We need a little fat (essential fats, also called omega - 3 and omega - 6) in our diet every day to repair tissue, manufacture hormones and to carry some vitamins. Good sources of essential fats are pumpkin seeds, walnuts, flax seed oil, hemp seed oil and soya products, as well as other nuts and seeds such as almonds, Brazil nuts, sunflower seeds. The best fat for cooking is virgin olive oil, which - although not an 'essential fat' - is still beneficial to our health. Fats can either be saturated or unsaturated (which includes mono-unsaturated and poly-unsaturated). A rough guide is that saturated fats are normally solid at room temperature and they include animal fats such as lard and butter.Unsaturated fats are normally liquid at room temperature, such as sunflower or olive oil. There are few vegetable fats that contain saturated fat - coconut oil and palm oil are the most common ones. Saturated fats (mainly from animal products and processed foods) are not needed in the diet and we are better off without them!
Cholesterol is a fat - like substance called a sterol. It is found in all animal foods but is completely absent from all plant foods. The body can make all the cholesterol it requires so we do not need to (and should not!) include it in our diet - at all! Saturated fats increase the level of cholesterol in blood while unsaturated fats can help to lower it. Too much of the wrong kind of fat is linked to cancers and other diseases. The single biggest dietry cause of clogged arteries, high blood pressure, heart attacks and strokes is our animal fat and refined sugar-laden diet. The more of these there are in your blood, the greater your risk of getting one or all of the above diseases. One in five men and one in six women die of heart disease - that's how huge an epidemic there is. And it looks set to get worse as young people consume ever greater amounts of fat - mostly animal fats as well as sugar.