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The next time you start shopping for food at
your local grocery store, try to spend some time reading the
nutritional facts on the label of the products you buy. You
should not only be paying attention to the amount of
carbohydrates and calories per serving, you should also try
to focus on the amount and types of fats the food contains
as well. You would be surprised as to what you are about to
digest in the form of fat.
Before Dr. Atkins made us all aware of the
low to no carbohydrate diet, most nutritionalists believed
that the way to lose weight was to avoid fats in your
diet. By simply stripping away the fats from your diet, you
would lose weight by boosting your metabolism. Subsequently,
the food industry followed suit and started to produce a
number of “fat free” products.
Most of us were duped into thinking that “fat
free” meant “calorie free” and we could eat an unlimited
amount without gaining weight. As we started to reduce the
amount of fat in our diet, our carbohydrate consumption
started to increase—as did our total calories. Instead of
losing the necessary weight by burning fat, we became fat
machines by converting the excessive carbohydrates into
fat. To make matters worse, the type of fat produced is a
saturated fat that has been linked to high cholesterol and
heart disease.
Fatty acids are components of fats and
oils. They differ from each other by their placement of
molecular bonds and the number of carbon atoms they
have. Research into diet and weight loss has surprisingly
shown that it is not the “fat that makes you fat” rather it
is the amount of calories and lack of exercise that makes
you fat. Further research has shown that not all fats are
bad for you and the types of fats we consume in our diet can
have a profound effect on our health. In simpler terms, our
body needs a certain amount of fat for optimal health. The
Dakota Diet provides you with the right amount of fat by
featuring foods that are rich in
omega-3 fat.
To get a better understanding of how our
health is affected by our diet, spend some time getting
familiar with the types of fats or fatty acids we consume in
our diet.
MORE FACTS ON FATS>
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