“Good” and “Bad” Fats – Al Marsad Libyan Newspaper

According to endocrinologist Ekaterina Kazachkova, when a person opens the refrigerator, he finds butter, vegetable oil, avocado, all of which contain completely different fats. But he does not think about why some fats are solid and others are liquid, and why nutritionists advise eating certain fats and excluding others. The answer to these questions lies in the nature of fats, their chemical composition and their effect on the body.

The doctor points out that fats are divided into “beneficial” and “harmful” because they consist of fatty acids and glycerin, and the proportion of these components in fats determines their benefit or harm. There are also animal-source fats and vegetable-source fats. The first type is found in meat, dairy products and eggs, and most of them are saturated fats, which makes them solid at room temperature. As for vegetable fats, they contain unsaturated fatty acids, which are liquid at room temperature and are considered more beneficial to health.

But there is a special group of unsaturated fatty acids, such as Omega-3, which is necessary for the human body because the body cannot produce it and only obtains it from foods, especially from fatty fish (salmon, tuna, etc.) and nuts, especially walnuts.

The doctor points out that cholesterol is associated with fats, which raises fear and anxiety for many people, even though it is necessary for the body because it participates in the production of hormones and vitamin D. However, the problem begins when its concentration in the blood increases.

According to her, the human body produces cholesterol and gets part of it with animal-source foods because plant foods do not contain cholesterol.

However, she warns against completely excluding animal fats from the diet because they contain components not found in plant foods, such as arachidonic acid, which is necessary for the functioning of the brain and nervous system, meaning that the human body needs both, but in a balanced manner.

Source: Izvestia newspaper