Unsaturated Fats

gemboy75

I have been emailing with my local grocery stores nutritionist. The reason for the contact was to get nutritional information for a loaf of bakery bread I like to buy. I asked if she could include the leveles of polyunsaturated as well as monounsaturated fats because my diet traking service allows me a goal of zero in these catagories. She respnded by telling me that this was not good nutritional balance and that unsaturated fats were infact healtier than saturated fats and should be allowed in my daily diet.

Is it possible to allow some of these fats into my deit? As of right now I am avoiding these fats and I think I am doing this unnesasarily. For instance this rules out any sort of oil to cook with. Thanks for your response.

burner

i thought that too...interesting to see what ppl say... as my goal is 0 aswell

CrystalT

What MFP gives you is just a suggestion. You can manually adjust any of your goals. From My Home, select Goals, then Change Goals, and then select custom. It will let you change anything you want on that screen.

Edit: It isn't that the goal is set to 0. There just isn't a goal set. Those areas are blank when I go into mine.

Iceprincessk25

You need fat in your diet. It's necessary for MANY functions in your body including: sources of energy, transports fat soluble vitamins, and insulates tissues.

What you have control over is the type of fat you put in your body. Trans fats and saturated fats tend to be more related to increased cholesterol and increased risk of heart disease.

Some healthier alternatives are:

Polyunsaturated Fatty Acids - Vegetable oils (sunflower, corn, flaxseed) & seafood, usually liquid or soft at room temp
Necessary for cell structure and making hormones

Monounsaturated Fatty Acids- Vegetable oils (olive, canola, peanut), Liquid at room temp.
Less closely linked to diseases

lisa811

Read "YOU: The Owner's Manual". Very good book, with humor thrown in so it's not so dry. It explains all you need to know to keep your body running well for a long, long time.

Saturated fat: BAD. Limit as much as possible (difficult to eliminate altogether, just keep it low) Can raise your "bad" cholesterol
Trans fat: VERY, VERY BAD. Avoid at all costs
Mono- and Poly- ("unsaturated") fats: Good. Can raise your "good" cholesterol. (avocados, peanuts, nuts, omega-3/fish are just some examples)

The book gives lots of details on the "why".

Bottom line, as iceprincess said: You NEED fat. Just make sure it's the right kind.

gemboy75

Thanks for the advice on setting the goals. I've reset both the poly and mono unsaturated fats to 10g each. This way I've got a little leeway with using oils or eating seafood or the like. The biggest issue I have is that I primarily use the iPhone app and don't visit the web site more than once or twice a day, and the app shows that if I eat anything with poly or mono unsaturated fat as a big old red overage. So now by resseting the levels I'll have some room to eat! Thanks again for your and everyone elses responses.