Interesting Facts About Fat

We often talk about fat in terms of loss and destruction (through burning) but there are many interesting things to know about fat both body and dietary.

Interesting Fat Facts

Dietary Fat

Being the most calorie-rich nutrient (9 cals per gram) fat slows down digestion and makes you feel more satieted over a longer period of time so adding avocado to your salad might make you feel more satisfied with your diet lunch. Also when it comes to it fat helps some nutrients like fat soluble vitamins absorb.

But when you think you’re eating a certain type of fat (saturated, unsaturated, monounsaturated, and polyu saturated) there is probably a little bit of all of them in one product. For instance, avocado you put in your salad contains three types – saturated, polyunsaturated, and monounsaturated with the latter in a higher amount.

Speaking of eating fats, high-calorie diets that are rich in saturated and trans fats can raise your cholesterol but eating a low-fat diet may not be an effecient way to reduce it since, well, a low-fat diet is quite difficult to sustain and you still need to get your essential fatty acids from food. So watch out for bad fat and reduce calories instead to lower your bad cholesterol.

Since essential fatty acids can be damaged by heat, light, and oxygen oils should be stored in dark vessels. For best quality choose virgin, cold-pressed, unrefined oils for cooking and salad dressing. Olive and coconut oils are both considered healthy and beneficial.

Body Fat

There are 50 billion fat cells in a body of an average adult that each live for a period of ten years and die to be replaced by new ones. These fat cells can increase by tenfold in size if the excess energy keeps coming in.

There are two types of body fat. The one we are used to battle is yellow fat, adipose tissue whose main role is to store energy. Another one is brown fat that produces heat in babies and hybernating animals.

A certain fat percetange is absolutely essential for production of hormones in both men (around 3%) and women (around 13%). Anything less is dangerously close to being fatal.