Saturated fats – the term even sounds nasty. But not all saturated fats are bad for you. The ones found in avocado and raw nuts are actually quite good for you; they’re uncooked and sealed from light and air, which means they have not been transformed in any way.
Because our bodies are designed to survive starvation, we store fat. If you eat lots of meat, dairy, and refined sugar and flour, you’re risking the kind of saturated fat that sticks to the inside of your blood vessels, accumulates in your organs like the liver and heart, and makes you prone to stroke, heart disease, and a host of other illnesses.
Sources of saturated fats
We eat ten times as much saturated fat today as we did a hundred years ago; and we only eat a fifth of the essential fatty acids – the good ones. The worst sources for bad fat are from animals – beef, pork, dairy. But saturated fats from hydrogenated vegetable oils aren’t any better. Worse, they are ubiquitous, hiding in places like breads and baked goods, canned beans, snack cakes, and fast food. Even foods advertised as healthy may harbor hydrogenated vegetable oil.
By avoiding bad fats, you can keep the sticky fats from accumulating in your body. But some starches also produce the same sticky fats in your body. A great rule of thumb is to avoid cooked fats and white starches (tapioca, white bread, white rice). These are the foods that increase your glucose, converting easily into even more fat.
The Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada, Canadian Choiceness Conference on Cholesterol and the Canadian Dietetic Foundation recommended that saturated fat not exceed 10% of calories.