Oil is a good source of healthy fat
Eating fats is essential for our overall health, despite what many people may think. Healthy fats, unsaturated ones, which come from oils and spreads are beneficial to our nutrition.
As with all aspects of a healthy diet, balance is key and dietary fats are no exception.
While polyunsaturated fats offer numerous health benefits, getting too much of any type of fat can be damaging to your health. Present guidelines suggest that no more than 35% of your overall daily energy intake should come from fat (with no more than 11% from saturated fat).
So while it’s not desirable to increase the total fat content of the diet, replacing saturated fats with polyunsaturated fats and monounsaturated fats will help you achieve a better balance for your heart and overall wellbeing (as part of a healthy diet and lifestyle).
These tips, from The Fat Information Service (FIS), will help show you how:
Switch to lower-fat dairy products e.g. low fat yogurts, and skimmed or semi-skimmed milks to reduce your intake of saturated fats. Eat less cheese.
Swap butter for small amounts of spread or margarine as this can help reduce your saturated fat intake. Spreads are also fortified with other vitamins and can help supplement your diet with key nutrients. Additionally, spreads made from seed oils contain essential fats, omega 3 & 6; these are fats that your body cannot make and must be taken in via your diet
Choose lean cuts of meat, poultry or oily fish rather than fatty or processed meat products. Make sure you trim any excess fat and remove the skin from chicken or turkey before cooking.
When you do roast or fry food, try using a lower saturated fat spread or oil product
Tagged in Nutrition Diet Healthy eating Healthy Food fat