Its time to ignore the assumption that no fat equals a healthy diet and improve your knowledge what fats are an essential part of maintaining a healthy lifestyle.

These days, if you walk into a super market, you’ll be bombarded by ‘fat-free’ this or ‘diet’ that. In fact, many people will brag that they lead a healthy diet because they exclude fat from their diets or they only eat ‘fat-free’ products. There’s no denying that fats have gained a bad reputation. Yet fats are an essential part of our diet, your body needs fats to function properly – nearly half of the dry weight of the brain is fat.

Good Fats
Oil-rich foods, which contain the good fats, include: nuts, seeds, sea vegetables, bananas and avocados.

Benefits
These are necessary in aiding weight reduction, lowering cholesterol, enhancing immunity and nourishing the reproductive organs, skin, hair and bone tissue. These fats help you to metabolise fat and are called essential fatty acids (EFAs).

Bad Fats
The foods containing these bad fats include: red meat, pork, pastries, chocolate, cakes and dairy products.

Dangers
If you are stuck in the office all day, it can be all too easy to just reach for the nearest biscuit tin. Bad fats, saturated animal fats that turn to stone once in the body, are responsible for clogging up your arteries, putting you at risk of a heart attack. As our bodies are not designed to effectively break down these fats, many of these fats are turned into toxic balls, stored in the body. High bad fat diets raise the blood pressure and cholesterol levels and can impact on your blood sugar levels, which often leads to weight gain and depression.