Is All Fat Bad For You?

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Over past four decades, fat has become somewhat of a dietary enemy, something in foods that has become feared for its ability to kill and cause disease. As a nation, we have taken the message to heart – literally. The good news is that the average American has reduced the percentage of calories obtained from fat over the last few decades. We have spent millions and millions of dollars annually on low fat products, all sorts of fat busting diets and cookbooks, and we have even purchased pills that supposedly block the absorption of fat from the digestive system.

The problem is that we are not any healthier for all of this wonderful effort. In fact, would you believe we are actually worse off? An astounding one half of Americans are overweight. More than 20 percent of all adults are so far overweight that they are considered as obese, almost twice as many as in 1960. Not only this, diabetes is on the rise, and the war on fat has not had any appreciable impact on rates of heart disease and cancer – the two main reasons we are concerned for it in the first place.

One big reason we are not seeing a payoff is that we no longer can see the critical fact that fats are not the same. Thus, not all fats are bad. In spite of all the negativity bestowed upon fat by whomever, the truth is that some fats are good for you and it is very important to have this in our diets. In fact, eating more good fats is second only to weight control on the list of healthy nutritional strategies.

Eating the right kind of fat is a critical issue because dietary fat gets most of the blame for causing heat disease, which is the major killer in the United States and most developed countries and soon to be the leading cause of death worldwide. In the United States alone, more than a million people will have heart attacks this year, and heart disease and stroke will account for about one third of all deaths.

The cost of heart disease and stroke will top $180 billion, not counting the costs of lost productivity. Diet certainly is not the only cause of heart disease. Smoking is still the single leading cause, while overweight and inactivity also contribute a substantial share of deaths and disability. However after smoking, controlling the type of fat you consume is one of the most important ways to prevent heart disease.

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