Eye On Health

Good Fats Vs. Bad Fats: A Lesson

DENVER, Colo. (CBS) ― If you want to be healthy, get the fat out. At least the fat you're not supposed to have.

But for many people this can be confusing.

"Trans fat, good or bad?" CBS4 in Denver asked one man at a store, "Uh, good I think."

The problem is, he was wrong. University of Colorado Health Sciences dietitian Bonnie Jortberg spoke with reporter Alan Gionet to help explain the good versus the bad.

Fat is needed to do things like synthesize vitamins. Its mono-unsaturated fat that should be our goal. It's the good fat.

"Actually, excellent fat," she says.

You'll find it in many fish like salmon. Also, "Some oils like olive oil, your canola oil, your nuts and seeds, your avocados, those types of things," says Jortberg.

Avocados are rare among vegetables, because they do have fat. Most veggies have next to none--or none at all.

Then there are the fats that might have your doctor raising an eyebrow.

"If it's the fat on your meat, the skin on your poultry, those kinds of things. That's going to be your bad type of fat. That's your saturated fat."

Then there's trans fat. Most people have that one down.

There's not a lot of research about trans fat because it's a relatively recent invention in the lab.

"So what food manufacturers have done over the last few decades is that they've added hydrogens," says Jortberg.

This is done to harden it. Trans fat were thought to be a nifty way to turn otherwise soft fats into stick margarine.

These days many manufacturers are trying to find ways to get trans fat out of their products. New York has decided to ban it in restaurants by July of 2008. Even Elitch's recently publicized that it will go trans fat free this year with its food.

As much of a villain many think trans fat is, CBS4 asked Jortberg if it's worse than saturated fat. "Well, I don't think we know that. We know that both of them tend to raise your bad cholesterol."

Then there are fats known as poly-unsaturated.

"Your poly-unsaturated fats which you mainly find in your vegetable oils like safflower oil, corn oil, those types of things, tend to be healthier than your saturated fat, but probably not as healthy as your mono-unsaturated fat."

It's not going to clog arteries like a plate of fettucine alfredo, but when you're going for the unsaturated fat, Jortberg says to reach for the mono-unsaturated stuff.

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