This is part of a series I’ve been creating for Azumio. Azumio is an app company dedicated to improve health and wellness by tracking sleep and steps, monitoring your glucose levels and heart rate, and providing exercise libraries and routines.
For most of people’s lives, they’ve been living in fear of fat. The messages that fat will make you gain weight, fat will cause heart disease, don’t eat a lot of eggs or red meat, and saturated fat is bad have kept us away from eating fat for decades. After the release of new scientific studies on fat consumption, those warnings are getting debunked and the truth about fat is finally getting its day.
Why We Need Fat
Fat plays a wide variety of roles in our bodies and affects nearly every organ system. They line and protect our organs, help absorb fat soluble vitamins A, D, E and K, increase the feeling of fullness, are a sustaining energy source, and make food taste good. Most importantly, fat is essential for creating and maintaining healthy cell membranes and hormones.
Organs in your body also need fat to function well. Your brain is composed of 60% fat, and needs dietary fat in order to maintain healthy function. The gallbladder also depends on fat as well. Your gallbladder stores and secretes bile your liver makes, which helps digest the fat you eat and allows it to be absorbed into the small intestine and your body. Without healthy fat in your diet, your bile starts to get thick, doesn’t flow well, and doesn’t break down fat or allow for its absorption.
Having a balance of omega 3 and 6 fatty acids also keeps the inflammatory and anti-inflammatory cycle in check. Inflammation is a necessary process the body goes through to protect us from infections. Without enough omega 3 and omega 6 (omega 6 fats are more prevalent in processed foods) in proper ratios, you become susceptible to more inflammatory issues because there’s less of the anti-inflammatory omega 3’s to balance them out.
Learn more about the benefits of fat and which to eat at Azumio’s blog.