TRANSform Your Fats

Over the years I’ve become quite a cold cereal aficionado, and I’m pretty particular about what I put in that bowl every morning. When I was a kid, putting anything but 2% milk in my cereal would completely ruin my morning ritual, but when I started to think more about my diet in college I realized that I could cut half of the fat from milk out of my diet just by cutting down to 1% milk. I thought it might take a while to get used to, but I adapted pretty quickly. These days I have my cereal with nonfat milk, but I’ve come to learn a few things about fat that make me think twice about cutting it out of other foods I eat.

Here’s the skinny: The fat in milk is saturated fat, which isn’t the best fat, but it’s not the worst, either. The worst fats are trans fats. Trans fats are man-made fats that are included mostly in processed foods because they have a longer shelf life than natural fats. As the use of processed foods and trans fats has risen, so has the rate of heart disease. Trans fats contribute to 2-4% of the calories in an average American diet (1). In a large study involving female nurses, researchers found that replacing the 2% of calories coming from trans fats with unsaturated fats could decrease the risk of heart disease by as much as 53% (2). The take-home from that statement is that we don’t need to cut fat out of our diet, we just need to transform the bad fats we eat into good fats. The more fat you cut out of your diet, the more carbs you will eat, and they’ll most likely be refined. Look instead to replace trans and saturated fats with unsaturated fats.

Tip: Olive oil is one of our unsaturated friends. Instead of greasing your pan with shortening or butter, use olive oil. Instead of getting the creamy salad dressings, look for ones that use olive oil as a base. Lastly, take a tip from the Italians and use it on your bread. It’s definitely not the same as butter, but it can be very tasty. We made garlic bread the other day by toasting some French bread and then brushing it with olive oil and rubbing a garlic clove on it. Yum! Lastly, look at the ingredient list when buying processed foods. The nutrition facts can say 0% trans fat as long as the product contains 0.5 grams or less of trans fat per serving. If the ingredients say “partially hydrogenated” or “vegetable shortening,” put it down and move on.



1. Willett,W. Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy. Free Press 2001

2.Hu, F. et al. Dietary Fat Intake and the Risk of Coronary Heart Disease in Women. N Engl J Med 1997;337: 1491-1499