Fats — the good, the bad, and the ugly.

There are some fats that are good for you. Some are even essential, which means that you can’t live without them and they have to come from your diet since your body can’t make them.

The difference is in the structure of the fats.  Here is a bit of chemistry, so hold onto your brains!  Fat is made up of chains of small molecules called fatty acids.  If the chains have carbon atoms that are not connected to each other, they are more free to interact with other atoms.  They don’t clump together and they can be used quickly.Think of dancing with Fred Astaire.  That’s what unsaturated fats are like.

Now think of dancing with Herman Munster.  Saturated fats have carbon atoms that are stuck together so that they don’t move smoothly.  They tend to stay in one place and move reluctantly. They have a bad habit of clumping together in arteries and piling up in storage around your middle.  They have a purpose, but too much of them is a bad thing.

The ugly — those are transfats, which are altered by well-meaning humans to make them deadly.  They appear identical to normal fats, but your body can’t use them like fats and they do dreadful things to your insides.  Think of dancing with Dracula — watch out for your neck!

More about fats — how to avoid Dracula, keep Herman under control, and dance like Ginger Rogers  (on a cellular level, anyway) — in the next posts.

Eating to live and living for Christ,

Susan Jordan Brown