In recent decades, the West has undergone a shift in eating patterns from low-fat, high-carbohydrate to a diet which is completely the opposite – a factor which not only impacts your overall health, but also your gut microbiome. By cutting out the fat in processed foods, more sugar was added to enhance the flavour. Your gut is home to trillions of microorganisms including bacteria, which make up a unique ecosystem called your gut microbiome. For your gut microbes to thrive, they need complex carbs for fuel. Dietary fats are the ones you eat, and there are several types, some are good for you, and others bad. In this case, you are not what you eat. Dietary fats make up one of the three macronutrients the others are carbohydrates and proteins.
For more consumer health news and information, visit health. For your gut microbes to thrive, they need complex carbs for fuel. How many grams of fat should you be eating daily? When it comes to diets, picking between high fat and low fat is difficult. However, the claims that Ornish-type diets are proven effective are themselves based on imperfect data that does not hold up well to objective scrutiny. After eight years, there was no reduction in the risk of coronary artery disease CAD in the low-fat group. Lichtenstein, who studies diet and heart health at Tufts University.
But while our shopping baskets are full to bursting with these guilt-free foods our waist-lines keep getting bigger. This means cutting back on full-fat dairy foods, red meat and certain processed foods. But, as we came to terms with this unpalatable fact, the food industry got to work replacing the animal fats in their products with unsaturated vegetable oils. Some of the changes they had to make included altering the structure of the vegetable oil so it could be used in the place of solid fats. To do this the food producers used a process called hydrogenation which created a solid or semi-solid fat thought to be more appropriate for their food processing needs. Unfortunately, we now know these hydrogenated fats increase levels of dangerous trans-fats which are both bad for the heart and our cholesterol. Although trans-fats can be found at low levels in some natural foods these man-made versions meant it was likely we were eating more of them. We all need some fat in our diet, not least because it makes our food more palatable and tasty. Nutritionally, fats do more than simply supply calories.