Fat and Health

Most of the nutrition science you hear about right now points to mono-unsaturated fats as the good fats. Olive oil and canola oil are both mono-unsaturated. Mono-unsaturated fats are thought to lower cholesterol.

In general, the fats to steer clear of are the saturated fats. Saturated fats are bad because they clog your arteries. Partially hydrogenated vegetable oils (which are artificially saturated fats) are now considered totally evil, both because of the saturation and a side-effect of hydrogenation called trans fatty acids.

Fatty acids that have double bonds come in two forms: trans and cis. "Trans" and "cis" refer to the direction of folding that occurs at the carbon double bonds in unsaturated fatty acids. Cis fatty acids are the normal, natural directions for the folds. A trans fatty acid is chemically identical to the cis form, but folds in an unnatural direction. The trans fatty acids are created by heat (as in deep frying) and by hydrogenation.

It turns out that in the body, the enzymes that deal with fat are unable to deal with the trans fatty acids (see How Cells Work for details on enzymes). Therefore, the enzymes get tied up trying to work on the trans fatty acids, and this can lead to problems with the processing of essential fatty acids.

Essential fatty acids are not bad for you the way trans fatty acids are. They're actually essential to good health.

Clogged Arteries The heart is an amazing organ. It beats thousands of times each day, every day, for your entire life. In the process, it pumps about five million gallons of blood through your body! The heart is a muscle, and it needs a supply of oxygen-rich blood to survive. Even though the heart has all of that blood flowing through it while it is pumping, it does not use that blood for its oxygen needs. Instead, there is a set of arteries and veins out on the surface of the heart muscle that feed it. If one of these outer arteries gets blocked, it causes a heart attack. A blockage like this is normally caused by fatty deposits that build up in the heart's arteries over the course of many years. Everything you hear about fat in the diet, cholesterol, coronary artery disease and "clogged arteries" is focused on this problem -- blocked heart arteries and the heart attacks they cause are a leading killer in the United States. See What is a heart bypass operation? for additional details.