Do you have problem with your weight? At a time millions of people go hungry from childhood to old age; people who number about one-third of the world’s population eat three-quarters of the world’s food.

The three classes of foods that provide energy are proteins, carbohydrates and fats. A gram of protein or of carbohydrate yields 16.7 kilojoules of food fuel. In other words, the fat you add to your food is high-octane fuel and consequently runs up the kilojoules fast.

Fat can be either liquid or solid. The fats that are liquid at room temperature we usually call oils. All fats are made up of three fatty acids joined to one molecule of glycerin. The reason some fats as margarine, lard, or butter are solid at room temperature and oils are liquid is because of the kind of fatty acid they contain. Fats with a large proportion of saturated, or stiff fatty acids, are firm. But regardless of the kind of fat or food energy you consume, the surplus is converted to body far made up largely of saturated, or solid, fatty acids. This is as at should be, otherwise in warm weather, your fat would turn liquid and you would just slush around like a bag of oil.  So would all land animals. For this reason animal fats are hard. So, then of you eat freely of foods containing animal fats, your fat intake will be largely of the saturated type, plus considerable cholesterol which is present in all animal fats.

But oils can be made hard by hydrogenation a process which causes the unsaturated fatty acids of the oils take on more hydrogen and so become saturated, or hard, as is done in the manufacture of shortenings and margarine. Hard fats of any kind tend to raise blood cholesterol, but not to the same degree. Some newer type margarine is only lightly hydrogenated and has little effect on the cholesterol level. High levels of cholesterol in the blood are associated with a high increase in the incidence of coronary artery disease and stroke.

You may think you don’t use much fat. You may not, but again, you may be using more than you think. Fats are divided into visible and invisible kinds, and you may be consuming more fat hidden in foods than you realize. Visible fat is fat or oil such as you use on your table or in the preparation of food. When you make a sandwich or salad, the mayonnaise, dressing, butter or margarine you add is visible fat.  So is the fat or oil the baker adds to the flour to make bread, pie crust or cake.

Invisible fat on the other hand is fat inherent in the food. Nearly all foods contain some invisible fat. The germ of grains, certain oily seeds, nuts and olives contain from moderate to large amounts, mainly in a highly unsaturated form. Animal foods, as meat, milk and eggs, are also high in invisible fats, largely of the hard or saturated kind. By eating freely of foods high in fat, visible or invisible, we greatly increase our energy intake.

If you are having a problem with excess weight, the simplest and easiest way to control it is to cut down on the concentrated foods. There are the fats, the sugars, and the foods containing generous quantities of sugar and fat, mainly the rich desserts. If eaten at all, these should be used only sparingly by anyone to cut down weight.

The problems of overweight are serious. For every 2.5 kilograms of weight, your body must provide an additional 4.8 kilometers of blood vessels to circulate blood through this fatty tissue. If you are nine kilograms overweight your heart must push blood through 19 extra kilometers of blood vessels, day and night. This increased work load is the reason overweight is frequently associated with high blood pressure. It is also associated with high blood cholesterol and with an increased liability to stroke, coronary heart disease and diabetes.

To be overweight is more than an inconvenience. Every excess of 500 grams shortens life expectancy by one percent. This means that if you are 30 years of age and would normally live another 40 years or to the age of 70; if you are 14 kilograms overweight you are risking death 12 years earlier, or at the age of 58. If you are 22 kilograms over weight at the age 30, you are risking 20 years of your life, or death at the age of 50. So you can readily see that overweight is a real life shortener.

While coronary heart disease and stroke is the greatest killer in technologically developed countries, cancer follows close behind as second in line. The occurrence of every type of cancer is more frequent in those who suffer from overweight than in those who do not.

Tags: Diet, Dietary, Fat, Fats, Heart Health

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