When you’re on a ketogenic diet, the majority of your meals focus on the intake of macronutrients – fats, carbs, and proteins.
However, you often hear how a lot of fats are bad for your health. This is true in a way, as plenty of food today contains harmful fat.
That’s why you should know the difference between good fats and bad fats.
Good Fats
Good fats are a major component of your keto diet. They have plenty of health benefits and keep your body in shape.
Good fats consist of:
- Naturally-occurring trans fats
- Polyunsaturated fats
- Monounsaturated fats
- Saturated fats
Usually, food with healthy fats contain a combination of these four fats instead of just one. Still, the most dominant fat in a particular food will determine which category that food belongs too.
Naturally-Occurring Trans Fats
Be careful – trans fats are usually categorized as unhealthy and harmful. However, a certain type of trans fat called vaccenic acid doesn’t fall into this category.
Vaccenic acid reduces the probability of cancer and diabetes and increases your heart rate. You can find this fat in grass-fed dairy products like butter and yogurt.
Polyunsaturated Fats
Polyunsaturated fats aren’t always healthy. If you heat them, they’ll release harmful components that increase inflammation, the possibility of cancer, and heart disease.
However, if you store them at low temperatures and eat them cold, they have many benefits. They contain omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids that reduce inflammation and risk of a heart attack. Also, they improve mental health and decrease the possibility of autoimmune diseases.
Foods that contain healthy polyunsaturated fats include flax oil and seeds, walnuts, virgin olive oil, fish oil, salmon, sardines, nuts, etc.
Monounsaturated Fats
For many years, Monounsaturated fats have been deemed healthy. They provide plenty of benefits concerning heart rate and the cardiovascular system. They lower blood pressure, reduce belly fat and insulin resistance, and increase good cholesterol levels. You can find these fats in nuts, avocados, and vegetable oils.
Saturated Fats
Since recently, saturated fats were connected to negative aspects of health, especially concerning heart diseases. However, recent studies have disproved this theory and found plenty of benefits in these fats, including better brain performance, boosted immune system, enhanced bone structure, and improved gut health.
If you want to include food with saturated fats in your keto diet, you should go for red meat, ghee, coconut oil, eggs, and cocoa butter.
Bad Fats
The most important aspect of a ketogenic diet is to know which fats you should reduce; the most harmful of which are processed trans fats. You should avoid these at all costs, as they can negatively impact upon your health.
These unhealthy trans fats appear during food processing. Regular polyunsaturated fat is heated and altered, which creates artificial and harmful trans fats.
Food containing unhealthy trans fats are crackers and cookies, french fries, fast food, processed vegetable oil (e.g. sunflower, peanut, soybean oil, etc.).
These fats can severely increase the risk of heart attack and cardiovascular disease, obesity, and cancer. Furthermore, they promote bad cholesterol in favor of the good and also increase inflammation. Not to mention that they’re full of carbs and other nutrients which negatively affect your ketosis.
More Good than Bad
As you see, most of the food that you’re consuming already is rich with good fats. Still, it’s important to know how much of that food should you consume every day.
To maintain your ketosis, keep a good balance of macronutrient by choosing the correct quality of food for each meal. Of course, stay away from processed trans fats at all costs.
