Ask the Expert: Good Fats

Candy Cumming, a registered dietitian at Sharp, answers these questions about what good fats are and what they can do for your health.

Where can I find healthy omega-3 fats?
We need fat and we have to get some of those powerful omega-3 fats which are found in the fatty fish like salmon and mackerel, lake trout. We also can find those omega-3 fats in some vegetable products like walnuts, flaxseed, flaxseed oil and also in canola oil.

Why are omega-3 fats good for us?
Omega-3 fats are really important. They protect us against inflammation, heart disease; they keep our blood platelets smooth so they don’t clump up and get sticky. They are very important for your brain. They’re very protective for hearts and brains. Remember your brain is 60 percent fat, so the kind of fat you eat will definitely effect your brain.

What other healthy fats should I be eating?
There’s also another group of fats that a lot of us know by identification as in avocados, nuts, olive oil is the monounsaturated fats, which are extremely helpful.

How can I work these fats into my diet?
You can use extra-virgin olive oil in a salad dressing, cook with canola oil and use it in food preparation. If we add those things, we’ll add the monounsaturated fats and they’re very protective of the heart. We can also use a little avocado and up to about an ounce of nuts a day, but we have to remember that all the fats are pretty calorie dense and so we need to use small quantities of them like an ounce of nuts, not a can of nuts, to keep our weight down in our culture because we’re not that active.

There are plenty of healthy fats to enjoy, so how do I cut out the bad fat?
The first thing we are going to do is minimize all those baked goods and junk foods that we don’t need any that are high in calories and they help us get heavy and contribute to disease. We’re also going to switch from full-fat dairy to low-fat or nonfat dairy product, and when we select a meat we’re going to select one that has no white running through the muscle part and we’ll cut the fat — the white stuff — off around the outside and that gets rid of most of the saturated fat. And we also need to look at the desserts we consume like high-fat ice cream and cakes and cookies. We’ll probably have a lot of trans-fat, especially in the cakes and cookies.

How can I still enjoy baked goods in my diet?
We need to really save those for very special occasions or make them at home, which will probably minimize a lot of cookie consumption because it take a lot of work from scratch using ingredients you can count on.

How else should I balance out the fats in my diet?
Make sure get some of the omega-3 fats, so including several fish meals a day particularly of the higher fatty fishes like salmon. We do that on the weekends we grill a bunch of salmon and then we have leftovers to take for one lunch during the week and then we get the salmon that we need and the omega-3 that we need for the week.

For More Information
To learn more about Sharp's nutrition services or to find a Sharp-affiliated physician, search for San Diego doctors or call 1-800-82-SHARP (1-800-827-4277), Monday through Friday, 8 am to 6 pm. To find general information about nutrition, read the Nutrition News archive.