Low fat is VERY important Recipe: Low Fat, Low Sugar

The emphasis is on low fat. NOT No fat!

Cakes, biscuits and pastry which are high in fat should be avoided. The recipes section suggests suitable alternatives.

Use lower fat dairy products such as skimmed or semi-skimmed milk, cottage cheese, low fat hard cheeses and diet yogurts.

Avoid adding extra fat or oil in cooking. Use methods such as steaming, microwave, grill or bake rather than frying. Roasting should be used as a method of removing fat from the food.

Use leaner cuts of meat and remove all visible fat, or use cooking methods that allow the fat to be removed from the meat.

The healthiest fats are the mono-unsaturated. Use olive oil if you need extra oil for cooking or dressings. Olive oil is an easily digested, mono-unsaturated oil and is a good source of vitamin E. Extra virgin cold pressed oil is best. It is the basic oil of the healthy Mediterranean lifestyle. Cretans in particular have the second lowest rate of heart disease in the world.

Other sources of mono-unsaturated oils are nuts such as almonds, cashews, hazelnuts and peanuts. Avocado is also a source of mono-unsaturated fat

The next healthiest fats are poly-unsaturated, such as corn oil, safflower oil and soybean oil.

Margarines are also poly-unsaturated fats but are highly processed and refined foods.

The least healthy fats are the saturated fats, but if you keep your fat intake low, you can allow yourself a very small amount of butter and cream ( under 1/2 oz / 12 g of all added fat in any one day and under 2 oz / 50 g of all added fat in a week ) Both these are pure, natural foods. Butter is an excellent source of vitamin E and is pure dairy fat. Single cream is 20% fat and is a good source of vitamins A, E and D. A certain amount of fat is essential in our diet. Provided that your overall intake of fat is kept low, butter and cream will enhance your lifestyle and help you maintain your health.

Lard, meat fat, bacon fat and shortening are saturated fats that add nothing to the diet and should be avoided.

Don't smother starch meals in fat! A healthy starchy meal can easily be overloaded with an unhealthy fatty sauce. A baked potato with a very small lump of butter or whole potato chips dipped in olive oil and drained before roasting in the oven make excellent meals, but if the potato is soaked in fat, you will suffer all the risks of a high fat diet.

Cholesterol is an essential compound, most of which is manufactured in our livers, and circulated throughout our bodies. High-cholesterol foods such as shell-fish and eggs are now thought to have little effect on blood cholesterol levels. Low cholesterol levels can result in severe depression.

Some diabetics are at particular risk of problems from high blood cholesterol levels. These people must ensure that ALL fat in the diet is kept to the minimum.

You can slash your risk of heart disease still further by eating two portions of oily fish, such as herring or mackerel each week. Blood pressure and inflammation can be reduced and controlled by eating fish oils that contain omega-3 fatty acids. The best sources of these are mackerel, sardines, salmon, pilchards and herring. But note; you can overdose on fish oil supplements - vitamins A & D are toxic in high amounts.

Fat and sugar mixtures are a double danger to our bodies. Because the ingredients are highly refined, we don't know when we have eaten enough. The refined fats are absorbed quickly into the bloodstream where they coat and clog blood vessels, and have to be stored quickly in fatty tissue. The sugar has equally serious effects on the body's mechanisms. Almost all medical opinions and government health guidelines now agree that sugar and fat mixtures make a major contribution to diabetes, heart disease and cancer. Avoid them!

Chocolate is also a fat sugar mixture that includes traces of drugs that can cause cravings and addiction. The amount of chocolate in the diet should severely restricted.

Copyright Peter Thomson 2012-May-19