Myths on Fat Busted! ❌ We should all be eating a low fat diet 🍳 Nope! Fat is an essential part of our diet and total fat in our diet, isn't super important. Different fats have different effects on our body. Unsaturated fats are super good for our health and saturated fats are mostly neutral. Some fats, like trans fats, are very bad for our health, these are mostly found in processed foods, like margarine. BUT this isn't a problem in NZ, where trans fats are very low in our food supply. ❌ Cholesterol in eggs and other foods increases cholesterol levels in your blood 🍳 Wrong again! Cholesterol in foods does not affect our cholesterol levels in our blood. Cholesterol plays such an important role in our body's that our liver makes most of the cholesterol we need (Like making hormones and bile salts and as an important structural component for the walls of all our cells) ❌ We should only eat low fat dairy products. 🍳 Full fat dairy products, consumed in normal amounts, is good to neutral for our health. Concentrated dairy fats, eaten in normal amounts, like butter and cream are neutral for our health. You may choose to have low fat dairy foods, depending on your health needs. ❌ Avocado's are fattening 🍳 Avocado's are high in fat, but that doesn't mean they make you fat. Avocado's are super healthy and can easily be eaten on a regular/daily basis. ❌ All saturated fats cause heart disease 🍳 Saturated fats have had a really bad reputation, for the last 30 years. It was thought that eating saturated fats increased our risk of heart disease, by increasing our LDL cholesterol. Now we know that not all saturated fats increase our LDL cholesterol, generally thought of as the "bad" cholesterol. And some actually increase our HDL - the "good" cholesterol. To add more confusion to the mix, we now know that there are different types of LDL, some of which may increase our risk of heart disease, some which don't. The foods that affect these are still being figured out / debated. ❌ Coconut Oil is the panacea for life 🍳 Studies on populations who eat a lot of coconut as a whole food, with a diet pattern of fish and plants, have low risk of heart disease. These populations don't eat coconut oil, they eat coconut as a wholefood. Coconut oil is generally considered slightly healthier than butter, which is neutral to health, when consumed in 'normal' amounts. 🍳 Moral of the story? Fats found in whole foods like avocado, nuts, seeds, olive oil, eggs and fatty fish are super good for us, focus your fat choices on these and have smaller amounts of the rest. Generally fats found in processed foods are not so great. Choose mostly whole foods and you'll be winning 😍 If you want to read a previous post, ranting about why you shouldn't worry about the amounts of fats and carbs in your food, then click on the link in the comments section☺️