How Bad Are Fatty Foods?
Fatty foods refer to foods that
contain high amounts of saturated or unsaturateed fats, although saturated fats
are more dangerous because of their tendency to solidify at room temperature.
Everyone needs some amount of fats to build important body and cell components,
absorb fat-soluble vitamins, provide concentrated energy as well as insulate
the body against cold during winter. However, the best form of fats for the
body is polyunsaturated and unsaturated fats, which are mainly obtained from
plants and are liquid at room temperature. On the other hand, saturated fats
are animal-based and solid at room temperature. Saturated fats are dangeroous
to health for the following reasons:
How Bad Are Fatty Foods?
1.
It settles within the arteris and veins, occluding blood
flow and restricting the internal volume of the blood vessels. This can lead to
hypertension, stroke and other CVDs.
2.
It coats the blood cells, making them stick to each other to form clots. These
clots, called thrombus/embolus, can cause heart attacks, stroke,
pulmonary embolism, and deep-vein thrombosis (which can cause leg pain and
swelling)
3. Pulmonary embolism is
the most dangerous form of deep-vein thrombosis as the clots can stop blood
flow to and fro the lungs, leading to symptoms such as sudden shortness of
breath, chest pain or discomfort that worsens when you take a deep
breath or when you cough, feeling lightheaded or dizzy, or fainting, rapid
pulse, and coughing up blood.
4. The clotting of the blood reduces the number of red blood
cells that can transport oxygen to the body’s cells, tissues and organs,
reducing the total volume of oxygen transported throughout the body. This
affects your cell, tissue, and organ respiration (energy output/efficiency) and
function. It is the absence of oxygen in the brain and heart that cause stroke
and heart attack respectively. Without oxygen, your cells and organs will die.
5. The clotting of white blood cells can also reduce the
efficiency of the immune system to fight off diseases, which explains why fatty
foods are highly associated with reduced immune system efficiency and increased
risk to infectious diseases, diabetes, cancer etc. 5,6.
6. Fats also
lead to diabetes, obesity and its associated problems, bone problems due to the
increased weight resulting from the high energy content of fats, which result
in more of the consumed fats being stored as adipose tissue as less of the
consumed fats are used to provide the energy needs of the body.
Fatty foods,
what are they? They refer to foods that contain large amounts of saturated fats
such as animal products (eggs, dairy, meat, fish), margarine or
hydrogenated oils/fats (also called trans fats), mayonnaise, cream, fast foods
and deeply fried foods such as french fries/chips. To cut down on your
fats intake, you must either cut down or avoid the fatty foods as mentioned
above. The best form of fats are from unrefined, cold-pressed and non-GMO
(genetically-modified organisms) vegetable oils such as virgin olive oil,
canola, coconut oil, peanut oil, sunflower oil, safflower oil, and flaxseed
oil. Please note that not all these vegetables oils are unrefined, cold
presed and non-GMO, so always read the label first before buying.
The commonest
and most notorious type of lipids, is cholesterol, a waxy substance found in
humans and animals. Although there is good cholesterol, they are made by the
body and not obtained from
animals.
Plants don’t produce cholesterol, although a plant
version of cholesterol, called phytosterol, which has a similar chemical
structure to cholesterol, is almost always misconstrued to be cholesterol.
Whereas cholesterol is very important for bodily functions such as hormone
biosynthesis and forms an important component of cell membranes, excess
cholesterol from animals lead to hypertension, diabetes, artheriosclerosis and
all other problems caused by fats as labelled above.
DR. APPIAH
Dr. Appiah is a Natural Health Therapist (Naturopath) who engages the natural healing agents given by God to save lives. EAT FOOD AS MEDICINE! EAT TO LIVE, DON'T LIVE TO EAT!! FOR BOOKINGS AND MORE: WANT TO ADVERTISE YOUR PRODUCTS? WANT A PERSONAL(CERTIFIED) NATURAL MEDICINE PRACTITIONER? REACH ME DIRECTLY ON WHATSAPP +233245643615 appiahinok@gmail.com
