Do I need fat in a fatfree diet
Quote:
> Hello Everyone - I am on a FATFREE diet, and every so often someone says to
> me "you have to have fat in your diet". I mostly eat beans, rice, potatoes,
> leafy veggies, fruit, and take multi vitamin & minerals each day. Do I
> really need fat, or is their enough oils in the
cooking.net">food I eat that's enough.
> Please also answer me directly by email please.
Well, as you suspect, there is already a certain amount of fat in your
diet. Fat is present in virtually all plant and animal foods. A truly
fatfree diet would have to be very short-term, or consist of highly
processed, artificial foods. You might be able to go awhile on honey
and egg whites, but even these probably contain trace amounts of fatty
acids, and of course, will not sustain you forever. Probably you'd also
go insane in a couple of days eating nothing but alternating mouthfuls
of sweet and tasteless goop.
So, when someone says you have to have fat in their diet, they're right,
but they really aren't saying anything interesting. Everyone already
has fat in their diet; "fatfree" diets are better described as VLF
(very low fat) or ULF (ultra low fat).
What they MAY be talking about are EFAs (essential fatty acids). These
are polyunsaturated fats which must be obtained from the diet, and have
received considerable attention from nutrition researchers and popular
nutrition writers lately. The importance of EFAs is behind admonitions
to eat fatty cold-water fish like salmon and mackeral, and to spend
lots of money on borage oil, evening primrose oil, flax seed oil, and
fish oils.
It seems to be bad for humans to have their proportions of EFA intake
highly skewed (this is the omega-6/omega-3 ratio people talk about). It
is also bad to have zero EFA intake, though again, this would not be
likely in a varied diet consisting of unprocessed foods. Beyond that,
I'll leave it to other, more knowledgeable posters to comment on the
importance of EFAs in your own particular diet.
