Eating For Health

Fat – we need fat in our diets.   So many people focus on cutting carbs but rarely do people focus on cutting the fat in their diets or changing their diet to include healthier fats.   And there are healthy fats we should be sure we have in our diets.   So, what are the fats we should be cutting back on and what are the healthy fats we should be choosing?   And where do we go to get advice on what fats we should be putting in our diets?    What are the fats we should cut back on, the bad fats? Saturated fats are the fats the American Heart Association (AHA) recommends we cut back on.   Why?   Because it is the saturated fats that raise your cholesterol, especially raising the bad cholesterol, or LDL cholesterol.   As the AHA notes, “high levels of LDL cholesterol in your blood increase your risk of heart disease and stroke.”    Foods with saturated fat Not easy to meet their recommendation though on how much satu...

Can you eat to improve your memory?   Apparently so.   A recent article in CommonHealth describes how one can eat to essentially clog up those brain pathways or how one can eat to unclog your brain and improve your memory.   Another article reviews 15 foods to eat for a healthy brain.   What food clog up your brain? We all know that eating high fat foods, especially those high in saturated fat, can clog up your arteries and are not good for your heart.   Another fat, trans fat, is especially bad as it builds up in our blood vessels and damages them.   So those French fries loaded with fat and foods high in saturated fat like bacon, are not only not good for your heart, they might not be good for your brain. The Diets high in cholesterol and fat might speed up the formation of beta-amyloid plaques in the brain.   These sticky protein clusters are blamed for much of the damage that occurs in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s. Recommend...