There are three main types of fats, saturated, polyunsaturated, and monounsaturated.
Each of these fats has a different effect on our health. Saturated fats are found mostly in animal fats and increase our ‘bad’ or LDL cholesterol levels.
You can take some small steps to reduce your intake of saturated fat. Here are some suggestions:
• Trim fat off meat and take the skin off chicken. Did you know that a chicken breast with skin contains 10g of fat while that trimmed of fat contains only 2g of fat!
• Be a label detective, you could look for packaged foods that contain less than 1.5g of saturated fat per 100g
• Cut back on sweet foods such as biscuits, cakes, pastries, and chocolate
• Reduce your intake of take-away foods, butter
Unsaturated Fats include polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats. These fats help to reduce our ‘bad’ cholesterol and improve our ‘good’ or HDL cholesterol levels. Here are a few tips to increase your intake of unsaturated fats
• Incorporate 150g of oily fish three times a week. Fish that is high in oil include tuna, salmon, sardines, mackerel, herring, and mussels.
• Snack on 30g of nuts per day. Nuts that are particularly high in polyunsaturated fat are walnuts, brazil nuts, and hazelnuts
• Add seeds such as chia seed, sunflower seeds, flaxseed to smoothies, yoghurts, breakfast cereals, and salads for a little extra crunch.
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