Not all fats are created equal. Increasing good fats in your daily nutrition and avoiding refined carbohydrates-which become bad fats in your body-can help improve your overall health.

In order to increase the good fats and decrease the bad fats, you must first know where to find them on food labels. Next time you’re in the grocery store wander around and notice all the labels that say “Low-Fat” and notice what you associate with that advertising. When I offer groups on label reading, people often bring in labels for their healthy foods labeled “Low-Fat.” However, when you turn over the package and read the Nutritional Facts, you find it’s not so healthy. A classic example of this is rice cakes. One rice cake is 70 calories, 0 grams of fat, 15 grams of total carbohydrates, 1 gram of fiber and 2 grams of protein. There is very little fiber in a rice cake, which makes it a refined carbohydrate. Additionally, the total carbohydrate to protein ratio is about seven to one. For most people, this type of ratio will make them hungry and perhaps anxious or irritable two hours later. Why? Well, insulin will clear the sugar from the meal in about two hours and we will want to eat again. If we ignore that signal we can then become anxious, irritable or fatigued. What good is a snack, if it’s going to help us over eat? Both the high refined carbohydrate snack and the re-eating behavior makes it more likely for us to put on additional weight, because the extra refined carbohydrates will be converted into fat by insulin. In other words, foods that say “Low-Fat” are typically high in refined carbohydrates because they have been manufactured, and can become high-fat in our bodies.

This moves us closer to cardiovascular disease, diabetes and obesity. The ‘low-fat’ public health message has failed. We now have more cardiovascular disease, more diabetes, more obesity and a number of other diseases related to chronically high insulin. The reason why Americans have chronically high insulin is we replaced fat with refined carbohydrates. Refined carbohydrates make us feel hungrier, while vegetable dietary fats make us feel satisfied. In fact, fat intake is so important that there is part of our brain called the ventral medial hypothalamus that monitors for fat and is one of the mechanisms that tell us that we are satisfied with a meal.

The best fats for us are the vegetable fats. Olive oil is a great source of good fat, and you use it as salad dressing, drizzled over appetizers such as mozzarella cheese and tomatoes, drizzled over vegetables such as broccoli, broiled brussels sprouts or asparagus, and baked sweet potatoes.

Other examples of snacks that are satisfying are: avocado with lemon/lime juice and a little sea salt, olives from the olive bar at PCC or Whole Foods, a handful of nuts such as almonds, cashews, hazelnuts, and pecans; nut butter (almond/cashew/ peanut) with carrot and celery sticks or apple slices. The nice thing about the vegetable fat is the variety and many ways to mix it up and it’s relatively inexpensive.

Another vegetable fat that’s good to have in your diet occasionally is coconut fat. Coconut fat contains a fatty acid, called lauric acid. This is a medium chain fatty acid that is especially useful to the immune system. My favorite way of ensuring that I nourish my body with this fatty acid is through Indian curries with coconut milk. Below I have included an easy curry recipe that I use at home.

As an experiment for a few days, try skipping the refined carbohydrates as a snack and replace them with real foods that contain vegetable fats. Try and notice if you feel less hungry, more satisfied with your meals, and over eat less.

Recipe: High-Protein Chicken Curry

Prep.: 20 minutes
Serv.: 2-4

3-4 C cooked quinoa (follow packaging instructions)
1-2 6oz. defrosted chicken breasts, sliced into thin strips
Curry paste to taste
12 oz. chicken broth (per chicken breast)
8 oz. coconut milk (1 can, not low-fat)
Bite-size vegetables (2-3 C per chicken breast), such as carrots, broccoli, asparagus, eggplant, sweet potatoes, onions, brussels sprouts, cauliflower, and apple.
Optional:
Cashews, shredded coconut and/or raisins as garnish

In a large pot, bring chicken broth to a simmer. Add sliced chicken breasts, cook thoroughly, approx. 10 minutes. In a separate bowl, whisk curry paste into coconut milk to taste. Add to simmering chicken broth. Add sliced vegetables, mix all ingredients and simmer for 3-5 minutes. Serve over a bed of cooked quinoa. Add garnish if desired.

Tip: You can buy the vegetables pre-cut from the salad bar to make it really quick.

Kristen Allott, ND, L.Ac
Dynamic Paths
Specializing in Non-Pharmacutical
Interventions for Mental Health
www.dynamicpaths.com
206-579-2757

Tags: carbohydrates, cardiovascular disease, low-fat, Nutrition

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 18th, 2008 at 8:00 am and is filed under Nutrition. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.