| By Joan Weems, RN
For over 30 years, fat in our diet has been considered the culprit in obesity, heart disease, and high cholesterol. A typical heart-healthy diet consists of whole grains, vegetables, fruits, low-fat dairy, and protein sources. Most Americans don’t know that consuming healthy monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats in the form of nuts, seeds, avocados, and oils can actually help reduce their risk of heart disease. These dietary fats are essential to give your body energy, support cell growth, protect your organs, maintain body warmth, absorb nutrients, and produce hormones. We must learn to incorporate the good fats into our diet while reducing our consumption of the bad fats. It can get really confusing when we start talking about types of fat. Trans fats and saturated fats, the bad or lousy fats, tend to be more solid at room temperature (like butter), while the good fats, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats, are more liquid (like vegetable oil). Saturated fats boost total cholesterol by elevating harmful LDL. Like all dietary fat, saturated fat also raises the protective HDL. Unsaturated fat is much preferable since it lowers the bad cholesterol (LDL) and raises the good (HDL) cholesterol. Examples: Saturated fats are foods such as beef, butter, cheese, milk. Trans fats are deep-fried foods, bakery products, packaged snack foods, margarines, and crackers. Monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats are vegetable oils as olive, peanut, canola, safflower, corn, sunflower, soy and cottonseed, avocados, poultry, fish, nuts, and seeds. Here are some tips to help you change the fat in your diet: • Read food labels, ingredient lists and avoid products with partially hydrogenated vegetable oil listed among the first ingredients. • Sauté with olive oil instead of butter. • Use olive oil in salad dressings and marinades. Use canola oil when baking. • Use egg substitutes instead of whole eggs when possible. • Sprinkle slivered nuts or sunflower seeds on salads instead of bacon bits. • Snack on a small handful of nuts rather than potato chips or processed crackers. Unsalted peanuts, walnuts, almonds and pistachios are good choices. • Try non-hydrogenated peanut butter or other non-hydrogenated nut-butter spreads. Use on celery, bananas or whole-grain toast. • Add slices of avocado, rather than cheese, to your sandwich. • Prepare fish such as salmon and mackerel instead of red meat twice a week. Limit sizes to 4 ounces of cooked seafood per serving. At Victory Home Health & Hospice, we sometimes call this the Healthy Heart Diet. Our body needs fat; just not as much as most of us eat. Fats are so energy-dense, consuming high levels of fat, regardless of the type can lead to too many calories, which then lead us to gain weight. So for a good balance, we must limit the intake of good fats also. Victory Home Health & Hospice is prepared to help you with any medical problems or healthcare questions you may have. Victory wants to provide you with valuable information that will allow you and your family to make informed decisions about your healthcare. We can help you understand your diagnosis and provide therapy (physical, speech, occupational) to get you back to your optimal level of health, or nursing staff to ensure you regain your independence as you recover from, or live with an illness or injury. Victory is one of the only home health/hospice agencies in our area that will care for patients that have no ability to pay, because we are dedicated to compassionate caring and we are here to help. If you have a terminal diagnosis, the Victory Hospice team will create an individual plan for you and your family that will meet your needs. The Victory team provides medical, spiritual, physical, and emotional support. Victory Home Health & Hospice Plus Medical Equipment wants to meet your medical needs. We sell a variety of oxygen therapy and respiratory products. We also have diabetic and ostomy supplies, lift chairs, scooters, electric wheelchairs, beds, walkers, uniforms and various medical supplies. Call our Corporate Office at 888-815-7922, and they can direct you to a location near you. |
