Policy makers around the globe have had their priorities all wrong when it comes to nutrition, according to a study that came out in the Journal of the American Heart Association.
To fight the epidemic of heart disease that claimed 3 out of 10 lives in 2012, researchers are pushing the fact that it is more important to include healthier fats in the diet than to eliminate unhealthy ones. Adjusting dietary guidelines to this could save millions of people from dying of heart disease around the world.
For an average person, fats can be confusing. Most, if not all, foods contain several kinds of fats. Little do you know that some of those are actually better for your heart -- compared to those common beliefs you used to have that all fats are unhealthy.
Fats that are obtained from plants and animals are known as dietary fats. They are believed to be the good kind of fats; including monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats. They give energy to the body in order for it to do certain function like processing vitamins in the body.
Having these healthy dietary fats can help lower low-density lipoprotein (LDL), commonly known as the bad cholesterol, levels and reduce the risk of developing heart disease. These are usually found in plant-based foods and oils, such as corn, soy oil along with fatty fishes like salmon, mackerel, and trout.
The other type of fat is called saturated fats and is considered to be the "bad fa,t" especially those that are usually found in animal products such as red meat, poultry and dairy products. These types of fat raise the LDL levels which increase the risks of heart diseases.
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According to the study's senior author Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, dean of the Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, there is a worldwide focus on lowering saturated fats in food. The truth is, he says it will be much more helpful to promote replacing saturated and other kinds of fats with polyunsaturated fats in the diet.
It is believed that heart diseases rooted from trans fats, which is said to be common in developed countries such as the United States, but it is totally not true. Heart disease is a growing problem in poorer countries, too.
Researchers found this after studying 2010 data from 186 countries which included food availability, dietary pattern, rate of heart disease, and mortality rates. They approximated 711,800 heart disease deaths were caused by eating too few healthy fats compared to 250,900 heart disease deaths resulting from high consumption of saturated fats.
During the comparison of data from 1990 to those from 2010, they discovered that heart disease deaths caused by the lack of healthy fats decreased by 9 percent, while deaths caused by high consumption of saturated fats decreased by 21 percent.
This led researchers to believe that the main concern is the lack of healthy fats in the diet and not the presence of the bad ones.
