Ask the Expert: Saturated Fat

Candy Cumming
Sharp registered dietitian Candy Cumming discusses saturated fats and the effect they can have on your health.

Why don’t we eliminate fats from our diet altogether?
First of all we need fat just to grow, build our immune systems, we need to create healthy brains, which by the way are 60 percent fat. We need fat for healthy skin, and we need the fat to help us absorb the fat soluble nutrients that are in our diet.

What other purposes does fat have?
Fat provides a lot of satiety in our diet, so if you were going to on a totally fat-free diet, which would not be healthy by the way, you would be hungry all the time because fat provides a little bit of that satiety that gives us fullness and satisfaction after a meal.

What can you tell me about saturated fat? 
Ninety percent of people probably don’t know what saturated fat means, and all it means is that the fat molecule is saturated with hydrogen so the more hydrogen that sits on the fat molecule the more saturated it becomes, the more hard it gets at room temperature and the less healthy it is on our systems. So, saturated fats definitely can be used by the liver to crank up your blood cholesterol levels.

Where are these saturated fats so I can avoid them?
You’ll find saturated fats typically in animal products. They are usually in the high-fat dairy things like cheese and full-fat milk and cream, and also in your red meats that are not lean. So you could always trim the fat off around the outside of the meat, but if you look in that prime rib and see all that white marbling that’s saturated fat in there and that would be really harmful.

How do saturated fats harm the body?
What the saturated fats would do once you ingest too many of them is your liver can take some of that fat and make cholesterol so it’s the saturated fat in foods even more than the cholesterol in foods that would drive up your cholesterol levels. So when your cholesterol level goes up, there goes your risk for heart disease — it’s starting to skyrocket.

How can I minimize my intake of saturated fat?
You can do that pretty easily by selecting nonfat or low-fat dairy products. Minimizing or not using butter and using a margarine that is liquid-oil based. Definitely lay off those heavily marbled meats. So some meats like pork tenderloin and very lean red meat that have hardly any saturated fats in them are OK; we just have to look for meats where there’s no fat running through the muscle and that would be a lean meat.

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.