How do fats work




















For example, spread avocado on toast, make a nut butter sandwich for lunch, and add a handful of nuts as an afternoon snack. Buy an oil brush and apply olive oil to chicken breasts and vegetables. As a service to our readers, Harvard Health Publishing provides access to our library of archived content. Please note the date of last review or update on all articles. No content on this site, regardless of date, should ever be used as a substitute for direct medical advice from your doctor or other qualified clinician.

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A conversation about reducing the harms of social media. Menopause and memory: Know the facts. How to get your child to put away toys. Is a common pain reliever safe during pregnancy? Staying Healthy Know the facts about fats April 19, Print This Page Click to Print. The fats you eat give your body energy that it needs to work properly.

During exercise, your body uses calories from carbohydrates you have eaten. But after 20 minutes, exercise depends partially on calories from fat to keep you going. You also need fat to keep your skin and hair healthy. Fat also helps you absorb vitamins A, D, E, and K, the so-called fat-soluble vitamins.

Fat also fills your fat cells and insulates your body to help keep you warm. The fats your body gets from your food give your body essential fatty acids called linoleic and linolenic acid. They are called "essential" because your body cannot make them itself, or work without them.

Your body needs them for brain development, controlling inflammation, and blood clotting. Fat has 9 calories per gram, more than 2 times the number of calories in carbohydrates and protein, which each have 4 calories per gram. All fats are made up of saturated and unsaturated fatty acids. Fats are called saturated or unsaturated depending on how much of each type of fatty acid they contain.

Saturated fats raise your LDL bad cholesterol level. High LDL cholesterol puts you at risk for heart attack, stroke, and other major health problems. You should avoid or limit foods that are high in saturated fats.

Eating unsaturated fats instead of saturated fats can help lower your LDL cholesterol. Most vegetable oils that are liquid at room temperature have unsaturated fats. There are two kinds of unsaturated fats:. Trans fatty acids are unhealthy fats that form when vegetable oil goes through a process called hydrogenation.

This leads the fat to harden and become solid at room temperature. Hydrogenated fats, or "trans fats," are often used to keep some foods fresh for a long time. Mobile Newsletter chat close. Mobile Newsletter chat dots. Mobile Newsletter chat avatar.

Mobile Newsletter chat subscribe. Edible Innovations. Saturated fat Unsaturated fat Polyunsaturated fat Mono-unsaturated fat Fatty acids Essential fatty acids Trans fatty acids Omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids Partially hydrogenated fat.

In the vegetable oil aisle you see oils created from different seeds and nuts. There is corn oil, safflower oil, peanut oil, canola oil, olive oil All seeds and nuts contain some amount of oil, because oil is a very good way to store energy. By the way, the only difference between oil and fat is whether or not it is a solid at room temperature.

In the meat aisle, you can look at different cuts of meat and see them outlined by a layer of white, solid fat created by the animal to store energy. In the dairy aisle you see butter and margarine -- fat made from cream or vegetable oils, respectively. Corn Oil. Cite This!



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