is more rapidly digested, and so has a higher GI than more coarsely ground grain.

The basic technique for eating the low GI way is simply a "this-for-that" approach, swapping high GI carbohydrates for low GI carbohydrates. You don't need to count numbers or do any mental arithmetic to make sure you are eating a healthy, low GI diet.  Follow these easy to implement suggestions.

·       Use breakfast cereals based on oats, barley and bran

·       Use breads with whole-grains, stone-ground flour, or sour dough

·       Reduce the amount of potatoes you eat

·       Enjoy all types of fruit and vegetables

·       Use brown rice

·       Enjoy whole-wheat pasta and noodles

·       Eat plenty of salad vegetables with a vinaigrette dressing

The above information is from my book Forever Fit and Firm. In this book you will find many other fitness tips to help you get and stay fit.  You can purchase a copy of this book and my other publications by following this link: Forever Fit and Firm
 

Muscle Plays a Major Role in Your Health

I've been in the health and fitness industry for over 21 years now and I've always emphasized the importance of building and maintaining healthy muscle, especially as you age. I've always known that muscle plays a major role in your overall health and fitness and current research has now proven this as so.

The importance of muscle mass, strength, and metabolic function in the performance of exercise, as well as the activities of daily living has never been questioned. However, the role your muscles play in whole-body protein metabolism is less recognized.

Your muscle plays a central role in your whole-body protein metabolism by serving as the principle reservoir for amino acids to maintain protein synthesis (growth & regeneration) in vital tissues and organs in the absence of consuming enough protein in your diet.  In other words, if you don't get enough protein in your diet, your body breaks down your muscle mass in order to make the necessary amino acids you need to survive.

Additionally, new research points to a key role that muscle metabolism plays in the prevention of many pathologic conditions and chronic diseases.  Loss of muscle has been associated with weakness, fatigue, insulin resistance, fractures, and frailty. Thus, many of the degenerative conditions that are associated with aging are caused by poor muscle health.

Thus, building and maintaining your muscle mass is one of the most important things you can do for your overall health.  In my next series of post I will show you the most effective ways to accomplish this.

Healthy Muscles for Healthy Adults

Here is another great blog by Dr. Donald K. Layman.

Muscle size and strength are usually associated with body builders and athletes, but the latest research is proving that healthy muscles are critical for adult health. Average life expectancy continues to increase, but along with the blessing of longer life comes the risk of age-related diseases. The risks for obesity, diabetes, osteoporosis, heart disease, and cancers increase with advancing age. Excluding individuals who die early in life from an accident, injury or acute illness, we all expect to live healthy and robust lives well into our 80’s or beyond. For adults over the age of 65, the real risks for loss of health relate to muscle function and mobility. The measure of functional mobility is defined as the ability to perform activities of daily living or ADL. ADL is a measure of independent living and directly predicts morbidity and mortality – how healthy will you be? … and how long will you live?

A few years ago, a colleague, Dr. Robert Wolfe, wrote an article entitled The Underappreciate Role of Muscle in Health and Disease. The article highlighted the importance of skeletal muscle in adult health. Dr. Wolfe looked at healthy aging, acute illnesses, chronic diseases, and recovery from surgery or falls and the common factor for recovery and even survival from each of these conditions was skeletal muscle health. If your muscles are healthy, then your odds of avoiding or recovering from illnesses improve greatly. Dr. Wolfe reported some eye-opening facts – women over the age of 65 who fall and break a hip, over 50% never walk again; recovery from cancer and chemotherapy is directly related to muscle mass at initial diagnosis; and risk of developing diabetes is inversely related to muscle metabolic health. Dr. Steve Blair at the Cooper Institute coined the concept of Fit and Fat to reflect that many people can be overweight and still healthy – as long as they have good muscle health. The list of examples goes on but the point is clear, healthy muscles equal healthy adults.

The importance of muscle health highlights a critical difference among weight loss diets. There are many fad diets and so-called nutrition companies that make claims about rapid weight loss or cures for obesity, but the secret they want to hide is they also cause muscle loss. That’s a critical factor when you evaluate a weight loss program. People tend to ask “how much weight can I lose in the shortest period of time?” These quick fix fad diets may work for spring break when you’re 18 to 22, but it’s a dangerous practice for any adult over 30. The correct questions are “is it a proven weight loss program, and what are the proportions of fat and muscle lost?” Be sure that the so-called miracle diet PROVES that it only causes loss of body fat and not muscle. Loss of muscle means you have damaged your metabolic flexibility and your functional mobility and virtually guaranteed the weight will return (note: research shows 93% of weight is regained within one year with these fad diets); and even worse the weight that returns will be all body fat increasing the risk for diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and osteoporosis. If you lose muscle during weight loss, the muscle loss will be permanent increasing your metabolic risks and accelerating aging.

Muscle health is so important that medical experts in gerontology are debating whether adults over 60 should EVER lose weight. Skeletal muscles have obvious importance for posture and mobility. When we’re young our muscles are strong and flexible. The same is true for metabolism. Young muscles have high metabolic flexibility. Teenagers seldom get muscle soreness and usually recover rapidly after an exercise challenge. As we get older, we observe changes in physical strength and flexibility, and there are changes in metabolic flexibility that we can’t see. As we get older, muscle health and metabolic flexibility requires more attention.

To maintain muscle health, you need healthy behaviors and a healthy lifestyle. Two major components of a healthy lifestyle are physical activity and nutrition, and specifically the physical activity needs to involve stretching and resistance and the nutrition needs to control protein and Carbs. These are fundamental principles in the METABOLIQ Lifestyle.

Don’t be fooled by the claims of the latest fad diet. Look for the research. METABOLIQ was developed and tested to protect skeletal muscles and the results are published in the leading nutrition research journals. We’ve done the research with young adults and with adults over 65. METABOLIQ allows for natural loss of body fat while protecting active muscles for everyone. Remember, muscles are the foundation of adult health and the METABOLIQ Lifestyle delivers on the promise of energizing muscles and creating a natural and healthy weight loss.

For your health,
Dr. Donald K. Layman
CSO, Qivana


Dr. Donald K. Layman is Professor Emeritus of Nutrition in the Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition at the University of Illinois. With more than 33 years of teaching and research experience, Dr. Layman has numerous awards and recognitions, including awards from the American Society for Nutritional Sciences, the National Institutes of Health and the Nutrition and Metabolism Society

Please follow this link to find out to purchase the Metaboliq System and other amazing natural nutritional products, Qivana

Help Improve the Health of a Loved One

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I have an idea on how to improve the health of the ones you love. Take the ones you love for a 30 minute walk each day. What better way to say I love you than to help someone to live a healthy and long life?

Walking is a simple and easy way to get the health benefits of regular exercise. A brisk 30 minute walk each day can decrease your blood pressure, decrease your risk for developing diabetes, help you lose weight, increase your energy level, and help you sleep better.

Just think you can help someone you love improve the quality of their life just by taking them for a walk each day. Plus, you can have great conversation and get to know them better. Try it for the next 30 days and you'll be surprised at how much better you and your loved ones will feel.