Monday, March 28, 2011

Which Oils Are Essential To Us?

By Owen Jones


In spite of the alternative of the Atkins diet, most people who go on a diet take the advice of reducing their fat consumption in order to reduce their bulk, which is fat. However, there is not a lot of proof to support the theory that reducing the consumption of fat will reduce how much fat you amass on your body.

The solitary strategy that can work in the long term, if you would like to lose weight, is to use up more calories than you take in. However, there is a great deal of proof to say that we require some oil and in particular some oils in our diet. This makes sense even on the most basic level, you need some oil (read 'fat') in order to lubricate your joints.

It therefore makes sense that athletes and individuals who have a strenuous job also require oil in some amount. However, it does not follow that eating just any oil or fat will be decent enough. There are beneficial fats and 'bad' fats, although we even need some of the bad fats. The concerns arise when we eat too much bat fat and not enough useful fat.

In other words, if our diet gets out of balance. For instance, animal fats (such as saturated fats) have a blanket 'bad' reputation, but they provide our bodies with such important vitamins as A,D, E and K. Similarly fish oil supplies our bodies with Omega 3 essential fatty acids that it is impossible to get from land-based foodstuffs.

These vitamins and oils in their most accessible forms come from dead animals. In the case of the long-chain omega 3 essential fatty acids like EPA and DHA, you can only acquire them from sea creatures, although you can derive the short-chain omega 3's from some land-based sources.

These vitamins and essential oils are crucial to all human life but even more so to finely-tuned sports individuals who need to be able to utilize all their physical and mental powers in order to get to the top of their professions.

Omega 3 essential fatty acids come in two broad types, long-chain and short-chain varieties but they are not identical. You need both sorts. Short chain you can acquire from flaxseed oil and it also has omega 6 in it too, although it is considered by many that most people consume far too much omega 6 as it is present in all vegetable cooking oils.

Oily fish delivers the long-chain omega 3's, so cod liver oil is a decent source of these. These omega 3's are literally 'brain food' and it is the reason why parents have been saying for hundreds of years that fish is brain food, although they certainly would not have known the precise reason why.

Cod liver oil also provides a spectrum of other vitamins and nutrients including vitamin D, which you could synthesize from the sunshine, if the ozone layer was not so thin as to make going out dangerous and we didn't nearly all work indoors.




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