Low Fat?

Another question posed – is low fat good for you?  Now, it is easy to understand why fat can be seen as the “enemy”. With over double the calories of either carbs or protein in every gram you eat and with the natural ability to be stored immediately as fat on your body, then it is no wonder that when  we embark on a “diet”, cutting fat cuts calories faster than anything else. However, it is not that simple, so here is a rough guide as to how much fat you need in your diet, what type of fat and whether choosing a “low fat” option is always the best choice.

The human body is designed to eat fat. We have hormones and digestive processes to handle fat, and lack of fat in our diet has a detrimental effect on how we look and feel. Therefore, we need a certain level of fat in our body to look healthy (shining hair, great skin etc) but not so much that we are putting our bodies at risk of being overweight or having heart disease.

The message to cut fat is often to due with weight loss and there are shelves of low fat options to by  -  Companies see selling “low fat” food as a great way to target the weight loss market and set about making products to tempt us into thinking that we are “eating healthy food”.

In order to call food “low fat”, the manufacturer needs to demonstrate that the product has 3% less fat than the normal product. If they can’t do that then you will see food labelled as “lower fat” or even “lite” - this is not because the reduction in fat does not fall below the 3%.  Once you take fat out of a product you have to stabilise it in some way and fill the missing gap with something. This is often Trans fat, sugar and water.

Today, go and have a look and feel of low fat products compared to normal product. Read the label.  The labels list ingredients in order – biggest ingredient first, smallest ingredient last. E.g. Helmans mayonnaise contains eggs, oils and a bit of salt. Low fat version - first ingredient Water. Same with low fat flora. Shake it. It will wobble like jelly. The process to do this is called “Hydrogenation”. The chemical processing to change liquid fat into solid fat requires huge heat and changing the structure of the fat bond. Sometimes, this process is not always complete and you get what is called a “trans fat”. Trans fat is used often in commercial baking as it is cheap. It is linked to heart disease and is banned in Denmark, Switzerland and some American states. Do you really want to eat this?

The other way of reducing fat is to increase sugar – sometimes there is 5x more sugar in a low fat product than a normal one. The effect of high sugar on the body is detrimental to good health and the WHO recommends a daily intake of only 6 teaspoons a day...The reason that sugar is added is to improve taste, as fat tastes good to humans. But I would rather eat a normal product than one that has gone through a chemical processing and definitely not one with Trans fats.

My recommendation is to eat products that have the least amount of chemical processing. Eat Clean is the message. That does not mean eat loads of fat.  30% of your daily intake of calories should come from fat – the majority from “good fat” – nuts, avocado, olive oil, eggs, and only 10% from saturated fat – butter, meat etc.  If you want to lose weight, then keeping fat low is good, but that is usually because in the UK we have a high fat diet of around 40%+ of calorie intake.  Think about buttering one side of the bread, grill rather than fry, stay away from high fat products such as sausages, bacon etc, choose chicken, salmon, or turkey as your main meat dishes. Eat normal yogurt not “low fat” but fill it with lots of fresh fruit so that you don’t eat piles of it – and plain with your own added ingredients it great. Try to use Olive Oil rather than saturated fat to cook if you have to. Watch levels of salad dressing and mayonnaise.  If you exercise then stick at the 30% level of calories from fat but still watch saturated fat (solid fats). 

Finally, prime your metabolism to burn fat quicker by increasing intensity of exercise in short bursts, exercising first thing in the morning if you can, or do 3 bits of exercise a day – doesn’t have to be more than 30 mins and can even be a walk, but you will want to release fats into the bloodstream to use a fuel rather than sugar. Finally, reduce your sugar intake as if there is sufficient sugar in the blood stream then fat burning stops – e.g., after class/exercise stay away from energy drinks, sugar/carbs for at least 30 mins, if you have to eat, then try protein such as yogurt etc or if you have to have sugar, choose low GI such as a not too ripe banana.