Fat or fiction? TOPS explains how the Mediterranean diet Promotes good fats

February, designated American Heart Month by the American Heart Association, is a time to raise awareness of heart disease and ways to prevent it. Heart disease is at the top of the list of the U.S. and Canada’s most serious health problems every year. The American Heart Association and the Public Health Agency of Canada recommend a healthy diet and active lifestyle as two of the best weapons in the fight against it.

Through the years, “low-fat” or “fat-free” was considered the way to go for healthy eating. In a rush to embrace fat-free foods, consumers overlooked the fact that fat-free didn’t necessarily mean “healthy.” Katie Ferraro, MPH, RDN, CDE, nutrition expert for TOPS Club Inc. (Take Off Pounds SensiblySM), the nonprofit weight-loss support organization, explains.

“Millions of people embraced fat-free brownies, fat-free cookies, fat-free chips and more, thinking they were doing the right thing. Although the fat may have been missing from those goodies, sugar and other chemicals replaced it. Having too many processed and sugar-laden, fat-free foods in our diets added up to extra calories, resulting in weight gain,” she says.

“Trading fat for sugar doesn’t work, and eliminating fat from our diet was found to not be a good thing,” Ferraro says. “We now know that fat—the good kind of fat—is needed in our diet to enable our body to make new cells and tissues. It also helps us absorb fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E and K.”

So how do we know what good fats are? Ferraro explains that we can find some answers by looking at the Mediterranean diet, an eating style that mimics the way the people of Crete, a Greek island, ate in the 1960s. The Mediterranean diet places an emphasis on plant foods, physical activity, moderate amounts of alcohol and minimal amounts of animal food.

Research has shown that eating the Mediterranean diet can help lower LDL (bad cholesterol) levels. It reduces overall heart disease risk and is also associated with a reduced likelihood of developing certain types of cancer, and Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases. But importantly, this diet contains fat, and a substantial amount of the good kind.

What Fats Are Good Fats?Not all fats are created equal. The type of fat that is found in animal foods (like meat, cheese and butter) is primarily saturated fat. Saturated fats are called unhealthy, or bad, fats because they contribute to plaque in the arteries, increase LDL cholesterol levels and are linked to higher rates of heart disease.

The types of fat we want to be eating are the good fats: mono- and polyunsaturated fats. You find these in plant foods like avocados, olives, nuts, seeds, and canola, peanut and olive oils.

Calorie count doesn’t always indicate whether a fat is good or bad. For example, a tablespoon of butter has 102 calories, slightly fewer than a tablespoon of olive oil. But olive oil is mostly good fat, whereas butter is mostly bad fat.

Even so, because fats are very calorie dense, most of us don’t have room in our calorie budget for hundreds of calories of added fats at each meal. So, when it comes to fats, it’s always wise to read food labels. Look for foods with more unsaturated fat and less saturated fats, and try to keep saturated fat to fewer than 20 grams per day. Too much of a good thing is not a good thing—and the same goes for fats.

You can find the 2015—2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans Mediterranean-recommended meal plan at 12 different calorie levels by going to health.gov/dietaryguidelines/2015/guidelines/appendix-4/.

TOPS Club Inc. (Take Off Pounds SensiblySM) is the original weight-loss support and wellness education organization. Founded more than 70 years ago, TOPS is the only nonprofit, noncommercial weight-loss organization of its kind. TOPS promotes successful weight management with a “Real People. Real Weight Loss.®” philosophy that combines support from others at weekly chapter meetings, healthy eating, regular exercise and wellness information. TOPS has members — male and female, age 7 and older — in thousands of chapters throughout the United States and Canada. Visitors are welcome to attend their first TOPS meeting FREE of charge. Membership is affordable at just $32 per year in the U.S., plus nominal chapter fees. To find a local chapter, visit www.tops.org or call (800) 932-8677.