Why You Need Fats Back In Your Diet

Is fat always dangerous for your health? Should you always avoid it at all costs? Here’s a quick lowdown about this controversial food group.

Including Fats In Your Diet Isn't Bad

Sometime around in the 1980s, the government told us that saturated fat can cause heart disease and should be avoided at all costs in order to make sure that our health stays in tip-top shape. As such, fat has since become a controversial food for 40 years now and it seems like that sentiment wouldn’t be swayed or changed anytime soon.

Since this is the popular belief, people listened, quickly followed by a steady increase in weight gain as well as a decline in health. And now, North Americans are obese more than ever. In fact, a report by BBC online showed that obesity rates climbed from 875 million in 1980 to 2.1 billion in 2014, with Americans owning the largest share of the statistics.

So where did it all go wrong? If fat is and avoiding it should be good, why did obesity rates in America climb?

Of course, there are only two answers: It's either people simply ignored the guidelines set by the government and continued eating fats or they did avoid it but the science itself is “bad.”

In fact, it really is bad, given that since the 1980s, the government warned against fats but also recommended increasing our consumption of carbohydrate to an amount equivalent to eight servings of cereals, pastas, grains and bread daily. Now, we all know that these foods can cause our blood sugar to spike and our bodies to store fat.

One such reason behind this is removing fat from food also removes its taste, prompting food companies to start adding sugar to make food taste good, which is yet another processed carbohydrate that gets thrown in the mix.

Truth is fat isn’t all that bad, given that there’s balance, not to mention that there are also healthy fats that our body needs. As such, opt for more fruits and vegetables in your diet, avoid sugar and understand that healthy fats found in olive, coconut, unsalted nuts, butter, eggs and more can help you lose weight and keep you healthier.