Healthy Oils, Healthy Fats: The 'New' Truth

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Healthy Oils, Healthy Fats: The 'New' Truth

New research has overturned some long-held ideas about good fats and bad fats. It used to be gospel truth: Saturated fat is bad. New studies suggest that, while no one would call saturated fats "good," they aren't so hard on your heart after all. What's more, replacing saturated fats with the wrong kinds of foods -- such as the highly refined carbohydrates in white bread, white rice, pastries, and sugary candies or desserts -- may actually increase your heart disease danger.

How can the average person make sense of the new research? Rather than banish saturated fat, many experts say it's more important to eat plenty of vegetables, grains, and fish, as well as a variety of fats in moderate amounts. Here are 5 tips to remember when you're trying to fit fats and oils into your heart-healthy diet.

1. Don't Obsess Over Saturated Fat

Health experts began recommending cutting back on saturated fat when they discovered that it raises LDL, the so-called "bad" cholesterol. That advice made perfect sense. Elevated LDL is a leading risk factor for heart disease. But new research shows that saturated fat -- the kind found mostly in meat, poultry, and dairy products -- also has some benefits. Saturated fat lowers trigylcerides, a form of fat in the blood that has been linked to heart disease. It also raises HDL, or "good" cholesterol. Both of those effects can actually lower your risk of heart disease.

The focus on slashing saturated fat may have been misguided. "Recommendations to focus on saturated fat were based on a single biomarker, LDL cholesterol," says Dariush Mozaffarian, MD, an associate professor of medicine and epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health. "But we now know there are many other important biomarkers for heart disease risk."

When you look at all of the biomarkers together, he says, the effects of saturated fat aren't as bad as once thought. Indeed, reviewing the evidence, Mozaffarian and his colleague Renata Micha found that levels of saturated fat have very little impact on cardiovascular risk.

Americans currently consume about 11.5% of calories from saturated fat. If we cut that roughly in half, to 6.5%, we might lower our risk of heart disease by only about 10%, says Mozaffarian.

Unfortunately, during the low-fat craze, many people replaced saturated fat with fat-free products made of highly-refined carbohydrates and often too much salt. Studies show that substituting refined carbohydrates for saturated fat may end up increasing our heart disease risk.

Does this mean you can eat as much butter and cheese as you like? No. The American Heart Association still recommends limiting saturated fat to no more than 7% of total calories. Fats of all kinds are high in calories, so it's wise not to overindulge.

The new findings simply reinforce the idea that it's also important to be wary of buying foods that claim to be fat-free or low-fat. Check the label to see if they are high in salt and refined carbohydrates, such white flour and sugar.

2. Choose Heart Healthy Plant-Based Oils

Most experts still agree that it's smart to replace some saturated fats with unsaturated fats.

Plant-based oils like olive oil or canola oil are a healthier choice than butter, for instance.
But there's plenty of debate about the healthiest choice among unsaturated oils.

Vegetable oils typically contain a mix of polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fatty acids.

Olive oil, for instance, is made up mostly of monounsaturated fats. Corn and soybean oil are mostly polyunsaturated. Canola oil is unusual among vegetable oils because it contains omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids, like those found in fish oil.

Because olive oil is a staple of the healthy Mediterranean diet, it has long been associated with healthy hearts. But recent -- and controversial -- research suggests that polyunsaturated oils may be better than monounsaturated oils at lowering heart disease risk.

For now, many nutritionists say your best health bet is to use a variety of plant-based oils.

That's good advice for cooking and flavor, as well. Olive oil, with its rich flavor, is great for salad dressings, for drizzling over pasta, or dipping bread. Peanut oil and sesame oil also have rich flavors. But all three of these oils lose flavor and begin to smoke when they're heated to high temperatures, so they're not the best choices for cooking.

Canola and sunflower oil are better options for cooking, because they have high smoke points. Also, canola oil has very little flavor of its own, so it won't overwhelm the flavors of other ingredients.

Using a mix of different cooking oils is a smart move for another reason. You'll get omega-6s, found in corn or safflower oil, and omega-3s, found in canola oil. A mix of the two may be the best thing for your heart. A 2011 study by researchers at the National Institute of Health found that diets that contained a mix of omega-3s and omega-6s cut heart disease risk by 22%.

In comparison, diets that contained almost exclusively omega-6 polyunsaturated fats increased heart disease risk by 13%.

3. Get Plenty of Omega-3 Fats

There's no debate when it comes to the health benefits of omega-3 fats. Found chiefly in fish oil, omega-3s have been shown to protect against abnormal heart rhythms. They also seem to help keep blood vessels flexible, reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease. Brain cells are particularly high in omega-3 fats, suggesting that they are crucial to healthy brain function.

In fact, recent findings suggest that a lack of adequate omega-3 fats may be associated with psychiatric conditions such as depression or schizophrenia.

When researchers in 2010 gave people at very high risk of psychiatric disorders omega-3 supplements, they found a significant reduction in psychiatric symptoms.

The American Heart Association recommends eating at least two servings of a fatty fish such as salmon, sardines, lake trout, or albacore tuna a week. If you don't eat fish, walnuts, flax seed, and canola oil are also good sources of omega-3s.

4. Keep an Eye Out for Trans Fats

It's been more than a decade since researchers sounded the alarm about trans fats. These artificial solid fats, made by changing the molecular structure of vegetable oil, raise bad cholesterol levels and lower good cholesterol. They also increase inflammation, which is linked to heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and other chronic diseases. That makes them far more dangerous to the heart and arteries than saturated fat. According to experts at the Harvard School of Public Health, a 2% increase in calories from trans fats increases the risk of coronary heart disease by 23%.

"Fortunately, labeling requirements and bans on trans fats have dramatically limited their presence in food," says Janet de Jesus, RD, a nutrition educator with the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute. Still, trans fats lurk in some processed foods. "It's still wise to read labels and avoid foods that contain hydrogenated oils."

5. Put Dietary Fats in Perspective

When the low-fat craze began, Americans became obsessed with fat. It was easy to think that a healthy diet simply meant slashing fat. We know better now. Fats are an important part of a healthy diet, especially unsaturated fats. The Mediterranean diet gets 30% or more of its calories from fat. It's widely considered one of the healthiest eating patterns in the world. Much of the fat in the Mediterranean diet comes from olive and other plant-based oils, as well as from fish.

As important as healthy fats are, other foods may play a more powerful role in protecting your heart. When Mozaffarian recently weighed evidence of the pay-offs from various dietary recommendations, he found some surprises.

Cutting back on saturated fat came in fifth on the list.

Eating more fruits, vegetables, and whole grains also had a bigger impact than saturated fat on health and disease-prevention.

So did cutting back on salt, which is a leading cause of high blood pressure.

"It's a matter of perspective," Mozaffarian says. "With the focus on low-fat, we lost track of that. A good diet isn't about percentages of fatty acids but about an overall healthy eating pattern." Eating fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and fish may be more important to heart health than what type of fat you eat.